Happy New Year everyone! And to celebrate the beginning of 2012, I invited the noted trendologist, Marian Salzman, the author of the excellent Little Book of Nexts, into our New York City studio to preview the year and tell us what will be the top trends of 2012.
Whatever else one thinks of Marian’s trends, they certainly are never boring. From predicting the death of the two big American dreams (owning a home and going to college) to looking for hope in a land of hopelessness to “double dip frugality” to a dramatically more polarized America, Marian’s predictions are pretty bracing. But 2012 won’t be entirely gloom and doom, she promises. Our appetite for personal electronics will remain undiminished, Marian told me, and social consumerism will be a huge growth area, with local networks, such as AOL’s very own Patch, being particularly hot. And this time next year, she suggests, we have might even have a President Huntsman – the only Republican candidate, she says, who can give Obama a run for his money.
This is the second of a two part interview with Salzman. On Friday, she identified the top trends for 2011.