Speak the Future
By Jim Taylor and Watts Wacker


The 500-Year Delta, excerpted here, is the work of former Yankelovich
partners Watts Wacker, now resident forecaster at SRI Consulting, and Jim
Taylor, director of global marketing at Gateway 2000. Equal parts deep
demographic research and divining rod, this wide-ranging guide to "what
happens after what comes next" spells out how convergence and accelerating
rates of change have redefined the momentum of history. We have entered an
era, in short, when chain reactions are governed not by the domino effect but
by Slinky theory, a continuous expansion and contraction of social energies.

Yet the shifting landscape of the future, like the increasingly competitive
craft of futurism, demands more than a keen sense of historical cycles. In
fact, an ear for idiom - and a knack for coining phrases - has become the
currency of modern-day imagineering, whether you chase the hidden agendas
of popular culture in the patois of street punks or trace the floor plan of
the next civilization in the technobabble of Sand Hill Road. Looking
backward, the true legacy of Naisbitt's Megatrends or Toffler's Third Wave
may turn out to
be not the worldviews but the words.

Mastering the new millennialist lexicon, it seems, is a primary thrival
skill; a phrase on everyone's lips - think push - can quickly become the
proverbial butterfly's wings. Wacker's coinages already have seeped into
many neotribes of the new economy, worn in "wordrobes" from the backwaters
of the Web to the
boardrooms of Silicon Valley. But use these words wisely: glossofacilia may
be the quickest route to global pillory.

Age of Access The age we are already in, in which connectivity drives
toward the access of everyone to everyone, everything to everything, and
everything to everyone. The Age of Access impels new political and economic
structures based on access, not scarcity. See connectivity.

Anthrolineage The résumé of cultural experience that allows one, in a
time-compressed world, to immediately discover identity with a short-term
other.

Bionomics Literally, the merger of biological and economic theory. In its
more figurative sense, the merger of the world of the made and the world of
the born. Bionomics will flourish as an academic discipline because as the
two worlds merge, economic systems will assume the properties of biological
ones.

Blue-chip ejaculation The tendency of very large companies when confronted
with massive amounts of change to ejaculate a single-point answer in a very
large way. See truncated perspective.

Capital quarks The subatomic structure of the elemental breeding matter of
any business. Capital quarks come in four forms. Unruly quarks produce
excessive governance, excessive streams of capital, or excessive
expectations on the part of the capital market or supplier. Fluid quarks
are capital that
immediately engages and sustains progress. Venal quarks require the
recipient organization to become like the capital source. Social quarks add
social magnificence to the basic philosophical concept. See pagan capital.

Competitive uniphobia A fixation on competitive situations that by their
very nature are transitory. See truncated perspective.

Complicated simplicity What's needed to survive and prosper in a chaos
world in which reason no longer applies, in which you must focus on
outcome, not process, and in which you must be, not do. "At the still point
of the turning world.... there the dance is," T. S. Eliot wrote in Book I
of his Four Quartets. "But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it
fixity."

Connectivity The result of the fusion of computing and communications.
First posited by Nobel laureate Arno Penzias. See Age of Access.

Convergence The blending of culture and ideas into a single product.

Corporate communalism The tendency of executives within any corporation to
group within their own think-sets, experience-sets, and product-sets. See
truncated perspective.

Cryptocentrism The tendency of media communes, tribes, and other
microcultures to invent language that maintains in-group/out-of-group
distinctions. Technobabble, gang "signing," and graffiti "tagging" are all
examples of cryptocentrism.

Cultural schizophrenia The modern condition born of a disconnection between
attitudes and behaviors, between the world as it is presented and the world
as we intuit it to be. Cultural schizophrenia occurs whenever society
begins to reinvent its vision of how it will conduct affairs in the future.

Customer loyalty The new imperative of marketing. As the marketplace
approaches a supersaturation of products - as the power in the marketing
equation shifts from product to consumer - brand loyalty disappears. To
survive, manufacturers and retailers will have to create unique loyalty
relationships with their
customers, one customer at a time. See marketing surplus.

Disharmonious conjunctions The organizing principle of a chaos world.
Nothing can be planned. Nothing happens as part of a predictable chain of
events. Decision making is driven by random convergences. See oxymoronic
future.

