We Predict... The Nineties
January, 1990
It's Fin-de-Siècle time, Folks. Screw up your courage and take a peek at what's ahead
Faith Popcorn,trend analyst, Brain Reserve: The Glitz Blitz is over, making money overnight is out. The Nineties will be very much like the Forties in their simplicity, a more humanistic time. People will begin to think it's just not worth it to be stressed out and will be leaving corporations in droves to remote places to start simpler lives. Families will become more precious and it won't be uncommon to see extended families living together or very close to one another.
Patrick Caddell,political pollster and strategist for Gary Hart and Jimmy Carter, among others: The Nineties will be the decade of Power to the People. Once "Power to the people" was a radical phrase. In the Nineties, it will be a moderate, middle-of-the-road movement. I see this grass-roots political revolution coming like a freight train down the track. George Bush is not capable of great vision and is a transition President. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are equally guilty of underestimating the intelligence of the American people. They treat us like Neanderthals. That's why people will revolt to empower themselves to have a say in what happens in their lives, to restore America and bring back the sense of community in the country. Education and environment will be key issues. It will be a tremendously invigorating renaissance—a commitment to making the world better for our children. It's as American as apple pie.
Florence Skelly,marketing research specialist, The Daniel Yankelovich Group: Work and leisure will be increasingly blurred. People will be working longer hours and have less leisure time. There will be more working women and working mothers. Also, salaries are not going up. To save money, people are going to have to take on more do-it-yourself projects and chores around the house. They will have to find affiliation and satisfaction in their work and household chores. That means a lot of leisure activities are going to have to be condensed into fewer hours.
Dr. Ruth Westheimer,sex therapist: The Nineties will be the supersex, superrelationship decade. Optimistically speaking, I think we'll see a breakthrough in AIDS, both in finding a cure and in having more compassion for the sick. As for relationships, people are going to realize more and more the importance of a significant other in their lives. Maybe people will marry later, but they'll be much more committed to the relationships they do have prior to marriage. Instead of three a week, maybe they'll have one a year.
David Allman,editor, The Elliott Wave Theorist's hotline: The Nineties will be like the Thirties. It will be a decade of very hard times yet also a terrific opportunity for people able to preserve their capital. The likelihood of a depression in the next four or five years is greater than it has been in the past 50 years. Government will play a major role in determining the outcome of the decade by its reaction to economic problems early in the Nineties. As the decade progresses, people are likely to look back at 1989 and think, Those were good times.
Reuven Frank,former president of NBC News: I'm the man who predicted that the VCR would never make it in America. Still, if you want my prediction about the network news in the next ten years, it would have to be that I'm not sure there's going to be any, at least not in the sense of a regular network-news presentation on a daily basis. Network news today has too little to offer that is not available elsewhere. More and more, the networks are providing news services to cable stations—material that you once had to tune in to the networks to get. More and more, the networks will specialize in interviews instead of straight news. I would guess that very early in the Nineties, at least one network will drop straight news presentations.
Ken Dychtwald,author of "Age Wave": The Nineties will be like no other decade. Since we're so chronologically oriented, the entrance into a new millennium will have a profound effect on people. It will build to a psychological peak, punctuated by introspection, which will lead to wide interest in religion and global existence. Part of this will stem from the fact that we'll all be maturing. Americans will find themselves sandwiched between generations, many taking care of as many parents as children.
Richard Lewis,comedian: Sadly, I feel that the Nineties will be known mainly as the Decade of Innovative Masturbation, and I'm penning an instructive book on the subject. I also think it will be most famous as the decade that Mario Cuomo either becomes President of the U.S. or has his own series. In a narcissistic vein, it will be the decade in which I break the therapy record; around 1995, I will have entered my fourth decade of treatment. I have outlived many of my therapists already. In the Nineties, at least one of them should retire a couch in my honor. Or maybe they will retire my appointment nationally. No psychologist will ever again see a patient at eight A.M., in my honor.
Zareh Khederlarian,men's-fashion executive for Politix/Sonneti: Men will be more fashion conscious and spend more on clothes than in the Eighties. But they will also be more individualistic and nonconformist. The new executive male may still dress in a suit and tie but in a much more individualistic way. Instead of striped or foulard, the tie will be loud, colorful. The jacket and pants probably won't match. Both will be loose and baggy. In general, men's clothes will be non-tailored, unconstructed, softer, with less padding and seaming.
Marla Edelstein,manager, Creative Food Center, Ogilvy & Mather: The supermarket will become the new takeout restaurant. Meanwhile, both restaurants and supermarkets will offer delivery services. Frozen children's meals will be a growth category. There will be a variety of children-oriented snacks and meals that latch-key children can pop into the microwave. Breakfast will also become a bigger frozen-food category. Chilled items such as spaghetti sauces or chicken cordon bleu will also expand, because consumers perceive them as fresher, more gourmet than frozen.
