Trends

When you live long enough you can recognize when trends change. Fashion is a great example. Through the years I’ve witnessed fashion through such varieties as denim and double-knit to suede to faux-fabric. Pants were baggy and then tight with straight legs and then the classic bellbottom.

It wasn’t so much that everyone followed the WWD but the buyers in the department stores did so they presented the latest trend and we all bought it because our only options were to select a mail-order catalog or build it yourself.

Cars, haircuts, appliances and even telecommunication all changed from year-to-year and we gobbled up every trend. That is what keeps the economy going. Everyone notices the manufacturing trends of half-filled chip bags, thinner cereal boxes or watered down sauces but we adjust.

Suppose someone came up with a Bat phone you could carry with you anywhere? Suppose you could send a picture of yourself to someone on the other side of the world without waiting a week for a response?

Wouldn’t you get onboard with that?

Sure you would. If not, the constant barrage of advertising will convince you that it is necessary to uphold your lifestyle. If not, your friends will.

There are other trends we follow that just grow like having wars we can’t win or having riots after sports events or the unanimity ‘freedom of speech’ turns to nasty due to anonymous avatars on the web.

Living in an older neighborhood the archetypal trends are obvious. A plot of land is purchased and flattened and a builder constructs X-amount of homes to fill the space, all in the same style. For the first decade everything is as planned but people move and more space is needed and trees are removed for additional housing with different styles and landscapes to break up the uniformity. I’ve had the opportunity to watch the real estate trend happen around me.

I noticed a trend in my neighborhood a few years ago of people putting Adirondack chairs in their front yards. I haven’t seen anyone sitting in them but they were just comfy lawn ornaments to the grass and bushes and a colorful match to the brightly colored front doors.

Some call it progress, like the devices that has gone from a rotary dialed vocal device connected with a cord to the wall to a pocket size Star Trek communicator that can send voice, music and pictures via satellite to anyone anywhere at anytime. Who would have vision social media would influence us more than the Forth Estate?

Which brings me to the bigger picture of what will be the next trend? Fashion, haircuts and new gadgets are easy but who remembers Beanie Babies or Cabbage Patch Kids? Will the post office close as we depend on electronics communication until the power goes out? Perhaps the 3-D printers will replace the delivery truck? Since so many pills are available for anything from a sneeze to intestinal blockage maybe the next doctor visit will be on your phone? Scan the problem and a doctor online will give you instructions on how to DIY. Might be messy for an operation but it will cost less and you don’t have to worry about insurance; only the disposal of the body. What about chairs at work? Get everyone to stand up and move around to make a healthier work force.

Take it another step: what about schools? They have been around for years but they may become obsolete. Instead of the parents’ home schooling their offspring, the community constructed a temple to education and hired a bunch of smart folks and hauled the kids there to learn how to read and write and arithmetic. Force feed and regurgitate to move to the next level. They also taught the wee folk social interaction skills, discipline and conformity. With the baby boom, schools grew larger and academia grew to include history, science, art, music, sports and even political preference. In some cases religion, not covered by the church, was included. Constant grading showed the future of the children, whether qualified for university or trade training.

Schools were also babysitters for children while their parents did their grown-up stuff. Schools became responsible for feeding and transporting and entertaining the rug rats until mom and dad got home. Schools also became sanctuaries (until recently) and were responsible for your child’s physical and mental health.

Schools take up space and cost a lot of money to hire all those people and maintain the buildings and cart the bodies back and forth. Why not use the cloud?

As kids have become overly dependent on electronic communication, a lesson plan and evaluation could be done anywhere at anytime. The smart kids would excel and the slower ones would be directed to easier lessons. Students could pick their vocations and customize their learning experience with the entire Internet as their library and there would be no snow days.

Who pays for the schools now? Personal property tax was to pay for schools and street cleaning and such for neighborhoods, then the lottery was going to fund schools, then increase food taxes, grants, state funding, federal appropriations and yet teachers have to pay for supplies not covered by the above.

What would happen to all the buildings? They could be gentrified to expensive condos or torn down to make parks where addicts, homeless and gangs can hang out just like they do now.

What happens to the little bodies? If the kids aren’t gathered in yellow buses and transported to school to be watched over until the return trip, where will they go? Coffee shops, libraries, churches, grandma’s, clubhouses or just stay home. Who is counting attendance?

Ultimately it falls back to the parents.

Like the trend of work-at-home; a trend for home schooling could return? You decide.

Next: Is religion good or bad for humanity?