World Trend Report 2010/2011

These are the most important and most present Trends for 2010/2011, observed by our CoolHunters Worldwide. Feel free to aks further information to carl@scienceofthetime.com or luis.rasquilha@ayr-consulting.com

10. The 'No Office' Policy “Open Work Spaces for Urban Nomads”
First idea generator: Wojtek Szumowski

We are all getting wired & are connected 24/7/365. Here and now we are becoming urban nomads, with the the creative class leading the way. Fixed office rooms are a thing of the past for these frontrunners of society. (Many of the young generations worldwide for example don’t have telephone landlines anymore; mobile phones are enough.) Starbucks tapped into this trend once and offered a place to work wherever these urban nomads of the 24/7/365 generation found themselves. Now we see a professionalization of this insight: The Rise of the Open Workspaces. Something that the corporate world is also experimenting with. However the more authentic of these open work spaces are popping up independently in numerous cities across the globe. Right now the USA is taking the lead, but the desire for cool open workspaces is recognized and growing internationally. This desire to work on the fly by those who are forever on the go also ties into the desire to be healthy as you navigate through your day. People who utilize open work spaces want to eat fast, healthy food. The neck breaking pace in which they live requires them to take care of their bodies or risk burning up and fading away as fast as they live. Every brand, every organization, every human being who taps into this desire will make people happy in 2010 and 2011.
Related Books:
Who’s Your City? Endcommercial

9. More Connections, Less Wires

We became aware of www.fmylife.com for the first time through students from Science of the time’s Euro-Asian cool mentality research start to mention the site.
From all over the world – though mainly Europe until now - people flock to www.fmylife.com in order to share the ‘suckage’ of their lives. Other people reflect on these stories by telling them that they are right to pity themselves. Or that they simply deserve their unhappy fates. Is this a mindboggling innovative site? No, it is just good, clean fun. But it does stand for an idea that just a few years ago was mindboggling: the Rise of the Social Web and how it will accelerate and intensify in 2010 and 2011 in numerous and as yet unfathomable ways. On sites like www.fmylife.com, we collaborate on the production of knowledge and action surrounding specific issues and sentiments that are dear to us. From environment advocacy through the use of certain Iphone applications up to telling each other intimate troubling details of our lives, we are using social media to connect. Totally new? Don’t think so. But according to many of our experts and students across the globe an acceleration and intensification of these uses is on the horizon for 2010 and 2011. It is a trend recognized all over the world, but not yet properly implemented when thinking about innovations.
Related Books:
Wikinomics
What Would Google Do?
Crowdsourcing
The Future of Competition

8. SANE RECESSION/SANE RESILIENCE

First idea generator: Trend Filter Guillermo Boces(Argentina and Barcelona).
The IMF says that we can expect ten years of job cuts and rising taxes. Fund manager George Soros says the rosy view on the American economy has everything to do with the fact that the US banks’ big profits right now are just a ‘gift’ from the state and nothing more. There are no substantial signs that the recession is over in North America and Europe. The Financial Times is even asking “Where have all the promising green shots of half a year ago gone - all those promising signs that the economy is recovering?” Europe and North America still consider themselves as the most “developed” part of the world, but with an immense debt they no longer think that they are leading the world as they did before.
What we need in 2010 and 2011 is the resilience to focus on the sane sides of recession. To focus on the fact that even though it may not be as easy to get rich as before, this might bring us a more enjoyable, a more ‘broad’ and therefore more rich life as well.
Guys have lost their jobs and are taking part in the Unemployment Olympics. By taking part in competitions ranging from “Office Phone Skee-Ball”, “Pin the Blame on the Boss” to the “You are Fired Race”, these unemployed use satire as a means of coping. As Miami based trend analyst Wojtek Szumowski told us “the Unemployed Olympics functions as a kind of group therapy to remove the stigma traditionally associated with unemployment in a society where a work ethos used to define the value of an individual.”
Yes, it is over the top. But it is also shows how we can deal with difficult circumstances and make them opportunities to have fun. This is Creative Resilience. Every brand, every organization, every human being who understands how to tap into that Creative Resilience will be more happy in 2010/2011 and will make other people more happy.

