Customer Reviews

Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives

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

 

 

This book clearly deserves more than five stars for its power and effectiveness in identifying, explaining, and projecting many important trends in American society over the last 18 years.

I first read this book when it was published in 1982, and decided to reread it recently to understand more about the methods used by testing them with 20-20 hindsight.

The book built from the principle that the "most reliable way to anticipate the future is by understanding the present." Although the book relies a lot on that method (by examining current beginnings that could turn into mighty rivers), its real power comes from the long-term perspective of how an information society will be different from the prior industrial one.

The trends identified were:

(1) Becoming an information society after having been an industrial one

(2) From technology being forced into use, to technology being pulled into use where it is appealing to people

(3) From a predominantly national economy to one in the global marketplace

(4) From short term to long term perspectives

(5) From centralization to decentralization

(6) From getting help through institutions like government to self-help

(7) From representative to participative democracy

(8) From hierarchies to networking

(9) From a northeastern bias to a southwestern one

(10) From seeing things as "either/or" to having more choices.

The detail behind each of the trends is often more rewarding than the overall trend itself. You get specific examples that excite your imagination. "On the producer side [of multiple choices], it means there can be a market for just about anything."

Even if you read this book back in the 1980s, I suggest that you take another look at it now to reinforce your understanding of the fundamental trends that will continue to be important for decades to come. That's because "we are living in the time of parenthesis, the time between eras." "We are clinging to the known past in fear of the unknown future." "The computer will smash the pyramid [at the center of how everything is organized]."

After you have finished considering or reconsidering this book, I suggest that you think about where your life may be out of alignment with these trends. Do you live where job growth and quality of life will be best? Are you taking advantage of your potential as an individual?

Let irresistible trends ease your breakthrough gains!

Naisbitt looks a long term futuristic trends. He helps one to see the big picture both chronologically and globally. Take for example his opening observation that "While America's new information economy is our most important megatrend, it is only part of the puzzle." He logically argues that "collectively what is going on locally is what is going on in America." The five bellwether states, which set the trends for the rest of the couutry are idenified as; California, Florida, Washington, Colorado, and Connecticut.
A strong case is made in the second chapter for "high touch" (i.e., human involvement) to remain a vital component of the high tech age.
In the third chapter, the global economy is described. The airplane and satellite communication are identified as the technologies that caused the transition from a national to a global economy.
Although an international, global economy exists, surprisingly at the same time decentralization is occurring. He explains in chapter 5 why.
In the following chapter he similarly explains how people are becoming increasinly proactive in their individual futures, and not rely on institutional help.
The proactive theme is carried a step further in chapter seven.
Chapter 8 discusses the phenomenon of networking.
Right up to the end of his book, he makes a solid case for the trends he describes. This is a well-written book, researched so that its essential theme remains accurate although a lot has changed since it originally was published.

This book was published in 1982. It stresses the motion from national to global economy, from either/ or kinds of choice to multiplicity of choices, from an industrial to an information society, from Technology dictating to us to our demanding what we want from it. These trends do seem to have played a part in the last quarter century.
But if I think back upon the past twenty- five years it seems to me that they are very far indeed from 'covering it all'. Consider the fantastic development of the Internet which has totally transformed the way we learn about the world. True, the book talks about moving towards an Information society but this Daniel Bell and other sociologists made clear many years before-and no one , as I understand it, conceived how the Internet has developed.
Consider other developments of this time, including the political ones, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rise of the US as single superpower, and then the Terror of 9/11 and the coming into being of a Fundamental Radical Islam that threatens Western society as a whole. Others foresaw in the eighties a return to religion , but I don't think anyone could have imagined anything as disastrous as this worldwide terror campaign against the West.
I could go on. I do not want to fault the book which makes valuable points. I just believe it presents only a very small part of the picture, and the trends which have been most consequential over the past quarter century.

I was in college when this book came out. Having come from a part of the country that was heavily manufacturing-based, I was seriously interested when I heard a group of students and profs talking about how this book stated that manufacturing was going to be a thing of the past in the US and that the economy would become service-based.

