In a recent trip to Goodwill Bookstore, my attention was caught by an elegantly covered hardbound–Dictionary of the Future. The Words, Terms and Trends That Define the Way We’ll Live, Work and Talk, written by futurist Faith Popcorn and business strategist Adam Hanft. As a Popcorn fan, having been enlightened by her past writings, it was not surprising to discover a totally fascinating, imaginative, and insightful sourcebook. It is not a standard dictionary. It is more a compilation of catchphrases, edgy street or boardroom expressions, and updated slang. It is a fluidly thought out and amusingly written overview of the world as it might soon be, across a variety of disciplines and topics–computers, demographics, education, fashion and style, food and entertaining, health and medicine, marketing and the consumer economy, and media and entertainment, among others.
The listed words were brought about by the rapid change happening all around us. As Popcorn and Hanft state, "Change, assuming its transformative magic will work in the right way, can create stunning, almost undreamed of improvements to people. On the other hand, change can also have dangerous side effects. Out of its chaos can emerge threats, new risks, and destructive behaviors. This dark side of life has always been fertile ground for the germination of new language and vocabulary."
For lovers of bombastic verbosity and mutating malapropism, this book of over a thousand entries is a must-read. They can be of particular interest to business, marketing and communication people: Here’s a sampling of what I like:
Ad Creep – The gradual expansion of advertising into our visual field–coffee mugs, building walls, even entire buses.
Altered States – With the number of people gaining weight and losing weight, plus the volume of clothing purchased at discount retailers that don’t offer tailoring, the opportunity is palpable for the first national chain of tailor/alteration shops.
Armored Packaging – Impenetrable packages that we need assault weapons to open, from fastfood condiments to aspirin to CD packages. Although this form of packaging started as a response to tamperings, many argue it has gone too far and has become the scourge of environmentalists.
Batbelt – A contraption to carry all electronic devices.
Brandlash – The backlash against the excessive branding of every inch of space and time in our lives, which will be expressed by a rush to use generic or unbranded products.
Brandrogeny – As we wear brand names on our clothes, and speak in brand lingo, we are increasingly inseparable from them, a fusion. Case in point: a classified ad that actually recruits applicants with the language "MTV Types" and "Vogue Attitude."
BuySexuals – Describes those who cross-shop at status stores, like Prada and Vuitton, and mass marketers like Target and Wal-Mart.
Cruelty-Free – Language to describe products that are produced without either having animals suffer, or worse case, surrender their lives.
Disability Managers – A new corporate job title whose function is to "better manage employee absences."
Ego Auditor – To help executives keep their perspective.
House Concerts – Cocooning meets live entertainment. Homeowners are opening their living rooms to live mini-concerts, giving them the opportunity to make a couple of bucks. Guests pay a small fee that’s split between the "house" and the entertainers while also giving the performers the opportunity to build a following.
Independent products – Soon we’ll have just about smart everything: smart stoves, smart shoes, and smart lives.
Intrusion Sponsorship – When sponsors actively and unexpectedly enter our lives. As an example, Microsoft could decide to treat an entire city to ride the subway for a day, as a way to introduce a new version of Windows.
Karaoke Managers – People who get ahead by lip-synching the wisdom of others.
Make-Up Marketing – Recognizing the importance of a loyal customer. Marketers will go out of their way to make up for any relationship glitches. Efforts will include cash make-up gifts, extended warranties, special offers, house calls, dedicated service numbers for future inquiries and other dramatic steps.
Mannies – Male nannies, who are growing in numbers.
Media Justice – describes the way in which the public reaches its decision about the guilt or innocence of public figures, based on the media presentation of the "facts."
Mygazines – magazines that will combine their generic editorial with customized content for distribution over the Internet.
Price-Unconscious – the way wealthy people shop a lot of time, or the way less-than wealthy shop on occasion. We read about them in InStyle magazine, the movie stars who earn $12 million a film and can drop $50,000 in an hour, before they even warm up. But it’s us, too: "I was depressed so I went shopping and had an episode of price-unconsciousness."
Programmable Horns – a way to personalize your car’s beep-beep, borrowed from the programmable rings available on cell phones. Choose your favorite pop song, jingle, hip-hop sampling or even write your own. When cars become web-enabled, you’ll be able to download a melody straight from the Internet. There’s no greater pleasure than serenading someone who cut you off a mile back, and is now I the process of getting a ticket, with Who’s Sorry Now?
Shockwave Marketing – when a product or a movie crashes through the walls of indifference and becomes a phenomenon based upon many media platforms coming together.
Terrorism Analysts – We are in a period where much of the world’s violence will come from civil wars, independence movements, regional conflicts and other struggles that trigger terrorism, both globally and at home. Thus, terrorism analysts will grow in importance. In fact, there won’t be enough of them since since so many of the regions involved have not been hot areas of study.
Viral Marketing – the holy grail of Internet marketing, it happens when your customers become your unpaid salespeople. The classic example is Hotmail, which was bought by Yahoo. Hotmail offered free email service, but every message you sent contained an embedded information recruiting others for free service.
Whisperers – Because customers are angrier than ever, customer service strategies are starting to change. Rather than yelling back, they whisper. It is effective in gentling enraged customers. The term comes from the book and movie, The Horse Whisperer.
How should Dictionary of the Future be read? "Traditional dictionaries are not read at all, other than by prisoners, idiot savants and the ferociously autodidactic. But we have written this book to be read straight through, although there is no reason why it cannot be read in a nonlinear sort of fashion," Popcorn and Hanft aver.
Indeed, this brilliant and amusing lexicon is a perfect brain-jolt for our disjointed time.