Though voting has been popular for ages, never before has it so totally permeated our lives. Whatever it concerns, we vote. Because we can. And because we expect that any matter, anything, anytime, anywhere, is up to us to decide. After all, we are Generation Boss. And we have the lists to prove it.

I’ve filled this blog with examples of Boss lists, ranging from whom to fire in Belgium (youchoosewefire.be) or hire in Sweden (dinkundservice.se), to Hillary Clinton’s campaign song, Mutumba’s soccer field tricks, or the routing of Kiss’ North American tour.

Whatever you want to get done, you can be sure there’s a Boss list to join.

The most logical lists of the Expectations society would have to be the line-ups. In a time and a world where the next is always the best, where we are seduced by the alluring-almost, lining up is one of our most value adding activities.

We just love lining up, reaching for that next thing we are not completely certain about, consuming our golden expectations along the way. But of course, our days already being more than 43 hours long because of all the activities we engage in, there’s not enough time to stand in line, to stand still!

Enter the line-up lists, where you can place yourself in line and continue with all those other activities all at once. The line-up lists are the Expectations society solution to having the cake and eating it.

Concert events, album releases, new car launches, wrist watches, there are lists allowing you to line up for virtually any product or activity imaginable. You can even line’up for your tv night, as every self-respecting tv set and service manufacturer today offers program planning lists where you can line up all the shows you potentially want to see later tonight – or tomorrow, or the following weeks.

In the Expectations society, nobody wants to buy already existing products. With line-up lists, you don’t have to.

Spotify, Voddler, virtualtourist.com, fastfoodcritic.com, the list of warp lists includes everything from music, to movies, to travel, to canadian bacon. And it keeps expanding, enabling anyone, anywhere to warp their consumption.

Warp lists are the most obvious symptom of the Expectations society, the generalized equivalents of minisodes and miniburgers. You remember the minisodes and miniburgers, stripped versions of tv episodes and burgers that focus on only the juiciest stuff, removing all redundant material, and enabling us to watch more episodes and eat more burgers (on to the next one!) than would otherwise be possible? Warp lists do the exact same thing.

Warp lists strip all the activities, areas, experiences you want to pursue down to their very essential, the very bonemarrow bits and parts that enable you to consume the thing as efficiently as possible.

You want to go to Reykavik? Virtualtourist.com provides you with the list of the must-sees and must-dos so that you can be in and out in 24 hours (and on the next location!). Or maybe, you have a specific focus, to go clubbing, slumming, or high-browing in Berlin. Just check the proper list on virtualtourist and you’re in and out the way you prefer in 24h. Never tried Canadian fastfood, but want to? Fastfoodcritic.com provides you the list covering its quintessence so that you can try out the highs and lows in a jiffy without wasting time or belly room. Wanna get acquainted with bluegrass or  or get updated on gay romcoms? Just check the lists on spotify or voddler.

Or want to get to know a person? Warp him or her, just check their music lists, movie lists, travel lists, and save yourself the trouble of ten or so dates. 

I had a great discussion with a very clever guy the other day about the benefits and the exploding proliferation of lists in our world. They are of course excellent aids in, and symptoms of, the Expectations society.

I actually wrote a trend watch piece of this for a popular magazine a while back, but they never published it true to my form. I later learned it was too provocative for their taste. So, here goes.

Lists are essential to life in the Expectations society, they come in many shapes and forms to match our evolving, accelerating needs. One such need is balancing of our warp consumption. As you might remember from the book and a host of previous posts on this blog, we consume things so incredibly much faster today, as we don’t want to be tied-up in present activities too long and thereby risk missing the next one.

Two favorite observations:

1. The couple next to us sitting at the pool at a vacation resort. Just arrived: “Great to finally be here.” “Yeah, it’s beautiful. So relaxing.” “Mmhmm. So, where do you think we should go next year?”

2. Cell phone cameras in the air at concerts – everybody so busy recording the concerts to show 5-minute miniconcerts to all their friends, that they hardly notice or enjoy the event in real time.

Freeze lists enable you to go back and enjoy the activities you scurried through in your warp consumption. The consumption is so warped that it’s more like a screening – you sample everything in mini bits not to miss out on anything, and rate them in freeze lists.

Freeze lists enable you to freeze consumption, that is, to go back to the consumption you had no time to enjoy in real time as you warped through the screening.

One beautiful example: On bedposted.com anyone, anywhere, can log and rate all the sex partners they rush through (remember, 34 million opportunities…). That way, they can go back when they have the time, and freeze their consumption:

1. Re-live the thing again through the list with less rush, getting more out of the experience when reading the log than they actually had time for during their warped screening.

2. Help find that person again, to be able to go for seconds (and be reminded what kind of seconds one should ask that person for)

3. Avoid bedding the same person unknowingly, and unnecessarily, twice, as one quickly forget those many warped screenings.

I’ve come across similar list services for restaurants, travel, and music. But admittedly, the only URL I memorized was bedposted (the others, I screened out).

