Five Trends
That Are Changing the World
TREND 1
Cultural modernization - The basic tenets of modern culture - equality, personal freedom, self-fulfillment, etc. - have been eroding the domains of traditional cultures - that value authority, filial obedience and self-discipline, etc. - at an accelerating rate over the past generation. The children of traditional societies around the world are growing up wearing western clothes, eating Western food, listening to Western music and (worst of all) thinking Western thoughts. Most Westerners - certainly most Americans - have been unaware of the personal intensities of this culture war, because we are so far away from the "battle lines." Beside which, we regard the hallmarks of modernization - public education, meritocracy, civil law, etc. - as clear signs of social progress, while the defenders of traditional societies see them as cultural degradation.
Already on a 50-year roll, the forces of cultural modernization, reinforced by globalization, are likely to marginalize the world's traditional cultures before the Century is over. And because the well-springs of modernization - the secular industrial economies - are so unassailably powerful, terrorism is the only means by which the defenders of traditional culture can fight to preserve their values. While I have not conducted an actual survey on the topic, my best estimate is that futurists are about evenly divided on whether or not the current war on terrorism will morph into a full-blown global culture war. Half are absolutely convinced that this will be another 100 years war, but the other half (of whom I am one) believe that economic globalization will so greatly improve both the quality of life and personal prospects among all peoples worldwide, that the purist traditional cultures will lose most of their natural constituencies well before the Century's end. In the near-term future, however, most believe that the culture wars are likely to produce at least a few further extreme acts of terrorism, security measures not withstanding.
After the 9/11 attacks, social commentators speculated extensively on how these events would change us. We would become more motivated by things of intrinsic value - by children, family, friends, nature, personal self-fulfillment. Or, we would see a sharp increase in people working for pro-bono and public service careers. A number of folks predicted that our popular media - movies, games, etc. - would feature much less gratuitous violence after 9/11. None of that has happened!! Nor have Americans become more attentive to international news coverage. Surveys show that Americans read less international news now than they did before 9/11! Event-inspired changes in behavior are generally transitory. Even if the current conflict produces further extreme acts of terrorist violence, these seem unlikely to alter the way we make daily decisions. Studies in Israel reveal that its citizens have become habituated to their terrible circumstances. The daily routine of life remains the norm and the random acts of terrorism remain just that; random events for which no mind-set can prepare us or significantly reduce our risk.
In summary, cultural modernization will turbulate the traditional cultures of the developing nations, provoking widespread internal political conflict, psychological stress and social tension. Individual human psychology will be the battleground on which the struggle between tradition and modernization will be fought. But in the developed nations, where the vast majorities embrace the tenets of modernization, and where the threats from cultural conflict are manifested in occasional random acts of violence, this global trend seems likely, at most, to produce security measures that will merely inconvenience us, but do little to alter our basic personal decision making, individual psychology or values.
TREND 2
Globalization - On paper, globalization poses the long-term potential to raise living standards and reduce the costs of goods and services for all, worldwide. But the short-term consequences of free-trade threaten established enterprises in both developed and developing nations with potentially insurmountable competition. For most people worldwide the threat from foreign competitors is regarded as much greater than the threat from foreign terrorists. The risk and uncertainty in daily life is characteristically high in developing countries, as reflected in both the fatalism of their faith systems and the low propensity to commit to long-term endeavors or investments. In the developed economies, where formal institutions sustain order and predictability, globalization is increasing the risk and uncertainty confronting many enterprises, and appears to be affecting the collective psychology of both blue collar and white collar workers - especially males - who are unwilling to commit themselves to careers in fields that are likely to be subject to low-cost foreign competition.
Specifically, male enrollment in post-secondary education in the U.S. has fallen steadily over the past decade - in spite of the high-tech boom - and surveys of male high school students in communities dependent upon manufacturing, mining and commodity production reveal a startling degree of fatalism, and little or no concept of a purposeful personal future. Strikingly, surveys of young Americans show little sign of xenophobia in response to the new immigrant workers with whom they are competing in the domestic job market. However, they feel hostile and helpless at the prospect of competing with Chinese factory workers and Indian programmers overseas.
TREND 3
Universal Connectivity - While IT continues to inundate us with miraculous capabilities, only one of our technologically-provided powers appears to have impacted upon our collective psychology: our enhanced ability to communicate with each other, any where, any time, any place. Behavioral researchers have found that cell phones - used by 2/3 to 7/8 of the population in all mature industrial countries - have:
- blurred or changed the boundaries between work and social life; (i.e. more and more of us are "always on duty").
