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American Morning
Gazing Into the Crystal Ball for 2002
Aired January 01, 2002 - 09:38 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: Predictions for the New Year: How will our lives be different? There's no crystal ball, but there is a book that's called the "Dictionary of the Future," and it has some very interesting predictions. Faith Popcorn, the author of that book and a well known trend expert, joins us now from New York -- good morning. Happy New Year's to you. Thank you for being here.
FAITH POPCORN, "DICTIONARY OF THE FUTURE": Happy New Year to you, Marty.
SAVIDGE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) lifted some of the definitions, I believe, from this book, and I want to go over a few of them. Armored cocoon.
POPCORN: Oh, armored cocoon -- by the way, I wrote that "Dictionary of the Future" with Adam Hanft, and we worked very, very hard on this concept of armored cocoon. Armored cocoon is that place where you feel safe. It's your home, but it has water filtration and air filtration. It might be a place where you educate your kids. You're constantly on the Internet. You might be working at home and telecommuting. So armored cocoon becomes a very big direction for the next, I'd say, 8 to 10 years.
SAVIDGE: 24-tainment (ph).
POPCORN: Well, 24-tainment says that as we're in our armored cocoon, and we're cocooning like crazy, we want entertainment, entertainment, entertainment. So if we wake up in the middle of the night, and we want to be able to choose our movie, choose a game, be able to talk to somebody that we haven't seen in a long time, go back into history, go forward into the future. So it's sort of a 24- entertainment module.
SAVIDGE: And are these liberal definitions or more like trends? In other words, are they really predictions or a trend year observant (ph)?
POPCORN: Well, in "Dictionary of the Future," it's the language of the future. So if you knew what people were speaking in the future, you'd kind of get a picture of the future. So these are predictions for the future. For instance, you'll be in a situation where you'll say to your friend, "I was DNA'd." And in "Dictionary of the Future," we talk about that as being -- you'll be able to know the other person's DNA. You'll hold your PalmPilot up, and it will tell you that, gee, your DNAs are a little bit incompatible. So it's the idea of what's your sign taken forward about 20 years.
SAVIDGE: Now, these are not words you made up. These are words you have taken from the culture, correct?
POPCORN: Well, actually Adam and I made up quite a few of these words.
SAVIDGE: Oh, you did.
POPCORN: And some of the words we are hearing very early in the culture. For instance, clean time. Clean time in "Dictionary of the Future" is about wanting to de-schedulize your kids, giving them clean time. So in that armored cocoon, you might have safe, quiet places where your kids can play without technology.
SAVIDGE: Wow! I may have to learn a whole new language here. Who benefits from this book? I mean, who would use it and why?
POPCORN: Well, anybody that wants to predict a product for the future, figure out what companies are going to be successful in the future, invent a new strategy, any Fortune 500 client or company. Those are the kind of people, or people that just want to be very interesting at cocktail parties.
SAVIDGE: You could be with the term sex-E (ph), and we're talking capital E.
POPCORN: That's right. And that's the Internet bringing us sexuality. We're there. We're in our cocoon. We don't want to even go out searching for sex, so we have a way of hooking our camera up to our computer and being sex-E, sex entertainment, sexual encounters, but extremely safe and protected.
SAVIDGE: Mandatory volunteering.
POPCORN: Well, mandatory volunteering says that we, in order to have a good resume and look good, we have mandatory volunteerism. It's nothing we really have a heart for, but we do it, because we feel that we should and we feel that our employer will think of us a little bit better. And that brings us to the word deskperation (ph). Now, deskperation says that we're sitting at a desk, we know there's a recession out there, and we're a little bit desperate. We don't love our job, but we're kind of chained there for a little bit to come.
SAVIDGE: I have felt that sometimes...
POPCORN: Do you?
(CROSSTALK)
SAVIDGE: ... sitting right here. Yes.
POPCORN: Well, you don't look it, Marty.
SAVIDGE: Thank you, Faith. Faith Popcorn, she is author of the book "Dictionary of the Future." It's a fascinating read, and you'll certainly be hip with a lot of those words -- thank you very much for talking to us...
POPCORN: Thank you -- happy New Year.
SAVIDGE: ... on this New Year's Day. Thank you.
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