Orlando Patterson,sociology professor, Harvard University: America will see the twilight of its economic and political supremacy. Its culture, however, will dominate and influence the entire world as it hasn't in the past. There will be radical changes in attitudes about race, moving away from a binary system of black and white, since the country's demographic make-up will be fractured with a large Hispanic and influential Asian population. Abroad, nation-states will be replaced with economic blocs, changing trade dramatically. This "postnational" era will be a lot like the 1890s.
Paul Mac Cready,inventor, engineer, world-champion glider pilot: The entire world will be connected by fiber optics and we'll travel electronically to conferences in full-color video. By the end of 1999, we'll see huge advances in this direction. Beyond that, I seriously think that eventually, the only surviving intelligent form on the planet will be computers and robots. They will take us over. There will be a transition period, where they'll keep us as pets for a while, but they'll find out that we're superfluous. I really think that will happen—it's a question of when, not if.
Paul Erdman,economist, author: The great threat that has been hanging over our heads—a confrontation between the Soviets and us—is disappearing. If it results in a demilitarization of American society, it can mean great prosperity. The U.S. open door to immigration will attract new blood—entrepreneurs from Hong Kong and elsewhere—that will make us more competitive. Japan and West Germany have closed doors to immigration and a rapidly aging population, which means the burden of their societies will grow.
George Lois,chairman and creative director, LOIS/GGK, an advertising agency: The Seventies were the Me Decade. The Eighties were the Decade of Greed. The Nineties will be the Decade of Need. Americans will be forced, because of their means, to buy products that are made better, that are not frivolous and that last. Advertisers must respond to the needs of an increasingly middle-aged country that is not realizing the American dream.
Al Neuharth,founder of USA Today: We'll have fewer wimps. The Nineties will benefit those who look out for themselves, not out of greed but out of self-preservation. People who meekly hope for the best will be left behind. Newspapers will be like USA Today, but even more so. The best will have more color pictures and more graphics. There will be more national and regional newspapers, more newspapers custom-tailored to the Zip Code and the demographics and more small-community dailies and weeklies. The big-city dailies stand to suffer if they don't get with it.
Dave Barry,humorist: Name that decade? I would call it Bob. My prediction: There will be big interest in designer dentalwork. Really good root canals and gumwork will be highly valued.
T. Boone pickens,chairman, Mesa Limited Partnership: The Nineties will be the Decade of the Lean and Mean. Fat and sloppy never wins. That will be true even more so in the next decade. Size of companies will become less meaningful. Results will be more important. Management is going to have to increase the yield to its stockholders. In the oil and gas industry, look for prices in natural gas to go up substantially when sold on parity with crude oil, which I predict will happen early in the decade.
Joseph Wambaugh,author, former cop: Genetic fingerprinting is the greatest breakthrough in forensic science since the discovery of regular fingerprinting 100 years ago. It's a way to specifically identify one human being from all others on the basis of his hair root, skin, blood, semen, saliva, and so on. In the Nineties, this science (continued on page 186)The Nineties(continued from page 81) will be so exquisitely refined that any body traces will help us identify a person. We will be able to identify the perpetrator of an extortion attempt, for instance, by examining the stamp on the letter and discovering who licked it. We'll be able to track down a criminal using a cigarette he might have left or a hat he might have worn with sweat on the band. The A.C.L.U. can yell all it wants, but there are going to be DNA banks on everyone, because you can't stop progress.
Barry Bluestone,professor of political economy, University of Massachusetts: The kind of living situation Tom Wolfe described in The Bonfire of the Vanities, the contrast of Upper West Side and South Bronx—the widening gap yet the proximity between the rich and the poor—is something we'll see much of in the Nineties, especially in big cities. The Eighties were a decade of consumption. Unless the Nineties are a decade of investment in technology and education of our people, we will see a continued erosion of our living standards relative to the rest of the world, devastating gaps in equality, and we'll lose the ability to compete. My fear is that we will continue to let selfish interests prevail and continue to live beyond our means, selling off more and more of America to foreign countries to pay for more imports and, as a result, becoming a second-rate nation.
Timothy Leary,futurist and performing philosopher: The Nineties will be the decade of unparalleled change. Since change makes everyone nervous, there will be a tendency to clutch at old religions. Tribal leaders always create demons to distract attention from real issues—in our country today, it is the tremendous problem of the poor. Our demon will be the continued war on drugs. It has become the central, critical spiritual and political issue, not because there's a problem—alcohol kills more people—but because no one is going to oppose it. Since there is no real problem, there will be no real solution. We'll just see more fury, more vindictive legislation, more police, more intrusions of Government into private lives. Our hope will be the children of the Sixties generation. Their parents went to Woodstock and they've been playing with computers since they were kids.
