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From sleeping
at the office to scanning the brains of consumers, and from green-goo
panic to helicopter parents... the next 12 months promises to bring
a revolution in the way we work, rest and play. Here, in no particular
order, we explain the thinking behind the jargon.
Corrina Dean,
Chloë Diski, John Hind, Oliver James, Jim McClellan, Harvey
McGavin, Niru Ratnam, Tom Templeton and Ian Tucker
Sunday December 28, 2003
The Observer
1. The well-slept
society
Meaning?
Time to wake up to the sleep deprivation our economy is suffering
from
In other words...
Dozing, sleeping, when the mind is relaxing - these are times when
your brain is at its most inventive. So in theory, the value of
sleep should increase in a modern economy such as ours, which is
driven by innovation rather than labour. But as James Wilsden, of
the think-tank Demos, notes: 'The culture of modern work, especially
in large companies, is premised on an attack on sleep, which is
stigmatised as little more than wasteful downtime.'
Demos suggests banning breakfast meetings, introducing office hammock
bays, sleep days to allow people to replenish their levels, corporate
siestas and 'dormitoriums' - sleep drop-in centres (one already
exists in Berlin). In fact, George Bush, much criticised for his
midday power naps, could be a pioneer - in this area, at least.
2. The end of loneliness
Meaning?
Making new friends by using social networking services, like Friendster
In other words...
Social networking services (SNS) use social network analysis (eg,
the 'Six Degrees of Separation' idea) to help people hook up with
like-minded others, for business, pleasure and much else. The big
SNS 'word of mouse' success is Friendster, a sort of hipster dating
network that lets you build social networks from friends, friends
of friends and beyond. In theory, such applications allow us to
bond with people who aren't quite strangers and aren't quite friends
either, therefore multiplying the opportunities to make new pals
in a relatively easy way.
Jonathan Abrams, CEO of Friendster, sees his site as a way for users
to enrich their offline life. But others have noted how technology
has outstripped our physical ability to manage our social lives.
Duncan Watts, assistant professor at Columbia University's sociology
department, notes that our biology may only be wired to look out
for family and close friends. Our online persona may be flogging
unwanted books on eBay, but our offline persona can't be bothered
to wrap them up and take them to the post office.
3. Neuromarketing
Meaning?
Focus groups are passé. Next, marketing people will be scanning
our brains to find out what we 'really think'
In other words...
Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), researchers
map the brain chemicals of test subjects as they taste a new soft
drink or look at new product packaging. The idea is that the resulting
brain scans will show how people really feel and so help companies
tweak their brand image/ad campaign. Hence 'neuromarketing'.
Experts have cautioned against the simplistic appliance of neuroscience.
But with interest in 'neuroeconomics' (scanning people's brains
as they make economic choices) and 'neuroethics' (mapping brain
changes as people make moral decisions) developing, 'social neuroscience'
seems likely to grow in influence.
4. Supermarket nation
Meaning?
Check out that revolt in the aisles
In other words...
Naomi Klein's No Logo didn't just bring the anti-capitalist movement
to the world's attention; it alerted publishers to the potential
profitability of taking pot shots at corporate culture. So far,
though, George Monbiot aside, the post-No Logo genre has been dominated
by Americans (eg, Michael Moore and Eric Fast Food Nation Schlosser).
Next year sees the publication of several home-grown anti-corporate
books, in particular Joanna Blythman's Shopped - The Shocking Truth
About British Supermarkets (Fourth Estate). 'We all moan about supermarkets,'
says Blythman.
'I wanted to go beyond that, to ask what the supermarkets really
get up to and how that affects real people.' That makes Shopped
(the product of a two-year investigation) sound like a British version
of Fast Food Nation. 'I would never claim to be as good as Eric
Schlosser,' she says. Still, her approach is similarly wide-ranging,
covering the way supermarkets have changed not just our diets, but
also our cities, countryside and economy.
