The combination of freedom, material comfort, and access to technology and information gives people a broad range of choices, allowing them to govern their lives and lifestyles to an unprecedented degree. As a result, identifying a few sweeping trends and expecting them to explain society is no longer possible, though that is how some futurist writers once operated. Pinning down today's myriad emerging "microtrends" requires engaging in "microtargeting," the only way to unravel how one microtrend might spawn another opposing trend.
Given the new ways members of small groups can connect via the Internet and multiply their impact by using other technologies, such as television, any group that reaches even 1% of the population can now become markedly influential. ...Society is switching from a mass-produced "Ford economy" to a "Starbucks economy," where you make continual personal choices to shape the life you want. As individualization grows, opinion-shapers, from marketers to politicians, will find it necessary to address many different niche markets.
Most predictions are driven by the same conventional wisdom that drives the daily consensus around us...but as you dig deeper, you see a world teeming with the lesser-known, harder-to-spot developments... the small forces that will drive tomorrow's big changes
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