Health and obesity — the new class divide
Recently, some very close French colleagues of mine came to Florida to attend the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals conference. Orlando is interesting because ALL of America comes to see Disney. Naturally, being French, they marveled at the amount of obesity in such a wide cross-section of Americans. But one of my colleagues made an especially tranchant observation — obesity, like smoking, is becoming a real signifier of class in the country.
“You know, it’s obvious what class you belong to if you are obese. Anybody over 50 who looks to be in shape is almost always in some form of management, no matter what kind of clothing they are wearing.”
As an American, this strikes me as true. So in the future, a membership to the country club and an extensive collection of vintage white burgundies won’t be as much an indicator of the upper class as low body fat and lack of chronic medical illnesses.
To put a point on this, yesterday John Hopkins published a landmark national study on obesity in JAMA. The statistics shows conclusively that teens living at or below the poverty line are considerably more likely to be obese and then to develop chronic medical illnesses, often by their late 20s.
There are two crushing implications here:
First, obesity will become even more of a class stigma. After all, future generations will reason, only poor people get fat. And if you are overweight, it will associate you with the less educated.
Second, and more importantly, the underclass is most likely to receive Medicaid and other publicly assisted healthcare, and they are going to be developing diabetes and heart disease long before previous generations. We have enough technology to keep these people from dying, but the impact on healthcare budgets will be crippling.
In short, the lifestyle of our poorest citizens is almost guaranteed to cause a fiscal crisis in the future.
Labels: Healthcare
The future of work — Email sensitivity training
We’ve all heard of team building, communications, and senstitivity training — you know, when your organization brings in HR or some consultant to work on how you interact as a team, words you choose, etc. We’re all familiar we those “I Messages” : “When you ____, I feel that ____, because _____.” Standard stuff about emotional intelligence.
I was surprised, however, to see IBM delving into this realm. In their online series of podcasts “The Future of Work,” IBM consultants are talking about the need for Internet-based emotional intelligence.
You see, Generation X and Y all understand that TALKING IN ALL CAPS IS REALLY LIKE SHOUTING ONLINE.
BABY BOOMERS, YOU SEE, DON’T ALWAYS GET THIS POINT!!!!!!!!
IBM HAS NOTICED THAT TECHNOLOGY IS GIVING THE ILLUSION OF CONFLICT IN AN ORGANIZATION, JUST BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE DON’T KNOW HOW TO WRITE EMAILS!!!!
ISN’T THIS ANNOYING?!?!!!
Anyhow, IBM is actually offering consulting based around this, simple hints to teach people simple email etiquette to avoid real problems in human resources.
THAT’S PRETTY SMART!!!!
–Garland
Internet Democracy — Less Big Business, More Big Community
What with China making Google dumb down their search engine so you can’t research human rights, the big question is whether or not the Internet is going to be a significant enabler of democracy. Does the Internet guarantee a free and open society, or is it just another technology to be used for the political purposes of the powerful?
This is a big question, still up in the air, but it’s being dealt with in an extremely cogent manner by Douglas Rushkoff, the media critic, Internet guru, and futurist. He’s written about 10 books on the development of the Internet and what it means — his latest, Get Back in the Box is simply unmissable as a business strategy book on innovation.
In fact, you can see him speak over at http://www.rushkoff.com/poptech.html.
My favorite bit is half way through the end when he starts talking about how the Internet has been about people, and all the businesses have been searching for different rationales why the Internet should be big business.
First, the Internet was big because “content is king” as if we were all waiting for Rupert Murdoch to come put some big, popular shows on it to make it good.
Then we had “e-commerce,” as if the Internet would lead to all other stores shutting down.
That never quite took, so there was investing online, which was a coincidence, since so many companies were Internet companies.
Then, it all fell apart…and the real fun began. According to Ruskoff, the killer app of the Internet is…people.
Yup, just people. Connections, social networks, interaction, FAQs, forums, online communities. It’s the one application for which the Internet is perfectly designed. Note the recent popularity of MySpace, which offers no complex search engine for business intelligence, no investing capability, no slick media content — just hundreds of thousands of people being themselves.