Are we likely to see the rise of an anti-supermarket movement over
the next few years? 'I think there is a deep reservoir of serious
discontent with supermarkets among consumers,' says Blythman. 'I
liken it to a bad marriage. You're in the relationship for years
and then something happens and you suddenly think, "Why did
I put up with this for so long?" We're at that stage with supermarkets.'
5. Get back on the couch
Meaning?
2004 will be the year of new evidence that madness should be treated
and prevented by talking therapies before drugs
In other words...
After decades of increasingly deterministic geneticism, it is fast
becoming apparent that the studies of identical twins on which estimates
of heritability are based are not reliable, as demonstrated in American
psychologist Jay Joseph's new book The Gene Illusion. This is in
accord with Genome Project supremo Craig Venter's claim that the
remarkably few number of human genes (25,000) suggests that individual
differences in our psychology are unlikely to be very genetic.
At a conference to be held in January at Coventry University, Joseph
and clinical psychologists Richard Bentall and Mary Boyle will call
on psychiatrists to rethink their treatments, to re-examine the
place of the environment in madness and to acknowledge that the
categories into which they put their patients are no longer scientifically
defensible as discrete categories.
6. The pro-am economy
Meaning?
It's not the letters after your name, it's the skills in your game
In other words...
In 2004, 'amateur' will no longer be a term of derision - you should
take it to mean you're dedicated, educated and open to new ideas.
Where would society be without magistrates, the TA, lifeboat people
and classroom assistants?
Moreover, in some fields amateurs are leading the way, for example
self-builders, astronomy, or self-publishing 'bloggers', such as
Baghdad's Salam Pax. As Charlie Leadbeater from Demos argues, 'ProAms
are set to play a more prominent role in innovation.'
The ProAm movement is spilling into the political sphere. Leadbeater
cites amateur politicians such as the Netherlands's Pim Fortuyn
and the fuel protesters, 'who have had a destabilising impact on
establishment politics'. Not to mention, of course, al-Qaeda, who,
seen through the ProAm prism, are 'an example of an amateur organisation
challenging better-resourced professionals'.
Which goes to show that, in 2004, you should sit up and take notice
of ProAms - we're not talking golf events with Jimmy Tarbuck any
more.
7. The kidult
Meaning?
The continuing upward expansion of the youth demographic
In other words...
Longer life expectancy, women having children later in life, the
rise in single households, the need for escapism and a culture obsession
with youth are all driving the extension of the parameters of youth
from the 20s into the 30s.
All the indications are there that consumers in their late 20s,
30s and 40s are taking more fluid attitudes to age-sensitive tastes
and behaviours.
Historically, attitudes towards childhood are seen as a sign of
the advancement of civilisation. If the 19th century saw the discovery
of childhood and the 20th century the discovery of the teenager,
then the 21st could mark the age of the 'kidult', or the perpetual
youth. 'This is a theory which, if it continued into the future,
would lead to the inevitable conclusion of human beings living in
a perpetual state of childhood/ infantilism, like the society depicted
in Logan's Run,' says Richard Welch, leading-edge analyst at Ogilvy
& Mather New York. Today, the average age of Sony PlayStation
users in the US is now 29, with something like 17 per cent of users
over 50.
8. The two-income trap
Meaning?
Having two incomes is a necessity, but also a liability
In other words...
When only one partner worked, if things got tight the non-working
partner could always get a job. Now, if a family loses one income,
they're in trouble.
The Two-Income Trap, written by Harvard law professor Elizabeth
Warren and her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, reveals that, these
days, families need both parents to work just to afford a middle-class
lifestyle. As a result, they're dangerously over-extended.
The book grew from research that showed that 'a family with children
is nearly three times more likely to file for bankruptcy than a
household with no minor children at home'. Warren dismisses the
popular explanation for this - 'the over-consumption myth'. Families
aren't going broke because of luxury fever and lattes, she says.
The problem is increasingly high fixed costs (mortgages, school/
college fees and health insurance) and the rapacious tactics of
the credit industry, with sub-prime lending (lending money to families
already in financial trouble) particularly to blame.
