Several Corante Network controbutors have posted prognostications and predictions to their blogs this week. Lois Kelly at Foghound posted a list here and expounded on it here. An excerpt:

"Meaning making vs. promoting: Customers are tuning out advertising, promotions and spin. What they "want is trusted help in making decisions. Companies that adopt more of a meaning making approach – helping customers make sense of so many competitive choices – will out market their competition. Meaning making will become especially hot for companies selling expensive, high consideration purchases."

Grant McCracken at This Blog Sits At The Intersection of Anthropology and Economics, looking past 2006 yet still in a prognosticatorial mood, posited four potential models to answer the questions "Will Internet 2.0 change everything or just some things? Is this a revolutionary moment or an evolutionary one? Is everything I know wrong, or just this, that and the other thing?" Model Four, in part:

"One way to assess innovations is to make a guess about where we are headed. I think our economic, social and cultural destination might be this: we will be continuously connected to all knowledge and all people with a minimum of friction, and priviledge will be measured, in part, by how good are the filters with which we make contact with all but only the people and knowledge we care about."

Michele Miller at WonderBranding describes a "shift in society that is moving away from individual egotism toward the era of the humanitarian":

"Start paying attention to the news and you’ll begin to sense the shift, too. Young people are saying, 'I need to transform my life and do something I’m passionate about - that’s the only way I’ll make a difference in the world.” Thousands are flocking to Road Trip Nation and its funky green RV’s that travel to campuses across the country, eager to be inspired and learn life lessons from the leaders around them."

Mary Schmidt at Mary's Blog links to Michele and adds:

"So, where are you going to start (or continue) to make a difference this coming year? And, remember, life truly is too important to be taken seriously. (Oscar Wilde)"

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