Zeitgeist 2011: anxiety, mobility, blending, indulgence, immersion, wrath, nudity and more

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As you no doubt know, the delightful word “Zeitgeist” comes from the German, meaning ‘spirit of the times’. And in these extraordinary times it is useful to distill the spirits of the day.

As such we have re-created our Zeitgeist for 2011 as a slideshow, as it’s an easier way to digest the 11 themes we put forward.

See the Map and ExaTrends of the Decade for a longer timeframe view forward, as well as the original Zeitgeist document.

The 11 themes of the Zeitgeist for 2011

View more presentations from rossdawson.

What do you think? What will define the Zeitgeist for the year ahead?

What are the jobs of the future?

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I just did an interview on the industries that will grow and shrink this decade – I’ll provide a link to the story when it comes out if the magazine puts it online, or if not write it up as a blog post later.

It made me remember an interview I did a couple of years for an article on the jobs of the future. They just took a brief quote from my interview:

Futurist Ross Dawson of the Future Exploration Network says that when social networks burst onto the scene, roles as community managers or social network managers became a necessity.

Such roles are still new, he says, but companies and celebrities alike are advertising for professionals to help them manage their consumer and fan online chat.

“You can have thousands of friends on Facebook and MySpace,” Dawson says. “A celebrity will have people that help them manage their MySpace site as they have a lot of people to interact with and not enough time.”

Here is the list of jobs of the future that I told the journalist about:
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11 themes of the Zeitgeist for 2011

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Our recently launch Map of the Decade triptych comprised three parts: the Map of the Decade, details on the ExaTrends of the Decade, and the 11 themes of the Zeitgeist for 2011.

I think may have been a mistake to put the Map of the Decade and Zeitgeist themes in the one document, as many only see the front page and don’t get to the Zeitgeist themes, and they come from quite different perspectives (1 year as against 10 years). As such, I’ve taken out the Zeitgeist themes here, with the image and full text below. Click on the image to download the complete pdf – go to page 3 for descriptions of the Zeitgeist themes.

Zeitgeist for 2011

Zeitgeist2011_500w.jpg

ZEITGEIST:2011

1. Networked or Not?

We are all facing a fundamental choice that will shape our lives. Many dive headlong into a world of always-on connection, open social networks, and oversharing. A few cry halt and choose to live only in the old world of tight-knit personal communication. The result is a divided society.

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ExaTrend of the 2010s: Demographic Crunch

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Excerpt from the list of ExaTrends of the 2010s:

DEMOGRAPHIC CRUNCH

Many developed nations will start hitting the wall in their ability to support their elderly. The contrast with the rapid growth of developing nations will bring into focus the turn in economic fortunes. The inevitable result is mass migration, licit or illicit.

See the full 3 page framework including the Map of the Decade, full descriptions of the ExaTrends of the Decade, and the 11 themes of the Zeitgeist of 2011 by clicking on the image:

ExaTrends of the Decade and Zeitgeist for 2011:

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Our 6 favorite infographics of 2010

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I’ll try to fit in a few summary posts from the year before I head off for holidays. To kick off here are our favorite infographics that we’ve launched this year, in chronological order. Click on the images for the original posts. Quite a few of these got a lot of attention!

Crowdsourcing Landscape

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ExaTrend of the 2010s: Collective Intelligence

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Excerpt from the list of ExaTrends of the 2010s:

COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE

In a world of infinite information and diversity of opinion we will not drown, but harness our dormant potential to be more together than we are individually. Crowdsourcing platforms and aggregators of insight will be part of the planks that create the reality of a global brain, expressing our destiny.

See the full 3 page framework including the Map of the Decade, full descriptions of the ExaTrends of the Decade, and the 11 themes of the Zeitgeist of 2011 by clicking on the image:

ExaTrends of the Decade and Zeitgeist for 2011:

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Map of the Decade, ExaTrends of the Decade, and the Zeitgeist for 2011

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It is traditional at the turn of the year to look forward at what is to come.

We have crystallized our thinking on the year ahead and the decade of the 2010s in a new 3-page visual landscape.

Note on ExaTrends: Given the exponential pace of change of today we are far beyond a world of MegaTrends. Exa is the prefix meaning 10 to the power of 18, following Mega, Giga, Tera, and Peta. As such Exa is Mega cubed.

Download the pdf of the framework by clicking on any of the images. The full text of the ExaTrends and the Zeitgeist themes is below.

Map of the Decade: 2010s

MapoftheDecade_500w.jpg

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Transparency has long been driving business and society… but it’s only just begun

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One of the most surprising things about Wikileaks is that it took this long for the massive shift to transparency to have an impact on this scale. The trend to transparency has long been evident, and sites to facilitate leaks have been around for many years now. The inevitability of a transparent world has long shaped my thinking about the future.

In my 2002 book Living Networks, the final chapter was on the future of a networked world. The second of my ten predictions was: Transparency will drive business and society.

Even before the book came out I spoke at KMWorld in Silicon Valley on Creating the Transparent Corporation, and given my background in capital markets, I have been interested in and written and spoken about transparency in investor relations from the 1990s with the rise of intangibles reporting and beyond to the impact of the rise of social media.

One of the facets in my widely read 2006 article Six Facets of the Future of PR was Transparency is a given, while one of my Seven Megatrends of Professional Services was Transparency.

In both of these papers, as in a number of keynotes I gave earlier in the decade, I mentioning the now-defunct corporate leaks site internalmemos.com, which was launched in 2002, and had a significant impact for a number of companies (which are next target in line for Wikileaks and its peers).

The full text of my 2002 prediction on transparency from Living Networks is here, with the full book chapter embedded at the bottom of the post.

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The rise of social shopping in 2011: 7 examples of where it is going

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SmartCompany recently featured an excellent article on The next 10 social media trends, which received considerable attention and was syndicated through a number of other outlets.

I was quoted in the article talking about social shopping and mini-blogs.

Here are a few further thoughts on social shopping. I have written another post on the rise of mini-blogs.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

Shopping itself is also developing a social element thanks to services such as Shwowp, (www.shwowp.com) that lets a user keep track of their shopping history and then share it with others.

Social media researcher Ross Dawson expects strong growth from social shopping services.

“You can browse together what’s on the websites, look at different things, and comment on them,” Dawson says. “So you can go shopping with your friends, but do it in an online context.”

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Why Crowdsourcing is the future of EVERYTHING (including 12 key areas (with just 3 exceptions))

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The theme of Future of Crowdsourcing Summit, coming up soon in San Francisco and Sydney, is how crowdsourcing (applying the minds of many) is the future of everything.

It’s a big claim, though to be frank I can’t think of many things it’s not the future of. Anything of human creation, which is most of what we know, has in some ways a crowdsourced future. There are probably three categories of things that will NOT be fundamentally shaped by crowdsourcing:

* Things in our environment that humans don’t impact (possibly volcanic activity and asteroid impact, though even those might not be immune)

* Individual creativity (important but historically overrated to an extraordinary degree)

* Aspects of our humanity that are intrinsic and we do not shape (sex (perhaps) and actually not much else given our increasing powers over our genetic destiny)

Let’s look at some of the things that crowdsourcing most definitely will shape:

Work. Unquestionably work of all kinds is being rapidly distributed across organizational and national boundaries and increasingly broken down into components with structures suitable for crowds to address. The nature of work for many individuals is likely to change dramatically in coming decades.

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