Distention Not inattention, but the refusal to involve oneself in issues
that have no relevance over one's life. A necessary survival skill in a
chaos-driven world.

Diversity IQ A basic measure of the capacity to survive and prosper in the
Age of Access. Diversity IQ is built on the ability to move freely and
tolerantly among people of various races, cultures, backgrounds, and beliefs.

Downward nobility The decline in the value of formerly status-laden items
and the simultaneous growth in the status value of just being satisfied.
Self-affirmation will come by underspending incomes and exercising
independence as consumers, not by depending upon objects to establish worth.

Ecomagnetics The creeping tendency of all products to move toward the
central values in the culture.

Endotruths Truths known inside, but not outside a culture - whether it's a
social, political, or economic organization, a tribe, or a media commune.
Endotruths usually begin with the nature of the founder of the
organization, and they explain why two companies in the same business often
have startlingly different corporate cultures. See exotruths.

Evilution The transformation of evil from time to time and place to place
and at differing rates of evolution, largely as determined by tribes and
communes. For the Mother Jones media commune, Richard Nixon remains the
embodiment of evil more than two decades after he resigned the presidency
under the threat of impeachment. For the Republican cocktail-party circuit,
Nixon has passed from victim to embarrassment to redemption to radiant
political authority. See global pillory and media communalism.

Exotruths Presumed truths about a culture, whether they are in fact true or
false. Exotruths are the myths that frame the social understanding of an
organization. They determine its external value and cannot be disproved
even by denying them. The exotruth of Coca-Cola is that the formula for
Coke is kept in a safe deep in corporate headquarters; the endotruth (see
above) is that virtually everybody who is anybody at Coca-Cola knows the
formula by heart.

Fault tolerance The capacity of any organization to tolerate calamitous
events. Fault tolerance increases in direct relation to an organization's
ability to say "thank you" and "I'm sorry."

Filocity A capacity to come up to speed in alien cultures, to make cultural
penetration and establish friendships. What Ferris Bueller had in such
abundance in the movie named for him.

Flight impulse The tendency of everyone between the ages of 45 and 50 to
seek a completely different lifestyle and actively plot their escape.

Fraternities of strangers Ad hoc affinity groups created for finite periods
to achieve specific ends. The new basis for social organization. See tribal
marketing.

Futopia Statements or ideas about how to live in the future that fail to
make reference to or take into account the impending urban population
explosion. All speculations about the future that do not factor in
large urban crowds are futopic and, thus, futile.

Global pillory Thanks to global access, global connectivity, and global
media saturation, global pillory is where you go when you are globally bad.
Nearly a decade after he was brought low by the law and despite
extensive efforts to raise money for research into prostate cancer, which
he suffers from, Michael Milken remains in global pillory, both famous and
ostracized.

Glossofacilia A tendency to use very large words to explain very small
phenomena. Glossofacilia drives to complexify rather than simplify and is
the natural instinct of reactionaries to an age of change.

Herd crimes Crimes that, once committed, are repeated communally, by
everyone in the herd. Shoplifting is a herd crime of young teenagers;
smoking marijuana was the herd crime of the counterculture of the late '60s
and early '70s; padding expense accounts is the herd crime of junior
executives.

Homophyly The tendency of objects, when in close proximity, to assume the
characteristics of each other. Based on genetic theory, homophyly is
equally applicable to human behavior. It increases in direct relation to
the increase in access and connectivity. MTV, for example, has created a
global homophyly of musical tastes among young people, just as television,
in general, and VCRs have created a global homophyly in wants and desires.
The ultimate extension of homophyly is a global biological similarity that
will threaten genetic variation.

Inconspicuous consumption Defining simply your taste, not your life, by the
items you consume. Part of the new economics built around individualism,
not consumerism. See downward nobility.

Instant history Reinventions of history as a way of accounting for near
term behavior. The marketing of golfer Tiger Woods as a racial icon and
Microsoft's introduction of Windows 95 were both examples of instant
history at work, but no example better captures the spirit of instant
history than the annual NFL Super Bowl. As ex-running back Duane Thomas
once put it, "If it's so super, how come they're having one next year?"