7. Compassion Without The Pity

The world over cruelties are committed every day and the voices of the survivors are buried beneath numbers and statistics. The world is a dangerous place, but the stories of those who live in the most dangerous places of the world should not be forgotten or romanticized. Through various art projects we encountered we saw the urgency and the need for a transnational dialogue wherein people were no longer numbers and where their humanity was no longer obscured by statistics that could only tell part of the story. By now we have all seen Hans Rosling’s debunking of what the statistics on the developing world actually say. He opened up another avenue of conversing with what we in the former west see as the developing world.
JR, an other type of artist, took another approach to foster real dialogue between the survivors living in conflict areas and us, the onlookers. And not just any survivors, but the women whose voices so often are neglected, misunderstood or who others find the need to speak for instead of listening. With his trusted 28 mm lens JR has already visited countless places around the world and showing that the possibilities for dialogue are greater than we think. In this project the compassion and these women’s will to live is put front and center. Showcasing them and showing us that what we are shown through statistics and in news reports are not the only stories. There is more and there needs to be more than just money to survive. These women take care of their families, take care of the household, hold down jobs, deal with loss sometimes on a daily basis and still get up every morning to go at it again. To live and survive. The resulting worldwide project is both an impressive symbol of empowerment and a deeply compassionate and human gesture. http://www.womenareheroes-paris.net/en/women-a-travers-le-monde/

Behind this example lies what the world will need in 2010 and 2011: Compassion. And we’re not just talking about being compassionate to your neighbor, but taking it to the next level. Tap into this cool mentality and we all get better.

6. Structural Eco Cool
“Cool Unobtrusive Eco Awareness”

Clever co-operation constructed the most environmentally friendly font to print with. Downloadable for free at http://www.ecofont.eu.

In case you may not have noticed: our environment is currently experiencing some technical difficulties. It’s all over the news and sometimes you can feel it on your own skin. Everywhere people are telling us: “the weather in my city is not what it used to be.” Whether we like it or not, we have to adapt our lifestyle and that will not always be fun. Generally speaking, we don’t consider the eco prophets of doom very cool. But at the same time, we surely cannot shield ourselves from what they have been telling us for decades now. We’d better adapt or be left trying to convince ourselves that it’s not true as the world gradually becomes a less hospitable place.
This is the fertile soil – surely enhancing in 2010 and 2011 – for Structural Eco Cool. Eco Cool is more than doing your duty to help save the world for future folds of humanity. Eco cool is doing it via well designed fun, pleasurable and creativity inducing and inspiring activities. It is taking an idea and making it fit this generation that isn’t just happy with the message but wants it to be massaged as well. Take for instance, the people behind ecofont at http://www.ecofont.eu, who came up with an efficient and effective way to lessen the usage of ink when printing and several other ingenious environmentally savvy office printing suggestions. Their main find however is the EcoFont which they provide free of charge at their website. Expect to see far more of these clever initiatives of Structural Eco Cool in 2010 and 2011. Initiatives that don’t just wave a finger at us, but give as an affirmative way of incorporating Eco friendly mannerisms in our daily lives without us having to go to extreme lengths.
Related Books:
World Changing

5. ANGER, DISTRUST AND DECADENCE

Bankers are not thought of fondly these days and this will not change anytime soon. They have effectively undermined the collective platform of social trust on which all societies are built. This platform has been severely damaged and it will take some time to mend. More attention is also being paid to the ones who have fallen prey to this misuse of trust. Thereby making everybody more conscious and aware of each other. Consequently collective anger and distrust reigns, sometimes volcanic but often just below the surface. We are once again connecting, as trend 9 showed us, we are more compassionate, as trend 7 tells us, and we are more conscious of our world and the way we are positioned in it, as trend 6 tells us.
However, our desire for little indulgences which are about us and exclusively about us will not simply go away. This trend is about getting away from it all. Feeding into this distrust and turning out backs to reasoning and giving in to the primal urge to just pull away. We have an innate need to prove to ourselves (and others) that we are (still) able to permit ourselves an island of decadent refuge, even if only momentary. It is simply about the way how it is done. When the rich do it over the top, the rest of us will be aghast and approach them with anger. Top executives of almost bankrupt companies traveling in private jets to ask for money is a no-no. But when decadence combined with an obvliousness to the harsh realities of our world is shown off in a cool way, the rest of us will admire and aspire. Cool Decadence will grow in 2010 and 2011: !! We will be working/writing on this soon!!

4. TENDER URBANITY

The city is rapidly becoming the human being’s natural habitat. The city’s pollution, disorder and anonymity however are points that people all over the world complain about. Many of us have however learned to love our city regardless. It is our city, so robust, so hectic, so fascinating, and after 9/11 so fragile as well. There is a loving concern for the city. Throughout the findings of our cool hunters and Trend Filters an affectual connection to the urban dwelling was noted. The city has become the place where we live our lives and meet the people who become our extended families. Where we find our favorite coffee corners or bagel shops tucked away in the neighborhoods we have gotten to know like the back of our hands over the years. We appreciate the city.
This hyper-decorative snail is an interesting way of using this appreciation. It was found during our EurAsian student coolhunt. This example hits several notes at once. The snail carries his home with him just as we carry our cities in our genes. Also those who are in tune with their city will notice the small creatures making their way through the city seemingly unnoticed and anonimous. Using the snails’ shells as exhibition spaces the artist expands the way in which graffiti and outdoor art is now used, among other reasons, to comment on the depersonalisation of cities through bland and “touristy” city marketing.
The website thefuntheory.com also taps into this trend of Tender Urbanity. It’s all about exploring ways in which mundane activities in the city can be turned into fun ways of bettering it. It’s about taking care of the city, and in turn yourself in the city, while not giving it that pedagogic weightiness that scares most. One of the coolest examples sent to us by Kristin Brodie, a student at Kamloops University Canada, is that of the piano stairs. The example shows how by making walking up the stairs a fun activity 66% more people than normal chose the stairs over the escalator. It wasn’t a guerilla tactic per se, it was sponsored after all, but the insight behind the act is infinitely cool.
Every brand, every organization, every human being who manages to act within this cool mentality touches a chord. Of course, you have to find your own authentic ways of creating Tender Urbanity. The best & coolest of us certainly will do so.
Related Books:
Merry
Graphiscape NY & Tokyo

