Customer Reviews

Insider's Guide to the Future

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This short book delivers an interesting vision of the future. Weiner & Brown use this book to define a new term. The Emotile Society is defined as the combination of an emotional focus; where there is a "heightened concern for personal well-being" and a motile focus; where things are "fast-moving, portable, non-fixed."

It is obvious to most that the future will lead to a shift in what and how people do things along with what their focus is. This book offers an optimistic view that this shift will lead to more jobs, a shift to customization of services, increased growth in financial planning services, more emphasis on personal security and safety, and a rise in commitment to religion and spirituality.

The authors offer a useful and insightful comparison between the four eras: Agricultural, Industrial, Post-Industrial, Emotile. It is interesting and useful to make the comparison between such characteristics of the ages as the nature of "The Boss", "Retirement", or "Education" and this book does a nice job of comparing these as well as nine other areas of society.

The book offers some valuable scenarios for planners, business leaders and futurists, to ponder and examine. Many of the authors' insights could help the savvy investor or entrepreneur.

Overall, the book made me think and consider what impact the Emotile Society would have on future economies and behaviors.

The title is misleading, and most people who buy this pamphlet misrepresented as a book are going to be very disappointed. This a 40 page stream of conscious review of various categories of life that lacks footnotes, a bibligraphy, or an index.

Based on my own broad experience and friendship with futurists of note, I consider this specific paper to be interesting if you don't read a lot and want a very shallow overview of numerous areas in the time it takes to fly from one state to another, but I find it very disturbing to read randomized references to ideas that I have seen developed and documented by others in a much more thorough fashion over the past 25 years or so.

Dynamite definitely comes in small packages. Pound for pound the best glimpse of future workplace and lifestyle changes I have read.

Weiner and Brown's description of the relationship between the economy and society and how we are shifting from a post-industrial to an emotile era was insightful.

Should be required reading for everyone in business, future entrants into the workplace and those considering re-inventing themselves.

There were many "wows" in the book for me, but two stand out; revisioning must take place before reengineering, and the "never owned" product concept.

I plan to re-read this book as many times as I can stand it. Thank you Edith and Arnold for a great read!

Exciting travel to the future EMOTILE society. The best way to check the correctness of prognosis for the future is to see how the elements of this future already gradually incorporating into the present reality. Emotion (entertainment industry explosion, global emotional collaps related to princess Diana's death) and motility (proliferation of cars, highways, airplanes, high speed trains, fast mail, Internet users)are already part of our life. If one wants to know more about the EMOTILE society one must buy this well-written exiting book.