10 Rules For Trend Watching

2 Responses to “10 Rules For Trend Watching”

1. JT Barnhart
   Posted from: 149.164.11.40

   March 30th, 2006 at 3:06 pm

   Mulling over Grant McCrackens stuff. I still think the guy takes some postmodern liberties with his “science” but some of his points are kind of warm fuzzies for me.

   I spent two (or three) summers as a field archeologist doing cultural resource management. (That pretty much means I dug a lot of very square holes in the ground, sifted the dirt and took a lot of extremely detailed notes about it. Not too glam.) I’m also a fan of the concept of humans as pattern users.

   The big picture is something that sort of occurs to you when you aren’t paying attention… kind of like those magic eye things you can only see when your eyes lose focus of the details. Maybe it’s because Grant and I are both anthropology guys or something… I don’t know. We could write a lot fo trite books about cool hunting, hunters and the hunted.

   I don’t think of us as cool hunters per se but it’s odd some of the criticisms and observations people make. Like the “great room” comment. I wouldn’t have guessed it was a thing people weren’t aware of. Like, a lot of the kids doing graffiti haven’t spent countless hours watching big screen tv’s in their parents suburban great rooms?

   As a contributor to the village that is PSFK I’m moved to ask, what are we doing? Are we something other than interested and curious?
2. Faust
   Posted from: 149.164.11.40

   March 30th, 2006 at 4:24 pm

   Grant made some really good points.

   …but, you knew that was coming, there are some things I might add or counter or whatever you’d like to call it today.

   When it comes to “cool” if you have to ask you’ll never know.

   Gladwell is a fantastic example but he isn’t unique, just smart and famous. The oracle isn’t dead. Just lost in a sea of false prophets. Try Bruce Mau, Gore Vidal, Douglas Coupland, Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, Rem Koolhaas, these are visionaries and far from a complete list. Ask your trend watcher how many of them they have heard of. Not what they know about them just if the names are familiar.

   Tom Wolfe is a boomer relic and journalists make lousy trend watchers anyway.

   The best answer your “cool hunter” could give you when you ask “why” is “I don’t know.”

   Cool is an existential “is”. It’s like talent, you either get it or you don’t. If you suspect they are ignoring part of the equation you probably don’t need them anyway. You are seeing more of the big picture than they are.

   Trends can not be predicted. They can only be observed, created and guessed at. Someone who is worth the money is someone sensitive enough to the trends that they get there without thinking about it.

   It’s Tipping Point and Blink 101. It’s also not Gladwell’s creation, it’s his articulation of a societal bell curve. Harness the 2%, influence the early adopters and the rest will follow… probably. Innovator, early adopter, laggard, they all flow in and out and the titles are not universal or static.

   In short, there are no rules and defining them is asking for someone “cool” to come along and break them.

   A further point I didn’t leave on Grant’s site is that the term “pattern recognition” died with the excellent William Gibson novel of the same name. If you want to really understand that Gibsonian wet dream you should look way back to Doug Rushkoff’s Frontline special “Merchants of Cool”. Then you’ll want to check out Chris Cunningham’s video for “All is Love”.

   In parting so as not to just beat the poor guy down, Grant made a valiant attempt and gets it more than most.

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