2009: The Year of the Total Reboot
What can you say about 2008? It wasn’t good, reports the Chicago Daily Herald. Most of us are looking toward 2009 with hope of brighter days ahead. Will there be? Not yet, says renowned trendspotter Marian Salzman.
“2009 is going to be the year we totally reboot,” she said. “The system is totally down. It’s like the Kennedys as we know them, we’re going to reboot with Caroline. The presidency as we know it, we’re going to reboot with Obama. And the American city as we know it is over and we’re going to reboot with Chicago.”
Salzman researched and wrote her 2009 trend predictions in a report titled “Intellect Dialogue: Change is Now,” for the Porter Novelli public relations firm. After studying everything from quantitative research reports to Facebook posts, Salzman isn’t forecasting any quick fixes to our country’s problems. But her predictions do have a few bright spots, such as a return to civility, improvements in health care, and a worldwide appreciation of Chicago.
“First, we have to fix what’s broken,” she said.
Top 9 trends for 2009
1. Cuspers (people born between 1955 and 1964) take the reins.
The Baby Boomers haven’t left us in very good shape, so it’s the “Cuspers” to the rescue. Salzman defines a Cusper as someone who’s too young to be a Baby Boomer (so they weren’t part of the Civil Rights movement or Woodstock) and too old to be a Gen X’er (but relate to the younger generation’s high-tech world). This age group will take leadership roles in corporations, government and communities in 2009, Salzman predicts. Cuspers include: Barack Obama, Arne Duncan, Bono and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.
2. A return to values.
The age of less-is-more is here. Value will be placed on how people live their life and not on what they own, where they live or what they do for a living.
Luxury is out, and more attention will be paid to corporate behavior and environmental issues, Salzman says. Listen for more consumers to say, “I’m not paying for all those extra features, I just need the basics.”
“When your community – the people who matter to you – says it’s not cool to say, ‘My sport is shopping!’ then you stop. The pushback against the over-the-topness is already happening. There’s this feeling now that I don’t want to be seen as a materialistic person,” Salzman says.
The report quotes New York Observer columnist Simon Doonan, who proclaims: “Deep is the new superficial.”
3. Taking risks to change health care.
With so much money to be made in this field, change is on the horizon. Personalized medicine, technology and genetic analysis will make medical treatment far more effective, focused and cost-efficient, Salzman predicts.
Money is already being invested in biomedical and genetic enhancement, which some consider “the new space race,” the report says. Plus, patents will expire for many brand-name drugs, so cheaper generics are on the way.
Richard Heim, vice president of business development at Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove, doesn’t think we’ll see biomedical and genetic enhancement in the suburbs in 2009. But more personalized service and technological advances? Definitely.
Good Samaritan, for example, is making hospital stays more personalized with everything from room service to educational shows related to the patient’s condition programmed into their TVs. In terms of technology, Good Samaritan has new, state-of-the-art operating room suites, which among other features, have green lights to help surgeons perform laparoscopic surgery with better accuracy.
“Things are definitely changing,” Heim said. “Every day there’s a new piece of technology that makes it faster and easier to take care of patients, to diagnose them, and to treat them if necessary.”
Click here for a link to the whole story.
Filed Under: Baby Boomer Culture • Baby Boomers
I was born in 1962 and never felt like a Bomer or an Xer, so I’ve been glad that our lost generation finally has a name. But not “cuspers”! Ecch. After all these years of being denied a collective name, the last thing we should get is name that defines us by our neighbors, ie. we should be defined by who we are, not who we aren’t.
Moot point, since cuspers has never caught on at all, while Generation Jones has already established itself as very popular with a national following. I’m proud of our generation and of the name that emerged for us: Generation Jones.
Google cuspers and you’ll see that virtually nobody uses that term for the generation between the Boomers and Xers. Cuspers was proposed as a name for this generation 10 years ago when Boomers and Xers were the two dominant generations, but it never caught on at all, and anyway, doesn’t even make sense at this point, since now people between GenX and GenY, and those born between GenY and GenZ, are called cuspers.
By contrast, google the term Generation Jones, and you’ll see that it’s gained a big national following…it’s gotten a ton of media attention, and many top commentators from numerous top publications and networks (New York Times, Time magazine, NBC, Newsweek, ABC, etc.) are specifically referring to Obama, born in 1961, as part of Generation Jones.
Cuspers is the term which is most often used to describe those of us who are in-between Generation X and Generation Y. Admittedly, those who on in-between, or on the cusp, of all generations are called Cuspers, but the term is mainly used for those on the cusp of GenX/GenY.