I was even more surprised when the group came to the conclusion that this was a good thing because service-based jobs are cleaner and more admirable than manufacturing jobs. They decided that the sooner the messy factory jobs could be shipped out of the country, the stronger our economy and nation would be.

Later, many of these people grew up to be the business leaders of the 80s, 90s and today. They along with many others who fell for the predictions made by Naisbitt, converted U.S. business to a global economy, forced manufacturing jobs away from trained American workers, caused a myriad of crashes in Eastern local economies and congradulated themselves on a job well-done. Afterall, they maintain high company profits with little effort by exploiting desperate workers in Third World places. Who cared about what was happening under the surface in American businesses...the leaders were getting big bucks to be ahead of the trends and to screw American workers out of decent-paying jobs with benefits.

I don't think this book predicted the trends as much as it got business leaders to believe in those trends and make them happen. Which is how we have arrived at a time in history where we have lost the idea that GNP should be based on real products and have been deluded by the notion that financial "products" are better than real products, and that low paying service jobs are better than manufacturing jobs, and big bonuses for employees who watch their companies crash and burn are normal and desirable. Heck, even education and healthcare are unimportant as long as Wall Street is up, right?

Now we can't even make the weapons we need to defend our country. We have outsourced our guns, bombs, planes, vehicles and other defense needs. If those countries choose to withhold those items, will we even be able to defend ourselves? Isn't it possible that those countries could use the threat of withholding defense equipment to force us to do things that aren't in the best interest of the American people?

Maybe this book just gave greedy people an excuse to indulge their own greediness. Maybe it was the impetus to improve conditions in economically disadvantaged areas overseas. Maybe if I had never heard so many business leaders talk about how they had to be ahead of the curve on Naisbitt's predictions about a global economy, I would feel this book is more of a prediction and less of a driving force.

For instance, I love Future Shock. I think it's spot on with its thesis that the world is changing at an increasingly accelerating pace and that those who refuse to change will be unable to function in the present and the future. I just don't think it drove those changes to the point that Megatrends did.

There's a fine line between identifying trends and making bad things happen because of them, I guess. I think if American business leaders had been more worried about keeping American productive and less worried about being behind the trends, the US would be in a different situation right now.

The central point I recall in this book, which I do not see reflected in my quick scan of these reviews, is that the megatrends cited are DIALECTECAL forces, NOT trends from one direction to another. For example, AS globalization increases and intensifies, SO DOES localization. AS high tech gains ascendency, SO DOES "high touch." The author(s) did not advocate any particular outcome, to the best of my memory; he/they pointed out dynamic tendencies to become aware of and to attend to.

In that light, such "predictions" as are implicit in the megatrends cited do seem often to have played out: The attacks of 9/11 can arguably be seen as a highly localized action in response to the trend of globalization, as well as to the leading role played therein by US political, economic, and business interests and the resulting domestic and international policies. The existence of highly-effective, decentralized networks, such as Al Quaeda, enabling highly localized action in support of a major global trend and disperse organization (i.e., the global spread of fundamentalist Islam) can be seen in some ways as a synthesis of the dichotomous, simultaneous forces of globalization and localization.

Likewise, as technological development accelerates and permeates human cultures, the value of individually hand-crafted items rises. The interest in owning hand-made items, and in making things with one's own hands, increases in parallel. As one indicator of this trend playing out, consider the proliferation of magazines and in-person gatherings on these two groups of subjects. Consider also the increasing interest in antique and alternative processes of photographic printing, developing alongside the proliferation of digital cameras; and the apparently accelerating trend of custom-built and "modded" computers--an example of getting very high-touch with high-tech devices. (William Gibson--in _Idoru_, I think it was--took this last notion to an extreme, positing a company called Sandbenders, one of whose very high-end, custom-fabricated computers consisted of a completely flexible leather bag, ornamented with a turquoise-and-coral clasp.)