This is a pretty positive development. It seems that people are looking for new ways to relate to each other, to stay connected. Moreover, that kind of personalized networking is more attractive to the younger generations than your current political parties and similar social networks.
One can imagine that a generation of people raised with those values of social connections would change the way the Internet is used as a tool of governance.
Perhaps we have a future of more responsive government?
Hey, I live in Washington. I can dream, can’t I?
Learning to die a good death
Americans have never been terribly comfortable with death. Since our culture promotes individuality and prizes success, we motivated, ambitious Yanks almost view death as a character flaw, something that could have been avoided if we really made the effort. Also, death happens in a place removed from our daily lives. We only go to the hospital a few times in our lives, and that’s where many of us check out. Death remains a mysterious event we’d rather avoid at all costs.
Within the next 15 to 20 years, Americans are going to need to get better at the idea of helping people have good deaths. First, a few trends:
1. The Boomers are about to double the number of senior citizens in America, from 35 million to 70 million. (Grey is the new black.)
2. Experts forecast that healthcare spending may balloon from $2 trillion a year to $4 trillion a year.
3. Most of our spending comes in the last six months of life.
Dying is really expensive, and we are going to be doing a lot of it in just a few short years. To keep from breaking the bank, we will be forced to learn much more about the process of dying, and to optimize it, both financially and spiritually.
The spiritual component is definitely attached to the financial side. As my lovely new bride is an internal medicine doctor, we get to discuss end-of-life issues a lot, since many of her patients die. In her view, a great deal of expense comes when people have seen too much “ER” and say:
“Do everything you can to save Mom — including full codes, peg tubes, long hospital stays, ventilators, drugs, EVERYTHING! If Jesus wanted to take Mom, he would.”
Never mind that Mom is 84 years old with failed kidneys, congestive heart failure, out of control diabetes, and dementia, avoid death at all costs! Instead of peacfully meeting this transition, we engage in combat during the final moments.
What happens is that in the fight to avoid death and stigmatize it, we spare no expense and no suffering of the patient to avoid the inevitable. Often, the end is dragged out for weeks with no potential for meaningful recovery. This person will never play tennis or recognize her grandkids or enjoy a sunset. But in our fear, we cause greater suffering and spend thousands of public dollars.
So new policies will be needed to meet these challenges. Some will be controversial. Take for example, this piece in the Boston Globe about the use of psychedelic drugs to ease the suffering of death. It seems there is a resurgence in the use of Ecstasy (MDMA) to help cancer patients achieve peace during their final moments. Despite the stigma of the illegality of the drugs, some families find this the only option that brought solace to their loved ones.
Of course, with an administration that opposes giving marijuana to cancer patients for fear that kids will take away the wrong message, don’t expect this kind of solution to be accepted without discussion.
I suppose that once the kids see end-stage cancer patients doing marijuana, all the kids will want to go get Stage III gastric cancer — you know teens, all following the fads. “Mom, Jimmy got lymphoma, can I?”
Seriously, if we continue our policy of drawing out deaths with no concern for cost, it’s a good bet that we will need to reexamine a number of policies to make sure they fit with our financial and social realities. And maybe Ecstasy tabs for the dying may seem like a much more humane future.
–Garland
What happened to the last month?
So I look up, and huge chunks of April and May simply disappeared while I wasn’t looking. And as a few of my readers chimed in, “Hey, Future Man, what gives?”
A fair question. One cogent answer is that I just got married in April, and the following weeks were devoted to trading in Crate & Barrel gift cards for housewares I don’t even know how to use. A deviled egg plate? At least it’s China.
Ah, but marriage isn’t the only reason this blog has been barren. My plume has been used for many other significant projects. First, it is important to note that my publisher, AMACOM Books, has given my forthcoming publication a new name and a nice cover.
Meet Future Inc: How Businesses Can Anticipate and Profit from What’s NEXT.
Right now, it looks like it will be in stores around November 2006 — coming right up, and the perfect gift for Christmas.
Anyhow, the point is I’m back in the saddle, and quite a few things are catching my attention.
More soon.
-Garland
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