Kurt Brouwer,president, Brouwer & Janachowski, an investment-advisory firm: The Nineties will be a decade in which volatility will be the norm. For the long-term investor, who views the downs as buying opportunities, it will be a good decade for stock. No-load mutual funds will be the investment of choice. But you'll have to take a long view, decide on strategy, take advantage of targets of opportunity and not panic every time something happens.
Thomas R. Mc Donough,astrophysicist, coordinator of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence program at the Planetary Society, an international organization founded by Carl Sagan and colleagues: If E.T is out there, trying to communicate with us, our chances of detecting him are better than ever. Everyone is monitoring the skies, from Ma Bell to the CIA and the K.G.B. Also, greatly increased numbers of people will work at home as the result of increasing power and decreasing prices of hardware such as personal computers and faxes, as well as the opening up of optical-fiber telephone networks. Companies will be motivated to encourage working at home by the desire to reduce the amount of expensive office space. Cities will be less congested and smoggy, fewer highways will be needed, petroleum use will be eased. By the end of the Nineties, a kind of artificial photosynthesis may be practical that will break water down into oxygen and hydrogen—the ideal fuel. That could eliminate the need for petroleum for energy.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci,director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: The Nineties will be known as the second decade of AIDS, because we have as yet to begin to see all the implications of the disease. It will be the decade in which we will face health-care-delivery problems. How do you take care of hundreds of thousands of people who are infected and need medical care? Even if we cut down dramatically the rates of new infection—which is happening among the homosexual population—the likelihood is, unless drugs currently in use prove to be effective in delaying the onset of AIDS for a significant period of time, we're going to see hundreds of thousands of new cases.
David Cole,director, University of Michigan's Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation: The car of the Nineties will be more aerodynamic, lighter but not downsized, more fuel efficient. We'll see a dramatic increase in the use of electronics to provide functions such as traction control, antilock-brake systems, driver-information systems, transmission and engine control. New plastics, new processing technology will mean the continued acceleration of new shapes. The G.M. all-purpose van is the shape of things to come.
Jeffrey Goodby,cochairman, Goodby, Berlin & Silverstein, an advertising agency: We will see images everywhere. There will be videos in the back of taxicabs and in men's rooms. They will replace outside billboards. There will be a much higher rattle and hum going on around us. The Nineties will be a decade that will really alter the way people look at the American landscape and the kind of imagery they'll accept in their world.
Michael J. Fuchs,chairman and C.E.O., Home Box Office: All the things that seemed revolutionary in the Eighties will be institutionalized in the Nineties. Sixty-seven percent of America now gets its TV through cable. Everything we see today—the skipping from channel to channel, the increased number of cables, the democratization of TV—will continue. There will be new technology—high-definition TV and pay per view. Because of intense competition, imitation will persist, but there will be more energy devoted to carving a niche.
Dr. Michael Hyson,biologist, rocket scientist: By 1999, we have reason to hope that we will have extended our maximum life span by 20 percent. There are many vitamin and free-radical scavenging compounds that are potentially useful for extending life. For instance, recent studies have shown that Hydergine, a treatment for stroke and senility, increases the average life span of rats by 50 percent. Herbal products are another interesting category: Certain mushrooms lower cholesterol and may cause certain forms of cancer to regress. Finally, there's electromedicine, which shows promise of regenerating limbs and reconnecting spinal cords.
Anthony J. Adams,vice-president of marketing research, Campbell Soup Company: In the food business, the big heat is on time. With all the working women, no one will want to cook and clean up. There will be a lot more frozen food. The home-delivery and takeout-food business will be explosive. Supermarkets will be entertainment centers with demonstrations and jazz bands. There will be a lot more hand-held food, so we can eat while we're at the PC or on the phone. We're looking at weird things such as the soup bar and reinventing the cereal bar. There will be microwaves in cars and in half of the rooms in your house. But the food of the future won't be bland. We'll be into highly intensive flavors—spicy food, hot food, big flavor hits that will knock your socks off.
Scott Trimingham,president, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society: I hope the Nineties will be the Decade of Awareness, where we become aware that we are not on this planet alone, that we are members of an interdependent community of life spinning through space and that our physical and economic health depends on the health of the forests, the seas and the harbors. We did not inherit earth from our parents; we are borrowing it from our children.
"Well see more fury, more vindictive legislation, more intrusions of Government into private lives."
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