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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 1, 1990)
A snob's guide to the '90s I t’s a long row to hoe, those of us who wish to be and remain truly pretentious. We need to time our acquisitions of the right consumer goods at just the right time — not so early that our friends and acquaintances are unfamiliar with them but not so late that everyone else has one and the impact is lost Our plight is compounded by the damnable talent of American consumer capitalism to take perfectly good, expensive (and thus desirable) items and make cheap knockoffs of them. Take Gucci-striped luggage, for example. When new, it was ultradesirable and available only in the finest boutiques. Then it hit the department stores and became somewhat less desirable. Then some really horrible adaptations got into the discount houses. Now the stuff will get you laughed out of any Greyhound terminal in America. Projections for the nineties Cleaning up the environment will gradually cease to he the goal; holding the line will he about all we can hope for Predicting the future — myths and realities Corporate scenarios F or at least the past 50 years, American corporations have put forth bright, Jetsonian tableaux of life that (not coinci dentally) happen to feature their products. Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future (Summit Press, 1984) n one sense, no one can truly predict the contains numerous examples of corporate future. Who, at the beginning of the future scenarios. Most are quite funny in 1970s, could have foreseen OPEC, Watergate, retrospect: the General Motors “Futurama” or the Anita Bryant crusade? In another exhibit from 1939 (see sidebar) and Ford’s sense, we predict (or at least forecast) the 1957 Moonport (with tailfinned rockets) are future all the time; it’s a necessary and vital two of my favorites. Yet, there are people job. Should I rent for another year or buy who still take this stuff literally, instead of now and hope that housing prices hold up? merely as playful imagination. How many hospital beds will AIDS patients in my city need next year? Should I work for a small company or a larger, more conservative one? All these questions require Change for change’s sake us to make guesses — to some degree educated guesses — about the future and our his is the line of analysis that assumes place in it. we’ll be happy to scrap a reasonably We need to have some idea about what the efficient way of doing things for something future holds — unfortunately, much of what new, untried, and (usually) vastly more we hear about the future is bogus or expensive. Despite AT&T’s science-fiction inaccurate because it is based on false advertising in the 1960s (see “Corporate assumptions. As we begin a new decade, this Scenarios" above), picturephones have never is particularly true. Here are three common gotten established because the benefits don’t myths that distort our view of the future — come near the costs. Another innovation that and three realistic approaches that almost seems to be perennially just around the comer always work. is the personalized, FAX-type newspaper that prints out in our living room every morning. Wishful thinking Rather than pay $40 to $100 a month for such a service, though, I suspect that most of us will continue to buy the daily paper for 35<i his is the fallacy of talking about what and skip over the parts we don’t like. we’d like to have happen as though it necessarily will happen. Any gay agenda for Megamistakes: Forecasting and the Myth of the ’90s is bound to stress a cure for AIDS — Rapid Technological Change by Steven Schnaars (Free Press, 1989) is must reading it’s something very much to be desired. But for anyone who is too easily seduced by our desires alone, unfortunately, do not make “high-tech.” things happen. People who commit the Fortunately, though, not all future fallacy of wishful thinking can cause much unintended mischief: “I think the number of forecasting is based on emotion and illogic. There are a few common-sense guidelines we AIDS cases will decline (because I’d like it can follow in making some realistic to)” is a falsely optimistic prediction that assumptions, among them: could even distort planning. I T T just out ▼ 16 ▼ January 1990 Demographics A s Steven Schnaars points out, demo graphic predictions almost always work. Even after disease and accident, most of us will still be here 20 years from now — and we’ll be, by definition, 20 years older. Thus, it takes no great leap of faith to predict that, barring nuclear war or some other cataclysm, the number of American retirees will skyrocket after 2000 A.D. because the oldest “Baby Boomers” will be approaching 60 then. California/Bellwether I n the ’50s, California got a freeway system and vast tract housing first. In the ’60s, student unrest, swinging singles and other manifestations of the emerging Baby Boomers. In the ’70s California led the nation in the formation of “Gay Ghettoes.” In the ’80s, unfortunately, snarled traffic and crack cocaine. Social trends seem to hit California first. Alvin Toffler’s prescient book Future Shock (see sidebar) uses quite a bit of Califomia-watching to make its predictions. Voting one’s wallet T Fortunately, by following a few simple principles we can predict which items are going to be hit by premature mass-acceptance. High technology that calls too much attention to itself is always suspect. Digital watches, which were quite in demand 15 years ago, are now at the bottom of the heap of timepieces, socially speaking. Beware of investing in anything that is readily copiable and already shows too much popularity. Here’s a list of things that I predict will be truly tacky by 1998: • vanity license plates • sunroofs and moonroofs (the truly sportif will own convertibles) • gold credit cards (the truly elite will be into Amercurium) • anything country, except the music • cutesy telephone-answering machine messages • (for men) suspenders • (for women) the Colonel Sanders-type silk tie • home cookware with uninsulated handles • serious discussion about coffee beans his works quite well to predict future presidential elections: the party in power stays in power if the economy is good, it loses if the economy is bad. The one exception to On the other hand, a number of things this was 1976, when Jimmy Carter (barely) which are now considered quaint or “out” beat Gerald Ford despite an improving may come to be seen as desirably rare over economy. Most political analysts credit the next 10 years. These include: Carter’s win to the number of people who • rotary-dial telephones voted for him and against Gerald Ford • manual typewriters because they were mad at Ford for having • liberal-arts college educations pardoned Nixon. The “voting one’s wallet” • large collections of 33-rpm records analysis would put a Democrat in the White • pre-1974 cars (not only are they antiques, House in 1992 only if some kind of “Bush but their high-compression engines require Recession” precedes the election. leaded gasoline, or a substitute therefor) In the next section. I’ll use these and other • the two-week vacation. trends in a forecast of your daily life in the decade to come. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.