Intelligent disobedience What seeing-eye dogs are taught - essentially that
they are to obey unless they have a better idea. Intelligent disobedience
is already embedded in the corporate culture of companies like Microsoft.
See unrules.

Latent personalization The unrealized capacity of a product or an idea to
be taken personally. Clothing remains the highest per capita commodity
expenditure among highly personalized products, but most products, from
books to tractors, have a vast potential to be personalized. And in a world
of splintering markets and individual realities, realizing latent
personalization will become increasingly crucial to market success.

Loss followers Substantive investment in products, without a prospect of
recovering the investment, in order to catch up. The extraordinary
concession granted by the state of Alabama to attract a new Mercedes plant,
the extraordinary expenditures undertaken by the city of Baltimore to
attract the Cleveland Browns football team - rechristened the Baltimore
Ravens - and Panasonic's heavy investment in a knockoff of the Sony Walkman
are all examples of loss followers. In each case, the outlays were
necessary to remain credible:
as a state to relocate to, a city to invest in, an electronic product to
consider purchasing.

Macronomia The tendency of large organizations to experience feelings of
normlessness and disgust with their own size. Macronomia drives
corporations like IBM to partition their parts and decentralize their
structures. The cellularity and decentralization, in turn, threaten value
continuity in the whole. See values-based management.

Marketing surplus A theory developed by McKinsey's David Court, which holds
that success is determined not by market share, but by which one of the
entities in any transaction - from raw-goods supplier through manufacturer,
retailer, and consumer - holds the greatest amount of the surplus or profit
made at each step of the process. As the market reaches saturation,
marketing surplus moves to the consumer.

Media communalism An affinity group in which members selectively manipulate
their media lives to reinforce a singular worldview or set of values. See
truncated perspective.

Mediocracy The hierarchy formed within microcultures on the basis of media
appreciation for the individuals that make up the microculture. New York's
Reverend Al Sharpton, to cite one example, has no political base, but has
been anointed by the media as the mediocrat for his microculture. Because
mediocrats tend to know one another, they are how microcultures communicate
with one another.

Mental flexibility The measure of a society's ability to accept change, and
perhaps the largest single determinant of national macro-wealth in the
future. A 1995 World Bank ranking of future economic potential, based in
part on mental flexibility, placed Australia first in the world and the
United States fifth.

Multiple yous The capacity to re-create yourself as the situation demands.
John Wayne, strong and silent whether he played a cowboy or a soldier, was
the paradigm of a loyalty-based world. Tom Hanks shifting from idiot-savant
(Forrest Gump) to AIDS victim (Philadelphia) to hero (Apollo 13) is the
personality paradigm of a deal-based world.

Nanostalgia The tendency to feel nostalgic over events, such as movies,
that concluded only seconds ago. The $150-a-bottle Krug champagne, for
example, celebrates in its advertisements its capacity to deliver
nanostalgic moments. Instant history (see above) takes advantage of
nanostalgia by providing the
throttle for such moments. Super Bowl replays are nanostalgic moments in
the midst of an instant-history happening.

Non-sense 1. What logic becomes as we cross the delta from reason to chaos.
2. The indefinable qualities of great brands that enable them to travel
across and through time.

Nulture The convergence of nerds and culture, and a powerful, growing force
as a majority of the population actively seeks to assimilate and apply
advanced technology.

On the bubble As commonly used, a term of great respect. As it should be
used, a term of great fear. To be "on the bubble" is to be so close to a
trend that your future success is in imminent jeopardy. Why? Because trends
move in ever more narrow bands, and the success you presently enjoy is
likely to blind you to the changes you must embrace to succeed in the
future. When you're on the bubble, it's time to blow your organization up.

Oxymoronic future A future formed by the infinite repetition of
disharmonious conjunctions (see above).

Pagan capital Capital produced and delivered to a company with one set of
values from a capital source with a different set of values. Whether in the
form of direct investments or venture capital, pagan capital produces often
huge dislocations in entrepreneurial companies, because the values that
govern the capital are not commensurate with the values that created the
success of the recipient organization. The great success of Warren Buffet's
Berkshire Hathaway is directly related to the fact that the capital it
delivers is
never pagan. See values-based management.