- blurred or changed the boundaries between personal and public life, (reinforcing privacy research, which has shown that most people's desire for individual privacy applies to a relatively small area of their personal lives).
- increased users' propensity to: micro-manage their lives, be more spontaneous, and, therefore, be late for everything.
Most recently, instant messaging (IM) - via both cell phones and on-line computers - is having the most powerful impact of all, because IM initially tells a user whether the person they wish to call is "present" in cyberspace (i.e. actually on line at the moment.) Those who are present, even though they may be 12,000 miles away, can be messaged immediately, in much the same was as you might look out the window, and call out to friend who you saw in the neighbor's yard. Instant messaging gives a physical reality to cyberspace. It alters entirely our sense of distance. With video-instant messaging - widely available in less than 5 years - the illusion will be complete. We will be living in a global village, in which cyberspace will be the town square.
TREND 4
Transparency - Even before the massive corporate malfeasance of Enron, Tyco and Worldcom, there was a rising global movement toward greater "transparency" in all private and public enterprise. Originally aimed at kleptocratic regimes in Africa and the former Soviet states, the movement has now become universal, with the establishment of more stringent international accounting standards and more comprehensive rules for corporate oversight and record-keeping. Because secrecy breeds incompetence and malfeasance, we have decided to expose the principal financial decisions of enterprise to public scrutiny. But in a world where most business schools have dropped all ethics courses and preach that government regulation thwarts the efficiency of the marketplace, some corporate and government leaders around the world (including the U.S.) are lobbying hard AGAINST transparency mandates on the private sector, on the grounds that such openness would "tie their hands," "reveal secrets to their competition" and "keep them from making a fair return for their stockholders." It would appear that nearly a century after Woodrow Wilson's call for "open agreements openly arrived at," human psychology (at least, among Type A personalities) sees secrecy as a necessary concomitant of leadership. But pervasive, ubiquitous computing and comprehensive documentation will soon make all things transparent, and this may leave many leaders and decision-makers feeling uncomfortably exposed, especially if they were not provided a moral compass prior to adolescence.
TREND 5
Social Change - During the 20th' Century it became increasingly apparent to the citizens of the modern industrial nations that neither the Church nor the State were omnipotent, and that their leaders were more or less ordinary people, not all that different from themselves. This realization has led individual members in modern societies to assign less weight to the guidance of their institutions and their leaders, and to become more "self-regulating." While the decision research crowd says people have become more "pragmatist/realist" and less "idealist;" theologians fear that society's sense of ethics and morality have become more subjective and relativistic, and less certain. The social psychologists used to all it "post Freudian." (Now that Freud has been substantially repudiated, I'm not sure what they call it!)
Society has always been highly adaptive, but it has become more free to be so during the 20th Century. And, as I have suggested above, there is much more fundamental change occurring today to provoke social adaptation. If IT and off-shoring eliminate large numbers of high-pay/low-skill jobs, we will work two low-pay/low-skill jobs to replace them. If technology permits us to work from home, we do so, especially if the arrangement permits us to care for an aging parent. If the wife earns more money than her spouse, the male becomes a house-husband and takes care of the kids. If I am still in good health at age 65, and I enjoy my work, I don't have to retire, even if that's what I've been planning to do all my life. Of course, while we can - and do - adapt to change, that doesn't mean we like to "have to" do it, or that it can't be stressful.
Next week I will be kicking off a long-term program to transform a Community College in East Portland, Oregon, from being a typical two-year, associate degree granting institution into becoming the local economic development agency for a dying industrial community of 350,000. (A truly innovative experiment! The school administration and local business leaders are keen supporters of the project, as are the vocational-technical half of the faculty; the academic half of the faculty are appalled.)
As we were working out the specific content of my opening remarks, the president of the college observed that the institution had already been through a lot of change during the previous four or five years, and that he thought it would ease stress among the faculty and staff if I would tell them how soon this period of accelerated change will end - so that life can get back to normal. I told him, as I tell all my audiences, that THIS is the new normalcy. This accelerated pace of innovation and change will be sustained, since our fully installed info-structure will now permit us to lift the veil of ignorance on every frontier of knowledge - all at once!
The social psychologists suggest that people are not wired to handle continuous change. That ability will be essential if humankind is to succeed in the Information Age.
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