Future Shock

What the economists, however, have not done, is to ask the obvious question. Where does the economy go next? After the services, what?

The high technology nations must, in coming years, direct vast resources to rehabilitating their physical environment and improving what has come to be called "the quality of life." The fight against pollution, aesthetic blight, crowding, noise and dirt will clearly absorb tremendous energies. But, in addition to the provision of these public goods, we can also anticipate a subtle change in the character of production for private use.

The very excitement aroused by the mushrooming growth of the service sector has diverted professional attention from another shift that will deeply affect both goods and services in the future. It is this shift that will lead to the next forward movement of the economy, the growth of a strange new sector based on what can only be called the "experience industries." For the key to the post-service economy lies in the psychologization of all production, begi

One of the curious facts about production in all the techno-societies today, and especially the United States, is that goods are increasingly designed to yield psychological "extras" for the consumer. The manufacturer adds a "psychic load" to his basic product, and the consumer gladly pays for this intangible benefit.

A classic example is the case of the appliance or auto manufacturer who adds buttons, knobs or dials to the control panel or dashboard, even when these have seemingly no significance. The manufacturer has learned that increasing the number of gadgets, up to a point, gives the operator of the machine the sense of controlling a more complex device, and hence a feeling of increased mastery. This psychological payoff is designed into the product.

Conversely, pains are taken not to deprive the consumer of an existing psychological benefit. Thus a large American food company proudly launched a labor-saving, add-wateronly cake mix. The company was amazed when women rejected the product in favor of mixes that require extra labor – the addition of an egg along with the water. By inserting powdered egg in the factory, the company had oversimplified the task of the housewife, depriving her of the sense of creatively participating in the cake-baking process. The powdered egg was hastily eliminated, and women went happily back to cracking their own eggs. Once again a product was modified to provide a psychic benefit.

Examples like these can be multiplied endlessly in almost any major industry, from soap and cigarettes to dishwashers and diet colas. According to Dr. Emanuel Demby, president of Motivational Programmers, Incorporated, a research firm employed in the United States and Europe by such blue-chip corporations as General Electric, Caltex and IBM, "The engineering of psychological factors into manufactured goods will be a hallmark of production in the future – not only in consumer goods, but in industrial hardware.

"Even the big cranes and derricks built today embody this principle. Their cabs are streamlined, slick, like something out of the twenty-first century. Caterpillar, International Harvester, Ferguson – all of them. Why? These mechanical monsters don't dig better or hoist better because the cab is aesthetically improved. But the contractor who buys them likes it better. The men who work on them like it better. The contractor's customers like it better. So even the manufacturers of earthmoving equipment begin to pay attention to non-utilitarian – i.e., psychological – factors."

Beyond this, Demby asserts, manufacturers are devoting more attention to reducing tensions that accompany the use of certain products. Manufacturers of sanitary napkins, for example, know that women have a fear of stopping up the toilet when disposing of them. "A new product has been developed," he says, "that instantly dissolves on contact with water. It doesn't perform its basic function any better. But it relieves some of the anxiety that went with it. This is psychological engineering if ever there was any!"

Affluent consumers are willing and able to pay for such niceties. As disposable income rises, they become progressively less concerned with price, progressively more insistent on what they call "quality." For many products quality can still be measured in the traditional terms of workmanship, durability and materials. But for a fast-growing class of products, such differences are virtually undetectable. Blindfolded, the consumer ca

This paradox vanishes once the psychic component of production is taken into account. For even when they are otherwise identical, there are likely to be marked psychological differences between one product and another. Advertisers strive to stamp each product with its own distinct image. These images are functional: they fill a need on the part of the consumer. The need is psychological, however, rather than utilitarian in the ordinary sense. Thus we find that the term "quality" increasingly refers to the ambience, the status associations – in effect, the psychological co

As more and more of the basic material needs of the consumer are met, it is strongly predictable that even more economic energy will be directed at meeting the consumer's subtle, varied and quite personal needs for beauty, prestige, individuation, and sensory delight. The manufacturing sector will cha

This, however, is only the first step toward the psychologization of the economy. The next step will be the expansion of the psychic component of the services.

Here, again, we are already moving in the predictable direction, as a glance at air travel demonstrates. Once flying was simply a matter of getting from here to there. Before long, the airlines began to compete on the basis of pretty stewardesses, food, luxurious surroundings, and in-flight movies. Trans-World Airlines recently carried this process one step further by offering what it called "foreign accent" flights between major American cities.

The TWA passenger may now choose a jet on which the food, the music, the magazines, the movies, and the stewardess' miniskirt are all French. He may choose a "Roman" flight on which the girls wear togas. He may opt for a "Manhattan Penthouse" flight. Or he may select the "Olde English" flight on which the girls are called "serving wenches" and the decor supposedly suggests that of an English pub.

It is clear that TWA is no longer selling transportation, as such, but a carefully designed psychological package as well. We can expect the airlines before long to make use of lights and multi-media projections to create total, but temporary, environments providing the passenger with something approaching a theatrical experience.

The experience may, in fact, soon go beyond theater. British Overseas Airways Corporation recently pointed a wavering finger at the future when it a