The Hindu Business Line : You don’t have to follow the herd to be heard

The most powerful forces in our society are the emerging, counterintuitive trends that are shaping tomorrow right before us, says Mark J. Penn in Microtrends: The small forces behind today’s big changes ( www.penguin.com). “There are no longer a couple of megaforces sweeping us all along,” he declares. Instead, we are all being pulled apart by “an intricate maze of choices, accumulating in R 16;microtrends’ — small, under-the-radar forces that can involve as little as 1 per cent of the population, but which are powerfully shaping our society.”

The art of trend-spotting, as Penn explains, is to find groups that are pursuing common activities and desires, and that have either started to come together or can be brought together by the right appeal that crystallises their needs. “The world may be getting flatter, in terms of globalisation, but it is occupied by 6 billion little bumps who do not have to follow the herd to be heard.”

No matter how offbeat their choices, they can now find through the Net 1 lakh people or more who share their interests. “By the time a trend hits 1 per cent, it is ready to spawn a hit movie, best-selling book, or new political movement… In today’s mass societies, it takes only 1 per cent of people making a dedicated choice — contrary to the mainstream’s choice – to create a movement that can change the world.”

Useful insight, that should be, for politicians closer home, coming as it does from a former adviser to Bill Clinton. “The Internet has made it so easy to link people together. In the past, it was almost impossible to market to small groups who were spread around the country. Now it’s a virtual piece of cake to find 1 million people who want to try your grapefruit diet, or who can’t get their kids to sleep at night.”

Ever wondered why niches have become important? More people have more disposable resources (including money, time and energy) than ever before, the author reasons. “They are deploying them in pursuit of personal satisfaction like never before. And as a result, we’re getting a clearer picture of who people are and what they want.”

This, Penn calls, the triumph of the Starbucks economy of ‘choice’ over the Ford economy of ‘mass consumerism’ in which ‘thousands of workers turned out one black car, millions and millions of times’. With freedom of choice comes individuality, not only with the right combination of caffeine and sweetener, but also with just everything. “The more choices people have, the more they segregate themselves into smaller niches in society.” One of the 75 groups that the book discusses is ‘Internet marrieds’. Penn sees Internet marriage as a possible wave of the future. “In a world that increasingly emphasises self-determination, leaving your soul mate search up to singles bars, office romances, and friends of friends seems not only rather passive, but downright negligent,” he admonishes.

“There are 6 billion people in the world, and only a relative handful in your daily orbit. If you really want love, step it up. Do some targeted research, and make that Cupid’s Arrow a surgical strike.”

How far are Internet-based relationships deep and true? Won’t people found online go back online? Penn dispels common scepticisms with poll results that found the match to be ‘on a very strong footing’.

Like ‘office romancers’, the Internet marrieds too need a community of their own to share experiences, the author pleads. His survey found that “while only 37 per cent of Internet marrieds say they know at least several couples who met online, 82 per cent say they would like to.”

A book you shouldn’t miss spotting!

Engine-roars like ring-tones on mobile phones

At the Playboy Mansion, what kept Scott Painter and Elon Musk busy one midnight was a discussion on how to save the planet by overthrowing Detroit.

With this setting opens a chapter titled ‘the juice and the jalopy,’ in Zoom: The global race to fuel the car of the future by Iain Carson and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran ( www.landmarkonthenet.com). “The same anarchic, amazing forces that brought us the Internet and telecom revolutions are now racing to develop the clean fuels and smart cars of tomorrow,” the authors announce.

Painter, for instance, has been applying his new business models to the stodgy, centralised, and hugely inefficient car industry. “Through his start-up firms Builit-To-Order, CarsDirect, and Zag, he tried to bring the inefficiencies and transparency made possible by modern information systems and the Internet to the manufacturing, distribution, and sales of new cars.”

Musk, as you may know, made news by selling PayPal, an online payment system, to eBay for a fortune; “he is now the head of Space X, a start-up that is challenging the satellite launch oligopoly by offering private space launches.”

Painter argued that the barriers to entry in cars are so low that an upstart would need just a few hundred million dollars. And Musk could see ‘a fundamental technology discontinuity — a shift from the century-old internal-combustion engine to electric drive.’ Musk runs Tesla Motors, an electric car manufacturer based in California, “with money from Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the cofounders of Google.”

Tesla Roadster, ‘a smoking-hot, two-seat sports car,’ costs just under $1,00,000, and makes daring claims. “The first is that the vehicle accelerates from 0 to 60 miles per hour in just 4 seconds. That is faster than a Ferrari. The second is that it can travel 250 miles on an overnight charge from a household 240-volt socket.” This is made possible, as the authors explain, “by the use of advanced lithium-ion batteries and lightweight carbon-fibre bodywork.”

Fuel efficiency is 135 miles per gallon of gasoline. When ‘some of the gear-heads and racing purists complained that the silence of the electric motor was alien’ and that ‘they missed the grunt and growl of an internal-combustion engine,’ a Tesla engineer came up with an idea: “We’ll program the software to have a variety of engine roars, just like ring tones on mobile phones.”

On the one side, say the authors, the ‘juice’ is changing — from the traditional oil to alternative ways to energise the vehicle. And on the other, the ‘jalopy’ too is radically transforming — “from a grease-and-grime, stamped-steel approach to one that relies much more on silicon chips, lightweight carbon fibre, smart technologies, and software, turning the car into the ultimate electronic accessory.”

Thirty years ago, electronics accounted for only about $110 of the cost of the materials in a car, around 5 per cent, write Carson and Vaitheeswaran. “Today, at $1,400 to $1,800, various electronic devices comprise up to 20 per cent of the materials cost. Industry experts reckon that 80 to 90 per cent of innovations in automobiles nowadays relate to electronics, something that Mercedes learned bitterly a few years ago when its new E-Class models were dogged by breakdowns and recalls because of electronics faults.”

The authors credit ‘electronic engine controls’ for ‘the big gains in gas mileage that have come along in the past 20 years’. The traditional carburettor is little more than a bucket for pouring gas into each cylinder, they describe. “Today’s finely calibrated injection systems are like space rockets compared with the Wright brothers’ early flying machines.”

An interesting story in ‘Zoom’ is about Greg Hanssen, who runs his Toyota Prius with a licence plate that says ‘100 MPG’. What is his secret?

“He hacked into a standard Prius’s software, fitted it with a bigger, more robust battery, and ended up with a vehicle that could be used for most driving purely on battery power.”

The battery he uses is a superior one – ‘the lithium-ion technology found in laptops’. Also, he hacked the software “to prevent the gasoline engine from kicking in until the car is travelling at high speed.”

Racy read that is worth zooming in on.

Tailpiece

“Our telecom revenues began falling when people found a way to communicate…”

“Through missed calls?”

“Yes, and also through telepathy!”

dmurali@thehindu.co.in