Remembering the Father of “Megatrends”
 |
| John Naisbitt. Photo Credit: Petra Spiola |
John Naisbitt passed away. The author of
the phenomenal book Megatrends dies on April 8, 2021. I remember, John
Naisbitt's name was heard quite often in various discussions and articles in
the late 1990s. He was a visionary futurist whose works affect millions.
Together with other great futurists, Alvin Toffler who wrote the book Future Shock, Naisbitt became an important figure in the field of future studies. His name is often mentioned in the course "Futuristic Studies" with Prof. Iskandar Alisyahbana which I took in my last year at ITB. Later, when I started working at Mizan Publishers, one of Naisbitt's books High Tech High Touch was also published in Mizan in 2001,
After that period, I rarely follow discourses
on future studies and didn't hear about Naisbitt until a while ago I found in my social media timeline
a link to the obituary of his demise at the age of 92.
 |
Megatrends, which was first published in
1982, became a hot topic of conversation at that time. The book has sold more
than 40 million copies worldwide, has topped the New York Times bestseller list
for 2 years, and published in 57 countries, including Indonesia. The word
"megatrend" became a kind of mantra to attract interest in various
seminars and articles and gave rise to derivative terms that worked with it.
Naisbitt himself has also written other books using the term such as Megatrends
Asia, Mastering Megatrends, Megatrends 2000, and China
Megatrends.
In this phenomenal book, John Naisbitt
predicts the future by understanding the present using the content analysis
method, by analyzing the news content from hundreds of newspapers and magazines
over a very long period of time. Naisbitt predicted ten major changes in
technology and economics. Most of his predictions from the 1980s have become
everyday facts for us today.
I would like to note here only three of
Naisbitt's interesting predictions.
First, Naisbitt predicted the rise of automation
and the possibility of super technologies such as artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence has been predicted since the 1960s, for example in the
film 2001: Space Odyssey. But the difference is, Naisbitt added that this
technology can never replace humans. As the sophistication of innovation
increases, we need more and more human touch.
We experience this a lot now, even from
things as simple as an annoyance when dealing with customer service by chat-bots.
This is the main topic of the book he wrote with his daughters Nana Naisbitt
and Douglas Phillip, High Tech-High Touch. It recommends that a larger
portion of the use of technology be balanced with services that make users feel
that they are treated as human beings, not part of a machine.
Second, biology and medicine will be at the
forefront of innovation. The current research advances in biotechnology and
neuroscience are astonishing. Companies like Phillips are researching
mind-controlled equipment for people with disabilities. Theodore Berger and his
team at the University of Southern California are developing brain implants
that can restore or create new memories.
Biology pushes new frontiers. There are many
mind-bending technologies from medicine and biology. It can be said that
Naisbitt's predictions are quite precise, whether it be for cancer research,
food alternatives, or environmentally friendly energy sources, biology is
rapidly replacing silicon as the technology of choice.
Third, the development of a self-help society.
In 1982, Naisbitt predicted a massive increase in information. At that time it
was still unthinkable that there will be encyclopedias compiled together by many people such as
Wikipedia. And online learning and sharing platforms haven't grown either. But
now, millions of people are turning to online tutorials and using crowd-sourced
encyclopedia. A university degree will decline in value because what
matters more is study skills, learning how to learn, and developing new skills,
not diplomas.
Naisbitt has proven to be a visionary,
predicting trends that shape the future more than three decades before they occur.
His vision of China as an alternative to the West economically, politically, and
socially is also slowly taking shape. He helped the transformation of China and gave many
lectures on future studies at the institute he founded in Beijing.
Despite sounding very optimistic about
technology and information, Naisbitt reminded us that technology sometimes
generates new social problems, ranging from violence caused by video games to a
lack of closeness to nature and other people.
Intoxication with technology can shrink the human psyche, he said. Like many other visionaries, Naisbitt also warned that instead of providing expensive game consoles for children, go get them a ball. Playing together in the open is better. A message worth keeping in mind from a technology and information visionary, the "Father of Megatrends".
Indonesian version
Komentar
Posting Komentar