microtrends

Hello, everyone~!

Today, I would like to talk about the book called "Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes" by Mark Penn and E. Kinney Zalesne.

I happened to know this book when I watched the TV show whose story was about a popular economic analyst who has spent so much money on purchasing books, and of course reading them. In the show, she went to visit her favorite book store and looked around the shelves. She picked up the books she's interested while she's pondering something. Looking at how she made decisions about books, it seemed to me that she has never had difficulty making decisions what to buy. In fact, it looked so because she buys when she can't decide! Anyway, one of the books that she chose was the Japanese edition of this book. Actually, I've paid attention to it because the cover of the book fascinated me somehow and made me want to read the inside. But I just didn't have a chance to take it at the store. After watching the show on TV, the fact that she might have read it encouraged me to go further. Yeah, I finally got mine. It's the English edition, though.

To tell the truth, I wasn't sure if I would finish it at all because there's 520 pages!! But I tried to remember the time I read the book "The World is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman because it also had almost the same number of pages. All I can do was just to convince myself that I could finish! Hahaha. So, I made up my mind and had a goal that hopefully I would read 50 pages a day.

And... I did it! At first, it was a bit tough. But once I got used to it, it became as much fun as I have when I read in Japanese.

The book explains many different kinds of phenomena happening in the US society and the world. One of the authors, Mark Penn, worked for President Clinton's 1996 election campaign, and is good at numbers. The authors looked at figures and tried to put them into context. Each of them is relatively small and the people who are involved in these can been seen as minority. But, as the authors mentioned, the small ideas trigger large changes in the society. For those who are interested in the book, I'll pick some of them for you to share.

*Social Geeks: Geeks have been thought as unsociable. But for some of them, the situation is reversed now. Some people are even more sociable than others!

*Long Attention Spanners: More and more people are eager to read longer articles, longer speeches, and so on. As the Internet has come to our society, and many people seem to value time more than ever. So, it makes us think that we should everything quickly. But in fact, that's not always true.

*Numbers Junkies: The number of children who like studying math and science has decreased, but the TV shows and movies that deal with numbers do really well.

*Extreme Commuters: The number of couples who live separately and even have houses for each in on the rise. Bill Clinton and Hilary Clinton do so for years. Mentioning that, it might make you think that it's about couples who earn a lot of money. That's wrong. As more and more women can pursue their careers, they don't move with their husbands.

*Vegan Children: More and more children in the US choose to be a vegan or vegetarian. Several years ago, it was rare to see children who have the eating style like that. But many parents today cherish their children's independence, and for them choosing to be a vegan or vegetarian seems to be one of choices that they make as a citizen.

In the English edition, there are 75 kinds of "microtrends." It gives you a brand new way to see the world and it would be interesting to think about how you can put these into context. In addition, the authors not only analyzes the figures but also makes comments and thoughts for each of microtrends, such as how we should make the voices of these people heard, how we unite as a society in the world where we appreciate individualism, and what needs to be done for the future.

Alright, I hope you'll read the book and hopefully share thoughts with you!
See you soon. ^^