At the last concluded World Future Society conference, the future of some of these life stories was talked about by different futurists. One of the more interesting ones was about the future of celebrations. Trivial right? You may want to think so. But the truth about how future work comes to life is by making comparisons about the past and present events and then use these facts and surprises to talk about what lies ahead. Important to note is that most of the time what you get is the picture, but hardly any details. Those come of life as life goes on. But imagine we all took into account what the futurists say about the future, we would plan better and plan more accordingly instead of stumbling into life just like that.

So think about celebrations about 17 years from now celebration is the act of making one’s pleasure at an important occasion by engaging in, typical social behavior. Celebration culture surpasses all generational boundaries. We love to party. We look forward to birthdays and milestones for some there are always a reason to be happy and merry. If there aren’t, we create one. But from house—warming to celebrating our cats’ birthdays and sometimes simple life joys such as promotions, we find ourselves looking forward to being merry. It is all about timing. ‘Time dictates the pattern of our lives – when we work, when we eat, when we celebrate’- Claudia Hammond, TimeWarped.

Celebrations are however changing. The best celebrations today have these key elements: novelty, status, specialness and share ability. By the year 2030, celebrations will transcend our life stages according to Emily Empel. They will also be tools to change our world of influence. Today as we live, there is a lot of ‘feeling together’ even when we are alone. For example I can comfortably stay at home alone all day, but go to class, attend an elitist conversation and also remotely follow through the proceedings of a conference. Why? Because I am online and belong to many of these virtual communities. Technology will be a huge part of celebrations more than it is today:

In the future: celebrations will recharge our humanness. We will look to them to find ourselves and our sense of belonging. Celebrations will still have our key elements of novelty, status, specialness and share-ability. However they will enable shareable moments that change how one’s guests feel, empowering their influence within networks. Emily Empel also highlights what she thinks will be the events that we will celebrate: Mood festivals, Single Mingle week, rent warnings, brain jams, and life games. Think critically, and you will realize that signs of some of these gatherings are already happening. That means that in years to come: they will be the new normal. For example, who 15 years ago would have though that it would be okay to hold silent discos? I mean by then people doing that will somewhat be looked at as retarded. Today, it is an okay occurence.

Bits and pieces of this may not make sense now, but will do so in the future. But I must say these are very interesting conversations and turn of events that we need to look out for.

As Dean Kamen says: ‘We are what we celebrate’.

Ruth Aine Tindyebwa
Blogger/Online Communications

Read her personal blog; IN DEPTH which is at www.ruthaine.com

Read more about the author and her view on being a futurist.