Looking into the crystal ball
BENGALURU: When the world hunkered down to fight the coronavirus in April, Dr Sandeep Goyal turned to a blank screen. Over the next 100 days, the media and advertising veteran had a manuscript ready. Future Shock is his seventh publication, and it looks at the post-Covid trends that we can expect in various sectors, such as food, travel and tourism, education, health and wellness, jobs and careers, leisure and entertainment, advertising, relationships, etc. Edited excerpts from an interview:
Tell us about Future Shock.
This is a book on future gazing. It’s a book that looks at tomorrow, by simply asking ‘what next?’. It looks at emerging trends, analyses them, and uses the inferences to point the reader in the direction of change, with some suggestions on how quickly that change may arrive and how it may change the goal posts as they exist in the current context.
What prompted you to write this book?
Somewhere in late April, when the lockdown was at its absolute, I was having a chat with the editor of a pink paper. Inevitably, the discussion veered around to what the future had in store, and how were we equipped to predict where mankind was headed. I began writing a newspaper series on what was likely to happen across major domains. By the time the first six essays were done, I was half way to completing a book. My publisher asked me to continue writing. A few weeks later, I mailed the first draft to the publishers.
How long did research take?
I started work on it in April-end. I would write one essay of about 5,000 words every week. As much as 70 per cent of the week would go in reading and researching. The balance 30 per cent of the time was used to write the essay.
The book covers several sectors. Which were the most interesting to research?
All domains were equally interesting, engaging and challenging. While I had some general understanding of most subjects, I was not a domain expert in any of them. While it makes your task as a writer more difficult when you do not have mastery over a given subject, it is also an advantage in some ways. It ensures that you do not have pre-conceived notions or inbuilt biases of what you are writing. Also writing about a world that is in the midst of never-before turmoil and tumult is not easy. Too many things are changing at too fast a pace for you to catch a proper glimpse. You have to make do with piecing together many fleeting images.
Which top three future trends did you find interesting?
The emergence of home chefs is an interesting development. It has kind of reset the kitchen button. Working from home and staying at home has woken up many a potential chefs. This will have interesting implications. The e-classroom is a mixed blessing. While the classroom has gone digital, many students do not have access to devices and data. Some don’t even have power. So, digitalisation instead of inclusivity has led to a bigger divide. Religion has been the worst hit. No God has offered solutions that mankind needs. Prayers seem to have gone abegging.
What are the silver linings you see from the pandemic?
The pandemic has fast forwarded the digitalisation of most domains. The world has leaped by at least a decade in adoption of many e-solutions. Also, lack of alternatives ensured adoption without too much opposition or fault finding.
Did writing this book help you deal better with the lockdown and stress caused by the pandemic in any way?
Yes and no. Yes, because I was so engrossed in writing the book that I had very little time to worry about anything else. No, because the more reading I would do, the more I was forced to think about issues that I needn’t have known. And that is not easy.