Families should anticipate the worst financial blows they could
receive, says Warren, 'and plot out their emergency escape routes.
And the data are unmistakable: families are increasingly likely
to face hard times.'
9. No frills cruising
Meaning?
Floating hotels meet camping
In other words...
The transportation choice of dowagers and lounge lizards is about
to be sold to backpackers and large families as a cheap, efficient
way of island-hopping across the Med and the Caribbean. With berths
from £29 per night, easyCruise, the latest Stelios Haji-Ioannou
wheeze, is scheduled to set sail this summer.
Forget all-expenses-paid trips for a set length of time, crooners,
quoits and dining at the captain's table. Instead, you can stay
as many or as few nights as you like and buy food and drink from
'on-board concessionaires'. Bedding and toiletries will be available
for purchase if you fail to bring your own and you must clean your
orange fibreglass cabin to avoid the £20 'cleaning charge'.
Many passengers are expected to take the opportunity to sleep as
they chug from, say, Barcelona to Genoa, or Barbados to St Lucia
overnight, then get off and not look back. But isn't that what they
call a ferry?
10. Spies 'r' us
Meaning?
Surveillance used to be mainly a 'top-down' thing - the preserve
of government and business. But things are changing
In other words...
New technologies are creating a world of distributed, decentralised
surveillance. In particular, the spread of camera phones means we're
all potentially spies. 'You can't draw a clear distinction between
the subjects of surveillance and those who employ surveillance any
more. Increasingly, we are all both,' says MIT Media Lab's William
J Mitchell (author of Me ++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City,
a guide to the socio-cultural effects of mobile/wireless networks).
'The powerless can sometimes turn surveillance against the powerful,
as with the Rodney King videotape,' says Mitchell. For example,
last month, American hip-hop fans at a gig in Portland took camphone
snaps of a police car with a large toy gorilla attached to the front.
The pictures were made public, sparking investigations into police
racism, with the media dubbing the camphone users 'cellphone vigilantes'.
11. Green goo panic
Meaning?
The end is nigh!
In other words...
Prince Charles made headlines in 2003 when he raised concerns about
nanotechnology and got in a tizz about 'grey goo' - the result of
nanoscale (atom-sized) mechanical robots self-replicating uncontrollably
and munching the entire biosphere into a robotic ooze.
ETC, a Canadian watchdog group for socially responsible technology,
argues we should be more concerned about goo of a green hue - the
result of nanobiotechnology. The commercial logic runs thus: why
bother constructing self-replicating mechanical robots when self-replicating
biomaterials are readily available all around: ie, the birds, the
bees, us. What we need to do is reorganise nature - ie, invent new
life forms. Projects are underway to write DNA as easily as computer
code (have you seen The Matrix?) and add a fifth letter to DNA,
therefore multiplying the diversity of life.
Ron Weiss, an electrical engineer at Princeton, thinks he may be
able to turn living cells into robots that could, for example, build
houses or repair damaged organs. He has already 'birthed' a couple
of beakers of cellular robots that can communicate with each other
and light up in sequence. Of course, these cyborg organisms will
need to eat and reproduce - and they appear to be capable of exponential
self-replication. Experts predict that it would take about two days
for the nanobiobots to outweigh the Earth.
12. Sweet heat
Meaning?
The combination of sweet and hot flavours
In other words...
As a sweet-toothed and curry-loving nation, it was only a matter
of time until Britain got a taste for Sweet Heat. Peter Gordon,
head chef at London's Providores, is the UK's King of Sweet Heat:
'People are sometimes wary of combinations like chilli quince with
mascarpone or with sherry and honey,' he says, 'but they are now
becoming more accustomed to the flavour.'
Products such as Altu's Peanut, Cashew & Thai Sweet Chilli bar
and Walker's Sensations Thai Sweet Chilli flavour have really taken
off, while Rococo chocolates recently introduced chilli truffles,
which are now one of their top five best-sellers. Nigel Slater,
a Rococo's chilli truffle fan, says: 'The chilli chocolate is a
revelation, but then chocolate used to be spicy. The Aztecs spiced
it up with cinnamon and chilli, and orange peel, too.'
