I’ve written a number of posts on the US elections already, testifying to their expectity-producing power. In May of this year, Barack Obama, John McCain and Hillary Clinton were all in the top 5 of Time Magazine’s ranking of the worlds top 100 most influential people (incidentally, “Sitting bull” George W Bush was not). Since then, new names like democrat VP pick Joe Biden, and most notably, John McCain sidekick (or is it the other way around?) Sarah Palin, have also raced to the top of people’s minds all over the world.

The fact that Barack’s ratings far outrun Georgie’s, in terms of google hits as well as popularity polls (the latter indicating that Mr. O already is the most popular president ever!) would suggest that the US presidency is actually a US expectidency. The most powerful person in the world is the expected president, not the actual one.

And the expectations keep building. When I wrote about Obama a few weeks ago, his name generated 66 million google hits – today they are up to 75 million (meanwhile, George W’s hasn’t moved an inch).

A nice tie-in between the expectidency and the previous post on the nextconomy – the last few weeks have witnessed meetings and publicised plans in reaction to this fall’s financial crisis. Although the panic exists right here and now, and the call is for action today, George W Bush, president of today, is not the person in focus of the meetings and plans – Obama and Johnny McCain are (google “George W Bush AND economy” and get 14 million hits, a fraction of Obama-man’s 58 and McJohn’s 36):

 The power of the precidency lies in the expectations and the effects of the economy derive from the next. 

Seven seasons in, American Idol has become one of the world’s premier expectity factories. Starting out at the #30 spot in the US TV ratings in 2002, the show quickly rocketed to the #1 position and has had a steady grip of the top spot since the new millennium settled in.

And not only the Americans are mesmerized – the show receives high ratings in more than 100 nations worldwide. Not to mention all the international franchisees, ranging from Australia to Bulgaria to Singapore.

More than 25 million google hits and six-figure numbers of youtube clips give testimony to the world’s fascination with the to-be American idols (add another double those amounts for the to-be Hungarian/Polish/Taiwanese etc. idols). To-be idols that rarely transform into being idols. But nonetheless, to-be idols that are greater celebrities than most of the world’s “have become” idols. All because of the very reason that they have not become idols: they are to-be idols. They are centerpieces of the world’s expectations – the expected best singers and perfomers in the world. “Ruben Studdard is going to make it big!”, “Carrie Underwood will redefine pop music!” (do you even remeber these guys? They once generated more than 8 million google hits), stars based on their future rather than their present or their past.
Once the season is over, they are quickly forgotten. Because they lacked talent? No. Because being an idol is less interesting than to-being.

They should call the show American Expectity.

The entire world seems at the verge of a financial crisis. Newscast after newscast, headline after headline attest to the fact that we live in a connected world. What happens on Wall Street is connected to the rise and fall of Spanish building contractors, the Royal Bank of Scotland fights with Estonian Hansabank to survive, French anxiety helps bring Swedish Volvo on its knees, and the Japanese stock exchange has gone through a serious case of nervous hickups.

In the world of any, anyone can wrestle down a bank, a building contracter or a car manufacturer. Anyone with enough money (to retract), that is. Or rather, anyone with enough friends that follow. Or actually, anyone that can be noticed by anyone else, anywhere.  All it takes is, that a second person follows the first, which induces a third one and so on. But why would that second and third person jump on board (or rather, off board) the ship? That any one first person’s (retr-)actions won’t be enough to affect them?

The answer, of course, is that the economy has virtually nothing to do with the present and the past, it’s all about the next. In the new millennium’s connected world the economy is a full-fledged nextconomy, where expectations build and fulfil themselves by the second.  Anyone, anywhere, keeps their eye on the nextconomy becasue they expect that it will affect their lives anytime.

And so, the nextconomy has become one of the most powerful expectities of our time. Famous, at the center of the world’s attention , not for what it is or has been, but for what people expect that it will become; with new prognoses and speculations appearing in media across the globe every second (producing more then 13 million headlines so far this year). Check out Google Trends and see how “recession” has gone from almost 0 at the end of last year to 100 since the beginning of this year. A trend that does not mirror the real economy, but it as perfect reflection of the nextconomy. 

Remember the minisodes (“Rikki Lake in 5 minutes”), and microsodes (“Titanic in 5 seconds”), I brought up previously? They are signs of our accelerating consumption, where we just consume more and more, because we can. In the world of any, anyone can buy and try anything, anywhere, anytime. And because there is ever more to consume, we don’t have the time – or the patience (as discussed in a previous post, we are 2,920 times less patient in the new millennium) - to enjoy the consumption in real time, we either engage in trailerism, for example consuming the trailer and skipping the later following movie, or we engage in warp consumption, consuming only bits and pieces of products as fast as we can and move on.

I’ve received quite a few worried responses – “isn’t warp consumption a terrible waste, won’t such over-consumption kill us and the planet in the long run?”