3. LET ME LAND

http://www.yankodesign.com/2009/01/09/immaculate-mini-lawn-in-your-loo/
Many criss cross the globe – and if we don’t as yet, we aspire to do so in the future. We are more on the move (and on the run) than generations before us. We have wings – and it can feel great & cool. Because of these flights, literally and figuratively, the home and coming home, ‘landing’, becomes more important. Landing, after your trips as a worldwide citizen or as an urban nomad. Where Human Pearls In The City is about landing in your city, your neighborhood, your street. Here it’s about landing in your house, your home, the place you call your nest.
This Moss Carpet is all about Let Me Land. Discovered by a coolhunter in Skopje, it is designed by the in Vienna located Vietnamese designer Nguyen La Chanh, it is the ultimately reminder of where you have chosen to root yourself in this world of transnational networks and movements. You come home from your trip, a long one or a short one, take a shower or a bath and step unto your carpet. That homecoming is an experience beyond words. That is real landing. Moss does not need a lot of maintenance and the drips of water as you stand on it are enough to keep it alive when you are flying across the globe.
Every brand, every organization, every human being that helps you to land, to really land, will be loved and appreciated in 2010 and 2011.
Related Books:
The Global Me

2. TOTAL RELAX

Beeld. Dat is wat mij betreft het beeld van de Snake Massage. Als onderschrift kunnen we wat mij betreft volstaan met: Total Relax: Snake Massage.
Do you remember those hard working yuppies from the eighties? Well there’s a big chance that you are working harder than they ever did. Next to that we are living in a stress society grasping at every straw for ontological security. The former West are dominated by a deep recession and the predictions when it will end are vague. In South America and in big parts of Asia however there is more hope and growth. But this growth is connected to the rampant rise of a one-dimensional work ethic.
There is that moment however, when we let go of all those pressures. When the dangers of everyday, the insecurities of living in this fast paced, capitalistic world, are left outside the door. Outside your body, for once. This is a cool mentality desire that is recognized and embraced all over the world. The snake massage we show here is just one extreme example of it. If you manage to relax under such a massage, you can be really sure that it is a deep and total massage.
More generally speaking: every product, every service, every brand, every organisation, every human being that promises you a glimmer of Total Relax, will be appreciated. If it works it will be appreciated as cool. So wherever you are, and whatever your business might be, think hard how you are adapting to the international desire for Total Relax.
1. 24/7/366: The Transparency of Life
“Augmented Reality Kicks In”

This is the trend with the most growth potential in 2010. The desire for ubiquitous connectivity isn’t only limited to others, but also to information. Information is a powerful commodity. Locative media, media that gives you information on where you are in the world, are with our current winged nature as urbanites of the world more important than ever. We want to know where we are, where resources useful for us can be found when we are once again walking around our cities or a city that is not ours.
Locative media aren’t the only thing though. They need to connect to our growing networks. Informing us where the shops are that might interest us. Google maps and Google Earth have given people the ability to position themselves on the map, Google Goggles links it all. Even on Youtube you can directly pinpoint where your video was filmed. We’ve had Augmented Reality Asphalt Games in New York and other cities and Esther Polak has shown us how milk travels the world before it reaches us using locative media.
Now there is Layar, an award winning application first developed for the Google Android phone. With this application a mobile telephone’s camera is turned into a network revealing tool. To simplify a complicated story, the phone’s GPS system is used to apply a layer of knowledge over the image that your camera captures. A further conceptualized version is Windows to the World. Students from Science of the time’s EuroAsian cool mentality research found this gem. Where Layar shows you where the resources are Windows to the World goes a lot further. Put the little screen in front of a building and – always connected as it is – it will show you the history of the building, its ecofriendliness, the people who work there, the people who have lived there etc. Put the little screen in front of a person and it will tell their fun potential as disclosed on Hyves, their friends on Facebook, their hobbies as revealed on MySpace, their professional c.v. from LinkedIn etcetera. Broad and deep knowledge about everyone and anything. Augmented Reality connected to our material and social networks.