MEGATRENDS 2000
John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene
New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1990
356 pp., $ 21.95
John Naisbitt and his collaborator, Patricia Aburdene, may not be prophets, but they do make their living by predicting the future. Largely by means of a regular, methodical analysis of new stories from around the world - "sifting through a staggering amount of information" that, in their opinion, are shaping the current restructuring of American, and world, society.
"Megatrends do not come and go readily," our authors insist. "These large social, economic, political, and technological changes are slow to form, and once in place, they influence us for some time - between seven and ten years or longer." In making their case, Naisbitt and Aburdene focus on bellwether states, cities, and corporations of North America, Europe, and the Pacific Basin for concrete illustrations, weaving local history and international news into an interesting tapestry.
When the first book, Megatrends, was published in 1982, it caused a controversy, and in so doing, sold eight million copies worldwide. Megatrends 2000 is a logical sequel, more international in its scope and even more positive in its outlook. If you liked volume 1, this new work won't disappoint you.
Megatrends 2000 can be compared to Time magazine in book form. Just as Time and its competitors offer a digest of world and local news for the fast consumption of relatively literate but busy people, so Megatrends 2000 gives us a quick, easy-to-read picture of the larger implications and future significance of that news. This task of "symbol manipulation" has usually been relegated to the intellectuals-professors and their commentators - whose sharp criticism of volume 1 maybe rooted in resentment that mere popular journalists like Naisbitt and Aburdene are taken more seriously than they…and are becoming rich in the process.
The ten millennial megatrends that will influence our lives during the next decade are listed in the introduction and discussed in full in the chapters that follow:
1. The Booming Global Economy of the 1990s
2. A Renaissance in the Arts
3. The Emergence of Free-Market Socialism
4. Global Life-styles and Cultural Nationalism
5. The Decline of the Welfare State
6. The Rise of the Pacific Rim
7. The Decade of Women in Leadership
8. The Age of Biology
9. The Religious Revival of the New Millennium
10. The Triumph of the Individual
Not every reader will be happy with all of these megatrends, nor will all give them the same degree of significance that our authors do. Liberals will like a few, conservatives, many; high-culture elites may rejoice in (or show disdain for) the
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