On Trend

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Devon Powers
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Current Trend ◽  
Early History ◽  
Business Opportunity ◽  
The Future ◽  
Trend Forecasting ◽  
History Of ◽  
Consulting Industry ◽  
Social Scientific

What is a trend? What role do trends play in consumer culture? How do trends come into being? And how do trends shape the future? This book explores these and other questions through a focus on the business of trend forecasting, an industry that emerged in the 1970s to anticipate, manage, and influence the future of culture. Galvanized by the rise of futurism and by social scientific research on popular culture and taste, pioneers in trend forecasting turned unease about the future into a business opportunity, using trends to marketize cultural change. Since then, the business of trends has grown into a highly influential (if sometimes overlooked) facet of the wider consulting industry. Trend forecasters advise some of the world’s most prominent companies on how to innovate, disrupt, strategize, and otherwise manage the future. In addition to the early history of trend forecasting, the book examines how current trend professionals do what they do, taking stock of contemporary practices and exposing their built-in assumptions. In sum, On Trend argues that trends have become an important way to sell cultural change, and as such they deeply shape and profoundly limit our ideas about what the future can be.

Thinking in Trends

On Trend ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 42-61
Author(s):  
Devon Powers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Long Range ◽  
The United States ◽  
Private Enterprises ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
The Future ◽  
Trend Forecasting ◽  
Social Scientific

Chapter 2 tells the story of how the trend forecasting business arose in the United States. The commercial trend business grew in the wake of popular frenzy about “future shock,” a term made famous by Alvin Toffler’s 1970 book of the same name. Toffler’s book also coincided with the birth of futurology--techniques developed among military strategists, long-range planners, and the like to study and better prepare for the future. In the hands of entrepreneurial futurists, futurological and social scientific methods became useful in consulting private enterprises on how to better prepare for the future. The trend business exploded during the 1970s and 1980s, giving rise to famous futurists such as Faith Popcorn, John Naisbitt, and Edie Weiner.

The Future Stops Here

Old Futures ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 88-96
Author(s):  
Alexis Lothian
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Black Woman ◽  
First Century ◽  
First Child ◽  
Queer Of Color ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Twenty First Century

The first wormhole chapter uses a speculative engagement with Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 film Children of Men to link disparate times and spaces in the book: the history of no future shown by feminist, eugenic, imperial narratives in part 1 and the affirmative prospects for queer of color futures in part 2. The major studio film, filmed in London by the Mexican director, highlights the presence in twenty-first-century transnational popular culture of tropes from the fictional futures examined in the previous pages. Cuarón’s adaptation of the 1992 novel by P. D. James underlines the ways in which hopeful futurity is unevenly distributed along the same lines of race, gender, sexuality, capital, and globalization that determine who gets to be seen as fully human. The contradictions surrounding the character of Kee—a black woman pregnant with the first child to be born in decades whose representation in the film leaves much to be desired—become a point of possibility opening on to different worlds and futures.

The Origin and Development of Heavy—Oil Aero Engines

1931 ◽  
Vol 35 (244) ◽  
pp. 265-298
Author(s):  
D. R. Pye
Keyword(s):  
Power Generation ◽  
Heavy Oil ◽  
Early History ◽  
Aero Engine ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Aero Engines

In this first lecture upon the origin and development of the heavy oil aero engine to be delivered under the Akroyd—Stuart foundation, it is appropriate to devote some space to the early history of oil engines generally, for it is certain that the aero engine of the future will claim a direct descent from some terrestrial parent. The early history moreover, of the heavy oil engine is of quite exceolional interest, both technical and personal.Herbert Akroyd—Stuart was born in 1864.His father, Charles Stuart, owned a small engineering works at Fenny Stratford, and it was here that the son gained his training as an engineer. Between 1885 and 1890 he took out several patents for the improvement of oil engines, which appear to have been the outcome of his experience with a “ Spiel ” petroleum engine used for power generation at his father's works.

Trend forecasting: Collecting the history of the future

2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-25
Author(s):  
Amy Ballmer ◽  
Jennifer Tobias
Keyword(s):  
Computer Games ◽  
Future Trend ◽  
Art And Design ◽  
The Future ◽  
Trend Forecasting ◽  
History Of ◽  
Institute Of Technology ◽  
Digital Formats ◽  
Post War ◽  
Information Landscape