Answer: No. Warp consumption will not kill the planet, it will save it. Warp consumption is not over-consumption. Warping our consumption means that we consume more, but also so much more efficiently.  Just take a recent example. Right now, mini burgers are the latest and greatest eat in the US. A typical example of warp consumption, it means that people enjoy the eating and trying of new burgers more than the actual burgers. So, rather than sinking their teeth into big, stomach-filling burgers, they prefer having mini versions of the burger, warping their way through two or three burgers instead of one. And even with three mini burgers they consume less than the equivalent of one ordinary burger. With warp consumption, more does not mean bigger or heavier, quite the opposite – it’s less and leaner. Requiring less resources to produce, consume, and dispose of.

I don’t know if you really see the beauty and the significance of the mini burger? So, consider this: originating from Chicago, the very capital of hamburgers (and McDonald’s’ HQ) they are the future version of a nation’s signature food, a nation that likes things BIG. So, if even the Americans can enjoy mini burgers, just imagine its impact on the rest of the world. 

“Tropa de Elite” is already the most successful Brazilian movie in history. Released in October 2007, nearly 200,000 people saw the movie in its opening weekend. And before the year was over, it had attracted 14 million viewers.

Incidentally, “Tropa de Elite” is also Brazil’s first real nextopia movie. Two months prior to the official premiere, in August, a preliminary cut of the film was leaked from a production company, and soon anyone with an internet connection could download the movie. And, almost instantly, private “street movie theaters” hosted their own screenings of the movie, with the number of viewers counting in millions.

Before the October premiere, everyone and anyone in the country knew of the movie. Brazilian media report that 77 percent of the urban population were familiar with it, 80 percent rating it as excellent or very good. Come October, everybody was talking about this great movie, a movie that many people had seen a raw cut of, but no one had seen the final, perfect – nextopia – version of. Expectations were huge. So huge that everyone went to see the movie in the two months after its official premiere.  

The person responsible for the leak was fired and set under criminal investigation. Right or wrong?

Last Sunday, Barack Obama opened up the United Nations’ World Space Week with the promise that he “will increase funding for a robust human space exploration program and research that pushes the very boundaries of discovery”. True to his expectity status, he has already put himself rhetorically in the White, and continued: “As President, I will lead NASA down a new path for the 21st century that guarantees our preeminence in space today, tomorrow, and the day NASA celebrates its 100th anniversary.”

Interestingly, comments abound that he is eerily close to his president predecessor JFK in his promises about space exploitation and visions of universal exploration. Which would be yet another explanation to the fact I wrote about previously, that Obama and JFK are the most popular presidents ever – because they are nextopia presidents. Not only is their rockstar-slash-royalty-status a result of expectations of what they will achieve (Obama not yet being president, JFK not being it for long), it is also a result of their extremely nextopian, bombastic and forward-looking rhetoric.

So what does Obama have in common with 70 percent of Swedes? Answer: they are both eager to take an elevator ride to space. One of the main features in this year’s World Space Week is the global race towards being the first to launch an elevator to space, a race that employs many hundred scientists across the globe, from the US to Europe to Asia. And the Japanese have declared that they intend to win the race, kicking off with a conference in November and following through with a program estimated at 10 billion US dollars.

Everyone seems sure that it is just a matter of (a short) time, before a wire-secured hundred thousand stories elevator will be able to give people a lift to space. Obama said he wants to jump on board. And so did 70 percent of the thousands of people polled by Sweden’s largest newspaper. Everybody wants to go to space. Soon anybody can.

In the book, I write that we live in the world of any, where anyone, anywhere can book a space flight anytime (for example, on virgingalactic.com). Soon, we don’t have to. Anyone can take the elevator. And most of us (at least if Obama and news-reading Swedes are like the rest of us) will.  

These guys will probably need a lot more stamina…

Have you got a copy of the book yet?

A real fun thing – those who attended the Södra Teatern event last week received a pre-release copy of the book. Within 24 hours I got a ping in my computer that the book “can be yours now” for triple the retail price!

Not very hard to connect those dots… Last year’s hyped Long tail theory is all good, but obviously websites like ebay may not only prolong the right-hand tail of the product life cycle, but the left-end (pre-launch) tail as well…

Then there’s the story about the large company that insisted on my publisher pre-pressing the book because “tomorrow is not soon enough…”

In addition to these fun anecdotes, I have some “horror stories” related to the book as well, more to come!

As sung by Belgium’s premier eurosinger:

Thank you everyone that attended the premiere and launch of “Nextopia – livet, lyckan och pengarna i Förväntningssamhället”, as the book is called in Swedish.

The professor delivered his thoughts on the Expectations Society, and on the discussion with Fredrik Wikingsson afterwards concluded that the world of any indeed affected even 75-year olds in Sundsvall, Sweden.

Amongst other things, Micael touched upon the economic development and how it connects to the world of any.

‘

Later on, one of Sweden’s most progressive comedians and tv personalities, Fredrik Wikingsson, discussed the implications of Micael Dahlén’s book. Is the Godfather blu-ray release another symptom of Nextpanding? Is cocaine or MDMA-on-an-ibiza-beach synthetic happiness? What does Generation In-Charge imply for welfare and our expectations on healthcare?

Some of these answers are addressed in the next book Micael is working on, that uses Nextopia as a leverage point and moves further.

UPDATE: Thank’s to Dr. Gatarski, we have a live feed up:

A magical night at Södra Teatern, and we thank everyone who made it as enjoyable as it was!Volante QNB