Anthony Bourdain, author of Kitchen Confidential, has a slightly
cooler reaction to the sweet heat fix (it's big in the US): 'Jacking
chocolate with chillies is a delightfully incendiary departure from
the concept of chocolate as an indulgence, into the joyously sado-masochistic.'
13. Helicopter parents
Meaning?
They think they know best, but maybe they should back off
In other words...
You probably know a helicopter parent or two. Perhaps you are one
yourself. These days, it's hard not to be. It's hard not to hover
over your kids constantly, hard to not buzz round them obsessively,
hard not to be the overprotective over-parent. After all, it's a
cruel, competitive world out there. Your kids need you to look out
for them.
Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at Kent University and author
of Paranoid Parenting, says 'helicopter parents' are now dominating
interviews so much that universities design promotional literature
more for them than for prospective students. Parents, says Furedi,
'have lost confidence in their instincts. They've been told that
things are more complicated than they think, that the first three
years of a child's life is make or break and if you screw up it's
all downhill. This creates "parental determinism", the
idea that everything that happens to your child is the direct consequence
of what you do as parents. Over-parenting is an obvious way of handling
that pressure.'
14. Notschool
Meaning?
A school for kids who don't fit into the mainstream
In other words...
Children who are bullied, excluded, disaffected, chronically ill,
phobic or under police protection all meet the admissions criteria
of Notschool, an online learning environment piloted by Ultralab,
the IT and education innovators at Anglia Polytechnic University.
Pupils are called 'researchers' because the ways in which they like
to learn inform the website's non-hierarchical, signposted design.
Teachers are 'mentors' and Notschool-leavers stay online as 'buddies'
to the new kids.
'We are providing a safe learning environment for young people who
have nowhere else to go,' says Jean Johnson, Notschool's project
director. 'And we reawaken their desire to learn.' The initial pilot
intake of 100 Notschoolers has recently been upped to 600 in 17
local education authorities and new Notschools are planned for New
Zealand, Australia and the Netherlands. And after Notschool? Well,
there's another Ultralab invention - Ultraversity.
15. The program
Meaning?
Using Harvard Business School techniques to find a husband
In other words...
January sees the publication of the UK edition of Harvard MBA graduate
Rachel Greenwald's American bestseller, The Program: How To Find
A Husband After Thirty. Greenwald describes a 15-step programme,
nine of which include the word 'marketing'. You learn how to 'package'
yourself, use 'mass marketing' methods to meet more men, and adopt
'exit interviews' - getting a friend to contact unsuccessful dates
for feedback and ring-fencing 10-20 per cent of your income for
husband-finding activities.
The Program is the rebound to the coquettish The Rules. As Greenwald
says, 'This is not about the fairy tale. It is the realisation of
being a single woman and taking matters into your own hands.'
16. Spiritual art
Meaning?
Britart gets religion
In other words...
As ever, it's easiest to blame Damien Hirst. Those who this year
flocked to his exhibition Romance in the Age of Uncertainty were
treated to quasi-spiritualism of º ª the highest order
- the main installation featured the apostles and Christ, while
the whole thing was laid out in the formation of a church.
Meanwhile, down at the National Gallery, Bill Viola's The Passions
exhibition featured actors in agonised slow-motion religious reveries.
The movement looks well set to continue next year. Hirst, along
with fellow ex-young Brit artists Angus Fairhurst and Sarah Lucas,
will explore the big themes in the Tate exhibition In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.
That the title of the show is the bastardised phrase of the Garden
of Eden originally coined by a psychedelic rock group suggests that
this is going to be a somewhat skewed take on the spiritual. Meanwhile,
Mark Wallinger, maker of the life-like Christ that adorned the fourth
plinth of Trafalgar Square for a time, is set to open his one-person
show at Anthony Reynolds Gallery. Wallinger used to make art about
class divisions, but now his mind seems to be on higher things,
so expect more revelatory stuff.
