Ok, this is me checking out. I’m leaving for a tour of the US and work on my next project. Don’t really know what to expect, just know that it will be full of surprises and terrifying revelations.

See you again in a couple of weeks. I hope…

The guy keeps popping up here. I guess it’s only fair, after all, I dubbed him the ultimate expectity quite some time ago: Barack Obama.

Once again, he deserves a mention. This time, he’s made the entire world devote a bizarre amount of attention to a US health bill. Why? Why would anyone outside the US care about a health bill concerning American citizens? And why should even Americans care? After all, bills are passed and overturned all the time.

First, it’s proof once again, that we live in the world of any. Just like before the election, when artists like Pras and Stevie Wonder toured the world in support of Obama, once again, there’s an insight that anyone, anywhere can have an effect on the vote, anytime. Either by digging up some dirt, or mobilizing Generation Boss in actions pro or con.

Second, the Obama people have realized that what makes the man great, a president and a Nobel Laureate, is not what he’s done, but what he’s expected to do. Has any one bill, anywhere, been touted so loudly so far in advance before?

And of course, courtesy of our golden expectations, the nextopian shimmer promises that this bill will make the world so much better for all of us.

Care to guess how amuch attention the passed bill will receive tomorrow?

I’m pretty sure you know of iamamiwhoami by know.  The last few days have witnessed an explosion of more than 211,000 google hits to the name, and headlines in media across the globe .

Most people who have heard iamamiwhoami’s music or seen her videos (the number of youtube views counts in millions) would probably agree that they alone would not likely generate that attention. More likely, it would amount to maybe 67,000 google hits and less than a hundred thousand youtube views in a few years’ time. Which resembles what Swedish artist Jonna Lee has amassed in her career to date.

The same Jonna Lee that the world is now almost certain is the person behind the iamamiwhoami persona. Almost, as in that wonderful alluring-almost that is so compelling in our world of any, where anything else is available to anyone, anywhere anytime. In that world of any, a certain Jonna Lee’s an isbeen of marginal interest, whereas interest for the alluring-almost Jonna Lee rockets through the roof.

The other day, police apprehended mafia boss Pasquale Manfredi. Suspected of anything from murder to drug trafficking, Pasquale kept a very low profile, hiding from the police, for four months.

Then finally, he could not resist.  He just had to update his “Scarface” facebook profile. A few hours later he found himself in jail.

It ain’t easy being Scarface in the world of any.

Seems like the Americans are really waking up now. The New York Times ran a story today on the terrifying news that anybody can find out virtually anything about you online all of a sudden! If they’d only had read a book called Nextopia (or followed this blog), they would have known about blogarazzi-bummer (the fact that in this day and age, we are our own worst paparazzi, digging deep into all our dirty secrets and exposing them for the world to see) a long time ago.

Here’s what the New York Times asks: “If a stranger came up to you on the street, would you give him your name, Social Security number and e-mail address?” And what they conclude is that, well, this is basically what we do online.

OK, to the good people at the NYT, and the rest of America(?), here’s the story.

First, there’s a thing called the truth of porn, which means that the more we reveal, the less naked we feel. In other words, in the beginning, we might feel really anxious to leave private information on facebook, on blogs, microblogs etc. But after a while, our fingers start to slip, revealing just a little more than we first thought proper, and after the first slip, the cat’s out of the bag. The more we reveal, the less personal it feels, and so we gradually (shockingly quickly) move our boundaries of privacy and “integrity”.

Second, most people’s concept of information is still stuck in the yestermillennium, when “real” information was info that formed a coherent unit, deliberately spread and deliberately gathered. Because in the yestermillennium, there was no world of any, where anyone could communicate with the rest of the world, anytime, anywhere, within a microsecond. Hence, no one thought it worth the while to consider small, incoherent, bits and pieces of info as “real” information. But now we live in the world of any, where anyone, anywhere, can send messages to the rest of the world in a microsecond, regardless of how miniscule and unimportant the info, and in the next microsecond, anyone, anywhere can pick all kinds of bits and pieces together from anywhere, anytime. 

Which explains the NYT report that students at MIT found that they could predict with 78 percent accuracy whether a person was gay just by accessing their facebook profile (and put two and two together based on status updates, listed friends, wall messages, etc.)

