Category Archives: generations

forecasting, gender, generations, research, society

Margaret Mead Imagined Different Futures

For those anxious about the state of the world, Mead’s celebrated work shows how anthropology can help guide alternative futures.

If Samoan adolescents had a (comparatively) easier time adjusting to their maturing sexuality, as Mead claimed, couldn’t people in the U.S. raise their children in a similar way? Mead quickly dismissed that idea, but then offered up another possibility: Familiar U.S. ideals of freedom and liberal tolerance needed to be extended to adolescent women as they explored their own sexuality.

https://www.sapiens.org/culture/margaret-mead-different-futures/
archetypes, culture mapping, ethics, gender, generations, language, music, society

Gender-neutral Brit awards nominate all men for 2023’s best artist

Men dominate nominations in the top categories for this year’s Brits as the music awards enter their second year without separate prizes for male and female artists.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/701f4664-928f-11ed-beb4-99fcdfa7645c?shareToken=871dd2bbd4f5f0d1c416aec496c13742
education, forecasting, generations

The incredible shrinking future of college

In four years, the number of students graduating from high schools across the country will begin a sudden and precipitous decline, due to a rolling demographic aftershock of the Great Recession. Traumatized by uncertainty and unemployment, people decided to stop having kids during that period. But even as we climbed out of the recession, the birth rate kept dropping, and we are now starting to see the consequences on campuses everywhere. Classes will shrink, year after year, for most of the next two decades. People in the higher education industry call it “the enrollment cliff.”

https://www-vox-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/the-highlight/23428166/college-enrollment-population-education-crash
archetypes, culture mapping, education, gender, generations, innovation

‘Reverse mentorship’: How young workers are teaching bosses

Think about reverse mentorship as flipping traditional mentoring on its head: instead of senior staff supporting lower-level employees in their careers, younger generations help teach their managers about everything from consumer desires and TikTok to changing attitudes around social issues and equality.

There are many upsides: reverse mentoring can spark conversations that help address organisational challenges and changes, for example. But experts caveat that it’s not a solution to all corporate ills. In Jordan’s study of the technique, she found the programmes could help both parties learn new skills and boost the careers of younger participants on an individual level. However, it was less effective to initiate company-wide cultural change.

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20221110-reverse-mentorship-how-young-workers-are-teaching-bosses?ocid=ww.social.link.linkedin
beauty, culture mapping, forecasting, gender, generations, society

Future of the Body report (FutureBrand Milan)

The report explores a vast and fascinating territory – the human body – and the implications of emerging nuances around beauty, gender, sexuality and health.

The result is five key macro-trends that we believe businesses in the space should keep in mind. Throughout the report, there are examples of brands, both big and small, who we think are capable of becoming pioneers in this space.

https://www.futurebrand.com/news/2022/futurebrand-milan-release-future-of-the-body-report
dystopia, economics, generations, social media, work

On TikTok and online, the youngest workers are rejecting work as we know it. How will that play out IRL?

“I don’t want to be a girlboss. I don’t want to hustle,” declaimed another TikTok user. “I simply want to live my life slowly and lay down in a bed of moss with my lover and enjoy the rest of my existence reading books, creating art, and loving myself and the people in my life.”

https://www-vox-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/the-highlight/22977663/gen-z-antiwork-capitalism
archetypes, culture mapping, fashion, generations, language, politics, semiotics, society

How far-right views became the new edgy aesthetic

What makes a group of twentysomething creatives and socialites want to engage in business with the world’s most shadowy far-right figures is a tricky case to unpack. New York’s downtown is at the epicentre of the so-called ‘internet scene’, which emerged out of the pandemic and spilt out across an endless stream of Adderall-fuelled and schizoid content: Substacks, podcasts and anonymous Instagram accounts. This also prompted an influx of nu-right podcasts, which are long, self-referential and intentionally opaque, stretched across hours of worm-brained audio and rambling text blocks that are nearly impossible to distil into any meaningful chunks of information. They are often led by the sort of terminally online scenesters who listen to Red Scare and wear Praying t-shirts with mimetic slogans like ‘God’s favourite’ or ‘Flop Era’. A similar strain of ironic humour can be spotted across Urbit. An Instagram account, shirts_of_assembly, documents the patrons’ fashion, which includes “I MET MY WIFE AT URBIT ASSEMBLY” and “URBIT MAXIMALIST”.

https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/57309/1/edgelords-far-right-views-kanye-west-dimes-square-urbit
archetypes, beauty, culture mapping, ethics, fashion, gender, generations, society

Sinead O’Dwyer On Why Body-Diverse Casting Needs To Become The Norm At Fashion Week

London-based Irish designer Sinead O’Dwyer has made it her mission to promote body diversity – from casting to the clothing she puts into production. Still on a high after showing her spring/summer 2023 collection at London Fashion Week, on a cast of models from size 8 to 26, O’Dwyer says it’s “only going to get better” from here. Here, she shares the steps she’s taken to prioritise inclusivity – and to encourage others in the industry to do the same.

https://www-vogue-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/article/sinead-odwyer-body-diversity/amp