BBC4 is screening Mark Kidel's film of Artangel's event at the deserted
village of Kimber, the centrepiece of which featured the music of
Gregorian composer Giya Kancheli, played in the abandoned church
in front of suitably hushed art folk.
17. 'Achilles Heel' HIV vaccine
Meaning?
A universal vaccine for HIV/Aids might be closer than you think
In other words...
The major problem with creating an Aids vaccine is that due to the
high mutation rates of the virus there are many strains.
Dr Anne De Groot, director of the TB/HIV Research Laboratory at
Brown University in the US, believes she has found the HIV virus's
Achilles heel - the parts it cannot mutate, since they are essential
to its function. This is known as an epitope-based vaccine - epitopes
are the pieces of protein that stimulate the immune system. Her
team are testing their vaccine on mice and should begin human trials
in 2005.
Groot is not the only one working on epitope-based vaccines, but
other people aren't working on a cross-strain variety - they might
only work on the strain common in the US, for example. As Groot
states, 'The nice thing about these epitopes I've found is that
they'll work no matter where you are'.
18. Wellness polarisation
Meaning?
While the healthier get healthier, the sick get sicker
In other words...
There is an increasing divide between those who are health conscious
or health obsessed and those who are oblivious to or unconcerned
with health risks.
Strathclyde University research confirmed in November that Britons
are drinking more and more, while concurrently noting an increase
in those abstaining. Polarisation is also ongoing between users
of traditional and alternative medicine, between the slimmest and
the plumpest and between 'chronic junk-food eaters' and 'health
fascists'. Further research will show how many people, hidden within
these trends, are 'Trans-Well' or have 'Zig-Zag Wellness' - being
undecided which 'healthstyle' to partake of from one year, week
or hour to the next.
19. Densification zones
Meaning?
High-rise and densification, discredited mantras of great 20th-century
architects, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, are fast becoming
the new 'isms' which will impact on our cityscapes in the 21st century
In other words...
As Renzo Piano's Shard of Glass has been given the green light,
the tower will be the tallest addition to London's skyline, at 1,000ft,
signalling the beginning of a vertically led development strategy
for the city, albeit against the wishes of English Heritage.
As housing shortages reach crisis point, a radical shake-up is proposed
to fast-track planning procedures and encourage the building of
housing stock. Roger Zogolovitch, developer and professor at LSE,
has come up with a radical scheme that will remove the need for
planning consent in designated urban areas, which has been endorsed
by the Royal Institute of British Architects. Dubbed 'densification
zones', these sites would permit the building of homes in light
industrial areas, freeing up brownfield sites. Imagine a housing
development squeezed between, say, a flower market and meat-packing
factory. A welcome addition to urban life, or could this result
in a backlash of Nimbyism from local residents?
Paul Finch, chairman of Cabe, the government's watchdog for architectural
standards on high-rises in London, says, 'The impulse to build tall
buildings will continue to strengthen and the good news is that
they will be better designed and become to be seen as part and parcel
of city regeneration.'
20. Life chances
Meaning?
How to get even with the Scandies
In other words...
The key political concept of the coming year (and Labour's third
term) is child poverty, which Tony Blair promised to halve by 2010
and stamp out by 2020. However, attempting to alleviate child poverty
might not necessarily improve children's prospects. So it's vitally
important to define how poverty decreases a child's 'life chances'
in the fields of health, occupation, education and security.
Sunder Katwala, general secretary of left-wing think-tank the Fabian
Society, says: 'The Left should always audit its success by how
far class and chance determine opportunity in Britain today.' To
this end, the Fabians will be conducting a major survey of Britain's
poorer families to see which aspects of poverty inhibit a child's
'life chances' the most. They will also look to see what can be
borrowed from Scandinavia, where only 3 per cent of children are
in poverty (compared to just under 30 per cent here) and will hope
to sell this to Middle England by pointing out how it will cut the
cost of crime, unemployment and educational failure.
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