Particle economics The economic analog of particle physics, which concerns
itself with matter so small that it lacks magnitude yet still exerts
attraction and has inertia. A central discipline as capital becomes ever
more frictionless, ownership disappears as a measure of wealth, and money
comes to lack intrinsic meaning.

Permanent flexibility What all great companies and managers will have - the
capacity to constantly remake themselves as different and randomly arising
situations demand.

Privacy management Critical in the Age of Access and one of the next great
growth sectors. As connectivity spreads, privacy management will become the
ultimate status tool.

Real disguise Getting outside the box, adopting a disguise that allows you
both to be yourself and to experience life or a situation from a different
perspective. The standard work in the field remains John Howard Griffin's
Black Like Me. See diversity IQ.

Shelf determinism The capacity of products to transform themselves on the
shelf without any physical changes - a characteristic of all great global
brands. Tide, to cite one example, takes on different meanings for
differing cultures, but however the culture defines "clean," Tide is its
standard of excellence.

Sisbertizing Named for the movie critics Siskel and Ebert, this is the
process by which products and ideas are validated within particular
microcultures by objective social critics anointed by the microculture to
do so. Every microculture has its Sisberts, and it is crucial to appeal to
them because, while advertising can create arousal among the microculture,
only sisbertizing can create conviction.

Situal intimacy Intimacy based on proximity, not deep association. The
annual Bohemian Grove gathering in California - an exercise in shared
nudity among the rich and powerful - is an example of the creation of
situal intimacy, as is the US Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island,
South Carolina. Arthur Andersen
institutionalized situal intimacy among its trainees by giving them free
tickets and encouraging them to get drunk with each other. Situal intimacy
can lead to situational love (see below).

Situational lifestyles Deal-based, not loyalty-based lifestyles.

Situational love Spasms of affection driven by circumstances that have no
binding effect beyond the moment. The intensity of situational love grows
in direct proportion to our incapacity to spend emotional capital in the
course of our ordinary lives, and as the compression of time intersects
with the acceleration of stress, the incapacity to spend such capital in
the normal course of events grows exponentially. See situal intimacy.

Slinky theory A theory of social history based on the premise that at any
given moment society, like a Slinky toy, is either contracting toward
consensus or expanding toward the exploration of end points.

Thrival skills Skills that will allow individuals and businesses to not
just survive but to thrive in the Age of Possibility.

Tribal marketing The creation of affinity groups for commercial ends.
Perhaps the most notable and successful contemporary example is Harley
Davidson, which has coupled the sale of motorcycles and peripherals to the
creation of weekend motorcycle clubs and an entire way of life built around
Harley-Davidson products. Tribal marketing works best when it is constantly
reinforced with icons.

Truncated equilibrium The theory that evolution occurs not as a succession
of regularly repeated peaks and valleys, but in huge forward leaps followed
by long plateaus. We are currently in the midst of one such leap.

Truncated perspective What happens either individually or within
corporations when communalism artificially limits the ability to see things
whole.

Unrules A form of corporate discipline built on the premise that in a chaos
world the company with the
fewest rules wins.

Value stacking How generational values are transmitted. Each generation
inherits a stack of values from its predecessors, and each value is subtly
transformed as it is stacked and passed on. Value stacking is influenced by
the acceleration in the rate of generational change.

Values-based management Management based not on objectives, but on a finite
number of incontrovertible beliefs never subject to a proof test. In a
chaos-based
world in which objectives are constantly overwhelmed by variables,
values-based management assures that decisions ultimately arrange
themselves to serve the good of the whole.

Vectron An idea or product that pushes a company in a short-wave,
relatively insignificant direction, yet is critical to the company's
ability to operate on the bleeding fringe.

Wrebels Employees who stray from the inherent values of an organization and
thus seek to wreck its value system. If wrebels are important enough, they
are sent to global pillory
(see above).

Xerophilia Not from the Greek root xero, meaning "dry," but from the
company that turned its dry-copying procedure into a global trademark. The
love of copying, and the ability of everything to be copied.


==>>From The 500-Year Delta: What Happens After What Comes Next,by Jim Taylor
and watts Wacker: Copyright © 1997= by Jim Taylor and Watts Wacker:
Reprinted by permission of HarperBusiness, an imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers
Inc.