Tab Article

Ratings: ★★★☆☆ (3.8/5)
Genre: Non-Fiction, Social Science, Economics, Futurism, Business Trends, Current Affairs

Book Review:
''Megatrends 2000'' is a fascinating cultural artifact from the cusp of the 1990s, where authors John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene, famed for their earlier bestseller ''Megatrends,'' attempt to forecast the decade that would lead humanity to the millennium. The book identifies ten powerful ''megatrends,'' such as the rise of the Pacific Rim, the privatization of the welfare state, and a golden age for the arts, which they believed would define the 1990s. Reading it today offers a unique blend of prescient hits (the emphasis on globalization, biotechnology, and the information economy) and notable misses (the optimism about ''free-market socialism'' and the scale of certain trends). Its value now is less in its predictive accuracy and more as a lens into the late-80s/early-90s mindset—the optimism, anxieties, and technological hopes of that era. For students of business history, media studies, or futurism, it's an essential primary source. For general readers, it's a compelling exercise in seeing how we thought about the future... before it became our past.