How do art and design libraries collect the history of the future? Trend forecasting literature presents exactly that challenge. These multifaceted print and digital publications, issued regularly and expensively by a handful of companies, are held by few libraries even as they influence everything from womenswear to computer games. We examine how libraries collect these materials and consider their role in the broader information landscape.First, we historically situate forecasting, looking to origins in colour charts, trade catalogues and international communications. Next, we look at the post-war institutionalization of trend forecasting, describing its role in the consolidation of a consumer-oriented supply chain.With the Fashion Institute of Technology as the case study, we then examine forecasting in context: how faculty incorporate it into pedagogy, how students engage with the materials and how librarians integrate critical thinking and information literacy into instruction. Practical matters such as cost, housing, long-term archiving and access are also addressed.We conclude with a forecast of forecasting, examining its move to digital formats and the challenge of meeting pedagogical needs that are at once rigorous (as accreditation demands) and creative (as schools promise), reflecting the mash-up wonder of today's fashion discourse.

scholarly journals An Intellectual History of the Concepts of Premier-Presidentialism and President-Parliamentarism

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Elgie
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Academic Work ◽  
Early History ◽  
Future Application ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Over Time

Shugart and Carey introduced the twin concepts of premier-presidentialism and president-parliamentarism in their 1992 volume, Presidents and Assemblies. Based on a meta-analysis of journal articles and book publications, this article distinguishes between an early and a contemporary history of the two concepts. The period of early history runs from 1992 to around 2009. This was the time when the two concepts were entering the academic consciousness and when there was also some typological and classificatory ambiguity. The period of contemporary history begins in 2010. This era is marked by conceptual and classificatory clarity and by an increasing reference to the two concepts in academic work. In the article, we show how the concepts have been applied over time, noting a number of changes across the two periods under consideration. We conclude by pointing out some challenges to the future application of the two concepts.

Children's Consumption in History

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Thomas Cook
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Consumer Socialization ◽  
Academic Scholarship ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
The 1960S

The academic study of children as consumers took root in the 1960s and did not begin in earnest until the 1970s, when the paradigm of ‘consumer socialization’ took hold among psychologically oriented business scholars. In the 1980s, some discussion of the history of children's consumption and popular culture began to appear in edited volumes and journal articles, with full treatments of some aspects of that history coming into view in the 1990s. Even as children's consumer culture takes centre stage in contemporary media reports, political punditry, and academic scholarship, the history of children's consumption remains largely unrecognized in, or otherwise marginal to, both histories of childhood and histories of consumption. Children's consumer lives or the popular culture of childhood most often occupy a side or subsidiary position in the overall historiography of childhood as in, for instance, recent works by Steven Mintz and Hugh Cunningham. It appears that, in a time of severe economic depression, both parents and commercial actors looked to childhood and the ‘child’ as promising bearers of hope for the future.

Utopian biologies

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Endersby
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Nuclear Reactors ◽  
Early History ◽  
Charlotte Perkins Gilman ◽  
Jack London ◽  
X Rays ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
George Schuyler ◽  
Scientific Questions

In 1924, the British biologist J.B.S. Haldane acknowledged that anyone who tried to predict where science was taking us was obliged to mention H.G. Wells, since ‘[t]he very mention of the future suggests him’. Nevertheless, Haldane complained that Wells was ‘a generation behind the time’, having been raised when flying and radiotelegraphy were genuinely scientific questions, but they were now mere ‘commercial problems’, Haldane asserted, and ‘I believe that the centre of scientific interest lies in biology’. Haldane's conviction that biology was the key to the future was widely shared, and lies in the background of both these books. Helen Curry examines the early history of the dream of engineering new kinds of plants, using first X-rays, then colchicine (a chemical mutagen), and then the new sources of intense radioactivity that were created by the early nuclear reactors. By contrast, Ewa Luczak is interested in the influence of eugenics on American literature, focusing particularly on Jack London, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and George Schuyler. What unites these books (and the diverse topics they address) is new ways of imagining the future, specifically a future based in biology.

Thinking in trends: the rise of trend forecasting in the United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-20
Author(s):  
Devon Powers
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Environmental Scanning ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Future ◽  
Trend Forecasting ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research Interviews ◽  
The Relationship

Purpose The paper examines the birth of trend forecasting in the USA and position trend forecasters and professional futurists within the wider history of marketing, market research and advertising. Design/methodology/approach The study is based upon archival research, interviews and close readings of primary and secondary literature. Findings Trend forecasters split from traditional market and opinion research in the early 1970s, as concerns about the future became paramount for businesses. At this time, entrepreneurial trend forecasters such as Faith Popcorn started firms, adopting futurological methods to make predictions about the future of culture. The field continued to grow into the 1990s as it developed or modified a host of mostly qualitative research methods, including environmental scanning, consumer ethnography and scenarios. Trend forecasting reveals the complexity of the relationship between business and “the future” and how trends aimed to predict as well as direct that future. Originality/value The article is among the first academic treatments of trend forecasting, drawn from original interviews and exclusively accessed archival research. It contributes to a theory and a history of the concept of a trend, which is understood here as a way to package the movement of culture as sellable. It likewise offers a unique exploration of the relationship between futurology and business.

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