First came Ebbsfleet United (which I write about in the book), the English soccer club that was purchased by myfootballclub.co.uk, an association of tens of thousands of soccer fans that coached the team together and voted on all major decisions in real time on line, going all the way to win the FA trophy last May.

Then came Martin Mutumba, another prime Expectations Society soccer specimen.

Martin plays with Swedish super series winning team AIK. He gained instant recognition when he, before the series final this fall, tattooed “AIK GOLD 2Grand9″. He, and soon the rest of the country, knew that victory is never as sweet as before it is attained. His nextopian tattoo made him a super star and now renders a whopping 60 000 google hits!

Following in Ebbsfleet’s footprints, he’s started a little myfootballclub of his own. Before any given game, people can send suggestions to him via SMS on what spectacular move or dribble he should have a go at in the field. Martin makes the most popular one during the game. Get hold of Martin’s cell phone number and YOU can control Mutumba’s game.

Gotta love Expectations Society Soccer.

Örjan Benzinger pointed me to Tommy Lee’s new record in production:

 Following in Radiohead’s footsteps, which I wrote about last year, where anyone could download the different stems from one of their songs and remaster it any way they wanted, and enter a contest to be put on the band’s album, Tommy Lee takes it all the way:

Tommy signed with record company The Public Record, which offers anyone, anywhere to contribute to their artists’ albums. So Tommy does no longer need his bandmates from Mötley Crüe. Nor members from his post-crüe band Methods of Mayhem. He just kept the latter band’s name, and now releases crude stems from the songs he’s started writing for the forthcoming album, one a week, inviting anyone, anywhere, to add instrumental parts of their own taste.

The best ones will be added in the mix, and voila, a record with not only four or five band members will soon be finished. Anyone has the chance to join the band, which could sum up to thousands of members.

Soon we’ll know. Six of the songs are now in raw production. But there’s still time for you to add a slicing guitar solo, shreaking falsetto, or funky bass thump to the rest of the album’s songs.

In the world of any, you don’t have to settle for playing in the tribute band any longer. Anyone, anywhere, can take Vince Neil’s or Nikki Sixx’s place alongside Tommy Lee.

Good old, ever clever, guest-blogger Martin Hugosson, made a great comment on my last post, referring to a debate article about the recent exaggeration of shyness as a problem. It has been listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and was even dubbed “personality disorder of the decade” back in the 1990’s.

“Is shyness really such a problem, is it not an exaggeration to call it a disorder?” the article asks.

Maybe it was an exaggeration in the yestermillennium. But in the Expectations Society, where people are judged not by what they do, but what they say they will do later, where everyone touts their personal next opera and personal blogs have replaced CV’s and application letters, or even become the business itself, it’s not just a disorder – it’s a disability. If you don’t promote yourself, you’re unemployably, undateably, invisible.

I hereby present the disability of the new millennium:

Invisidisability

Gotta love yesterday’s news flow.

1. Swedish employment site, or to my mind EBL (Employed But Looking) site, Monster published a list of the most common words featured in their thousands of wanted ads. Of the top-20 words, a majority focuse on the ability to stand out, for example:

Independent (up from last year), Proactive (top climber), Outgoing, Competitive, Creative.

These words suggest that, to get the most and the best job applicants, this is what companies must communicate, as experience has taught them this is what attracts us.

2. My very own Stockholm School of Economics published the results from a survey among Swedish top execs about what they expect from their talents. Top priority: Cooperative skills, such as Organizational adaptation and Relationship building.

Beautiful…

Last week was a real HR week, I flew across Scandinavia and did four talks on Human Resources, about what people in the Expectations Society want out of their work lives and careers, how companies can attract human capital and be successful.

One of my points, in particular, made older managers, in all four countries, quite upset (and the rest a little nervous):

The old, terrible cliché “There’s no I in team” should be replaced with the more more compelling “There’s no eye in team“.

Successful teams do not crumble with their weakest link. Definitely not in the world of any, where any company can find a co-worker that is good enough, and where anyone, anywhere can reproduce what anyone else has done anytime before.

Successful teams thrive with their stars, the ones that (at least for a microsecond) are able to stand out and do something that no one else (most importantly, not the company itself) has done before.

In a world of any with hundreds of thousands of available offers to buy even a trivial product such as popcorn, you need a star, not an anonymous team, to catch people’s eye. And in the Expectations Society, everyone wants to, expects to, be that star.

The universe expands and the world of any expands. Here’s the perfect intersection – Galactic Suites.

If you have the money (and soon we will all have, as economies keep progressing, or as in the case of Virgin Galactic, in a few years’ time, prices will approach zero) and the patience (a trickier part, being 2920 times more impatient than in the yestermillennium), you’ll be able to spend three days in the luxurious Galactic Suites.

The hotel opens its doors (not literally, I guess) in 2012. At a price of 1.5 million dollars, you can reserve your own stay now. Just get in line after the already 200 guests ahead of you. And by that time, it will only cost you 160,000 dollars to get there with Virgin Galactic (wait another seven years and the ride will be free).