Finally, the rapidly emerging interest in 3D printing and personal manufacturing can usefully be considered as a synthesis of THREE megatrends: the global/local, high-tech/high-touch, and manufacturing/information dichotomies (as well as a twist on Alvin Toffler's prediction of the rise of the "prosumer," and [quite curiously] on Karl Marx's prediction that the workers would eventually own the means of production).

All in all, my memory of this book is that it describes waves to be surfed, not which shore to head for. The author(s) can hardly be held responsible for advocacy, and far less so for driving the changes occurring in the intervening years.

Having now read some of these reviews, and written this one based on long-ago memory, I plan to re-read _Megatrends_, myself, and re-evaluate its insights and implications. I strongly recommend your doing so, as well, if you have an interest in thriving through the changes facing us all.

Other futurist authors very worthy of your consideration: Alvin Toffler; F.M. Esfandiary; Eric Drexler; Ray Kurzweil; Hans Moravec; The World Future Society.

The book was sent as promised, in the time-frame promised, in the condition promised. Can not ask for more than that.

It has been years since I read the book Megatrends, but when first reading it my mind and thinking became far more open than before. Rather than limiting what I thought possible to a narrow band of information, my thinking became far more open and sought out more possibilities than before.

If you are new to business and struggling with narrow thinking and imagination, pick up a copy and read it cover to cover. Even tough many of these issues have come to pass, the thinking process is still there and viable, just add in what is happening today.

The political paradox is State governments are becoming more powerful, rich, and independent. This revelation helped me to understand the illusion of big business and politics. The reality is small businesses produce more money, jobs, and innovation. Likewise, state governments have more power to solve social problems, more independence from federal powers, and more autonomy to create distinction and enact laws. The federal system has become somewhat obsolete. Centralized structures are crumbling: politics, business, and culture. Look at what is happening: Cultures are returning to tribes, local religious organization are the largest sources of charity and welfare; people are supporting state and local governments as representative's individual interest; more individuals support the rise of voluntarism; and cultures are expressing distinction by geographically difference. Look at the deception of the media spin leading us to believe that Federal spending is unlimited, national energy policies are all encompassing, and war is necessary. The truth is decentralized energy systems are the new hot technology, federal spending is causing big businesses to hold $900 billion in reserve with apprehension, the imposition of force tax by the Iraq war was unwanted and Iraq has returned no longer term benefit in oil supplies. A war with Iran is unlikely because the US can not afford an oil resource war with Iran and Iran has no capability to fight a superpower nation.

The national welfare state has failed. Social Security will be depleted by 2018 and begin borrow money from the treasury to make payments, the liquidity trap that banks are now falling into in Europe. 20 million people unemployment have depleted state funds dry, raised foreclosure rates, and burden local religious groups for charitable aid. The National Health care system has been sued by many state governments as illegal. States governments are stronger. They are challenge federal land management of state assets. The return to "Great Depression Economics" is a centralizing event where citizens look to the federal government for jobs, welfare aid, and debt relief. The federal government seems to be strong because its rhetoric is war and social welfare as national issues, a desperate act.

American culture is decentralizing. Americans are spreading from large cities to small cities and rural communities. As people decentralize they diversify. Geography is a way to diversify. The growth of decentralization parallels the decline of industrialization. The American industrial machine was America's greatest centralizing force: labor, material, and capital. Agriculture started the movement towards decentralization. Decentralization is extending everywhere in America. Local medical organizations are getting better as a result of decentralization. Unions are become smaller as decentralization spreads. We have not great captains of industry or great leaders in art, academia, or politics.

The number of people voting for the president and congress continues to decline. Congress is becoming an obsolete organization and their growing staff running errands for constituents and special interest groups.

States are showing a new assertiveness: a) states are structurally and procedurally stronger b) states have upgraded tax systems and modernized legislatures c) State representatives are more spirited and better qualified d) state leverage their power to levy income and sales tax e) state surplus have decreased as federal aid has decreased f) most states have a balanced budget law g) energy producing states often have large surplus funds h) most governors think the country is too diversified for a centralized government control and states are better able to serve the people i) state right emerge most readily over issues of energy and environment.