Five Trends to Track: Antonia Ward - Stylus's Chief Futurist
Proof of Life
We’re tracking humans being humans in the age of AI: idiosyncratic behaviours and idiopathic communications. If you’re watching all your media on 1.5x speed like the young people do, Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma festival has explored feature film showings at this speed. More or less annoying than typing being replaced by whispering in the workplace? Look out for more self-consciously human email signoffs, too: “All errors are sign of life” or my favourite, “If I owe you an email imagine what I owe myself”. For more like this, read Harriet Armstrong’s beautiful little essay on the use of ‘lol’ in text messages.
Ain’t Gotta Get Ready
In the month LinkedIn sent a targeted email about “staying competitive and relevant as you age” (thanks, I guess?) I’m thinking about preparedness: casual prepping workshops about everyday resilience. ‘Peri-prepper’ women coolly staring down midlife. Death doulas moving from fringe to mainstream. And @askastrid’s ‘sovereign hobbies’ matrix has all sorts of sticky ideas about the preparation (and permission) needed to enjoy ourselves. Then a client used the word ‘primed’ just as I was reading C. Thi Nguyen’s The Score, on how scoring systems guide us into new ways of seeing, and why “what's easily measurable is rarely the same as what's really valuable.” I’d love a LinkedIn course about that.
Ain’t Gotta Get Ready
In the month LinkedIn sent a targeted email about “staying competitive and relevant as you age” (thanks, I guess?) I’m thinking about preparedness: casual prepping workshops about everyday resilience. ‘Peri-prepper’ women coolly staring down midlife. Death doulas moving from fringe to mainstream. And @askastrid’s ‘sovereign hobbies’ matrix has all sorts of sticky ideas about the preparation (and permission) needed to enjoy ourselves. Then a client used the word ‘primed’ just as I was reading C. Thi Nguyen’s The Score, on how scoring systems guide us into new ways of seeing, and why “what's easily measurable is rarely the same as what's really valuable.” I’d love a LinkedIn course about that.
Ain’t Gotta Get Ready
In the month LinkedIn sent a targeted email about “staying competitive and relevant as you age” (thanks, I guess?) I’m thinking about preparedness: casual prepping workshops about everyday resilience. ‘Peri-prepper’ women coolly staring down midlife. Death doulas moving from fringe to mainstream. And @askastrid’s ‘sovereign hobbies’ matrix has all sorts of sticky ideas about the preparation (and permission) needed to enjoy ourselves. Then a client used the word ‘primed’ just as I was reading C. Thi Nguyen’s The Score, on how scoring systems guide us into new ways of seeing, and why “what's easily measurable is rarely the same as what's really valuable.” I’d love a LinkedIn course about that.
Ain’t Gotta Get Ready
In the month LinkedIn sent a targeted email about “staying competitive and relevant as you age” (thanks, I guess?) I’m thinking about preparedness: casual prepping workshops about everyday resilience. ‘Peri-prepper’ women coolly staring down midlife. Death doulas moving from fringe to mainstream. And @askastrid’s ‘sovereign hobbies’ matrix has all sorts of sticky ideas about the preparation (and permission) needed to enjoy ourselves. Then a client used the word ‘primed’ just as I was reading C. Thi Nguyen’s The Score, on how scoring systems guide us into new ways of seeing, and why “what's easily measurable is rarely the same as what's really valuable.” I’d love a LinkedIn course about that.
READING: Traveller Tales
In trying to bring back reading recommendations or indeed actual books from client travel, I was recommended In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (short stories by Pakistani-American author Daniyal Mueenuddin) by a New Yorker in Copenhagen, and Patrick Radden Keefe’s London Falling by someone I met in an airport in Michigan. Or possibly Illinois. I’ll take your book recs: my TBR list is endless.
PLAYING: Reacher Said Nothing
I love a quiz. I know, shocker. Favourite traditional media quiz? The linked questions quiz in the Financial Times Weekend edition. It’s like two quizzes in one (find the answers, then find the link between them). I also love a Jack Reacher novel and now there’s a Jack Reacher quiz book. It’s not even really about Jack Reacher. It doesn’t matter.
WATCHING: All the Glitter and the Grievance
Only after seeing a one-man show about the tabloid persecution of Elton John in the 1980s, Self Esteem in David Hare’s play Teeth ‘n’ Smiles, and a three-part documentary on Kylie (the first one) did I see the connection. If diva docs ‘n’ dramas sat under an obscure Netflix code, what would it be called… Rhinestone Reckonings? Pop Will Eat Itself?
SCROLLING: Back to the Salt Mines
Like any normal person, I also spend hours in a semi-catatonic state on social media. And like any normal person, looking back at this activity is equal parts illuminating and shaming. Current themes seem to be ‘surprisingly salted foods’ (salted egg pancakes, whipped salted cream margaritas, and ratte potatoes) and, er, ‘milky latex door art’. Oh, and always, always poetic muppets.