This morning on National Public Radio, Marketplace, Gerald Celente, director of the Trends Research Institute, and a trend expert, forecast that people will join their voices to form Techno Tribes that will change the way that the world is run. In his clip he said:
“Positive, negative, good or bad, more people are going to unite their voices over the Internet in forming these techno tribes in ways we've never seen before.”
Celente, who is a leading expert about trends, says that blogs and other social media will be transcended and will lead to the formation of Techno Tribalism. He describes it on his web site as follows:
“The tribes of the world are uniting. Tied together by the arteries of the information superhighway, citizens of common dreams and common causes are forming human bonds that transcend national borders, religious beliefs and political ideologies. Still in its youth and growing with unbound vitality, the exploding Internet is unleashing powers to the people that will change the way the world is run … and who will run it.
“Bigger than blogs and more influential than the social networks, TechnoTribes will rally masses with calls for action when rights are violated, lives threatened and/or change is needed. Distrusting of politicians and critical of their leadership skills, the egalitarian tribes will unite those who share civic interests, follow moral codes and believe in universal truths.”
My take is that his explanation sounds a bit too much like the free love of the 1960s to me. While his forecast has the grain of truth in it, it seems to me to be a little bit over-the-top in its analysis.
I think the important thing that Celente misses is that people come together out of their own self-interest and out of what they can gain from participating in certain networks. Through this initial self-interest, bonds are often formed between members of a network, and at that time the group may indeed start to operate from a common self interest.
Does this have the effect of changing the agenda for the social and political power brokers? I think it has been demonstrated that it does, but I believe it is much more subtle than Celente suggests, Techno Tribes taking over the world.
However, from a public relations perspective, he does a pretty good job of selling himself as an expert in the field of trend forecasting, even providing a list of forecasts he has made that have come to pass. He has appeared on Oprah and many other television and radio programs.
As for me, I predict that Celente will appear on many more shows come November/December next year. You can bank on it.
What do you think about Celente’s view of Techno Tribalism? War paint anyone?