It also explains how researchers at Carnegie Mellon were able to come across the full, nine-digit social security numbers of almost 10 percent of all Americans. Just by putting together all those slips of the truth of porn.

Blogarazzi-bummer, America!

The perpetual question once again: Are people happier in California?

I’ve answered no to this question many times before, based on life satisfaction research.

But now, I’m inclined to rethink. I recently learned that the state of California reviews and rewrites their citizen-focused laws every 10 years. That’s just beautiful, they understand that laws written 10 years ago may have nothing to do with the reality people face today. I wish legislators everywhere realized this. My only regret is that California set the interval to 10 years – an interval that was maybe suited for the yestermillennium when it was decided, but the world turns so much faster in our new, warp consumption millennium. Half that interval would be more than enough.

However, the Californians have made one smart adaption to our time: Come October, when the rewriting is set to start, it will no longer be government officials making the overhaul. Instead, the job is handed over to Generation Boss. Do you have any great ideas about new laws that need to be written, old ones that should be deleted? Just email the government, and you might get the chance to do so!

More than 30,000 people have sent their intents already. Hurry up, and you may be one of the 14 people who get to do the final writing.  

Living in a community not ruled by its past, where YOU decide, maybe Californians are happier after all..?

You non-Swedes out there may think of Abba when you think of Sweden (that is, if you’re old enough to have listened to music in the old millennium, or old enough to have read history books in school, which were popular staple goods in the yestermillennium schools). In Sweden, we don’t. Nobody cares about Abba. Sure, they won the (European popular music) Eurovision song contest once, but who cares about old wins when there’s new ones to expect? And tomorrow, we will at last find out who’ll win the Swedish finals!

Did you know that out of all European countries, The Eurovision contest has its very greatest stronghold in Sweden? The reason can be found in the clever, Expectations society format, in which there is seminfinal, upon semifinal, upon semifinal, upon second chances (lately, the format has been exported to other countries, too). For a whole bunch of weeks, a cropload of songs are all potential winners, and the entire country lives in a state of the alluring-almost where we almost know who the winner will be.

So, media fills with speculations, prophecies, and hypes surrounding all the competing songs and artists. The artists become huge stars because of their expectity status, and songs that will most certainly not receive any real airtime after the finals, get played again, and again, and again in the weeks leading up to the finals. They should call it the Futurevision contest instead. I love it.

This post is for all non-Swedish readers: If you want to experience nextopia first-hand, come to Sweden immediately.

My entire country has gone so nextopia bananas right now, exhibiting all the tell-tale signs of an Expectations society where attention and money center on what’s to come.

Swedish media (and a whole bunch of calls I receive from journalists) pretty much center on two things right now. If you’ve browsed a magazine, turned on the radio or zapped the tv, or whatever media you might enjoy in this country, you know what I’m getting at.

No. 1: The Crown princess wedding. Entire TV series, magazine titles, blogs, and much more, are devoted to the forthcoming wedding. The headlines keep piling up, taking greater and greater shares of all the news, and entertainment. The wedding has been a multimillion dollar industry for the last year (they announced their wedding plans a record-breaking year and a half in advance, wonder why…), and business and interest follow the nextopian demand curve I describe in the book (rising, rising, rising, til the launch) perfectly. There’s definitely more to come, have no doubt…

(BTW, don’t tell Victoria and Daniel that they will be less happy one year into their marriage than they are right now)

What’s No. 2? Every Swede’s gotta know the answer!

The movie industry is certainly on a roll right now. The other day, I wrote how movie studio execs just realized that yestermillennium-style movie stars are not worth millions anymore, as they don’t attract the “what’s next?”-generation to theaters.

And now, they’ve finally adopted an Expectations society take on movie awards as well. This year’s installment of the yestermillennium show the Oscars is just over, and received lower ratings and worse reviews than ever. Now eyes are turned to the South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival set for next week: A festival that awards the most appreciated part of any movie in our age of trailerism and golden expectations - the first two minutes.

The first two minutes’ opening credits is the part that tends to be the most attended to, enchanted, when the movie is still in its nextopian phase and expectations just, build, build, build. Who cares about the rest of the movie? Judging by the response to this year’s Oscars, no one.