For Trendies, a Forecast Long on Fads

DENVER —  “Smart toilets” and car radar will usher in the high-tech advances coming in the 1990s, while bad service, loud rock music and Mexican beer will become passe, says “The American Forecaster 1990.”

Other trends on the rise for 1990 are New Age radio, portraits commissioned for ego gratification and “wet” beer to serve on the rocks, says Kim Long, author of the yearly book.

White will be the fashionable color in clothing for women, who will favor shorter hair, he says. Men will grow their hair longer and wear wider ties, the Forecaster predicts.

“In the 1990s we will see phenomenal advances. A popular phrase some futurists are using is that life has the potential to move forward very rapidly because 80% of all the scientists and engineers who have ever lived are alive today,” said Long.

“The corollary to that is that 80% of all the artists, crackpots and loonies who have ever lived are alive today. We will see some intriguing things happen in the 1990s,” he said, including a wave of bizarre prognostications as the year 2000 approaches.

Long, 40, is a Denver free-lance author who began writing the Forecaster in 1983 and claims an 80% accuracy rate. He wrongly predicted a Michael S. Dukakis presidency and the demise of television’s “Dallas” and “Dynasty,” but he estimated half his material reflects inevitable consumer trends.

For example, a few years ago, he forecast that Cabbage Patch doll sales would drop by half. “They dropped off by more than half. It wasn’t guesswork. The information came from the toy industry, which says that all fad toys that sell that well that quickly are temporary phenomena.”

“Smart toilets” are made by a Japanese company to measure recent hospital outpatients’ blood pressure, pulse, urine, temperature and body weight. Results are displayed on a built-in monitor. Long predicts that gadget lovers will pay the $3,000 to have a conversation piece.

Long said car radar systems will gauge other vehicles’ speeds and may incorporate automatic braking. Some experts believe if all vehicles had the devices, highways could be safely packed with vehicles moving at high speeds.

New Age radio took off so quickly it’s a major trend, he said.

“It’s going to be a permanent form of programming,” he said. “It’s been called musical wallpaper, at its most disparaging. It’s somewhere between jazz and soft rock, and it has the potential to not offend a fairly wide proportion of the population.”

Meanwhile, affluent executives are commissioning sculptures and portraits of themselves and their families, a trend Long calls “ego-art.”

A low-budget version, the video booth, is cropping up in shopping centers and shouldering aside the booths where people used to have wallet-size snapshots taken.

“They shoot a 5- or 10-minute videotape,” said Long. “You can speak, sing, or quote poetry. It’s the concept of immortalizing yourself.”

A major trend that will carry through the 1990s is a campaign by retailers to stamp out bad service.

“Surveys, polls and extensive studies have shown that this is the top priority,” Long said. “We have become line-sensitive. Queuing up is a foreign disease that we don’t want to catch.”

Ear plugs are being offered to customers at pop music clubs and rock concerts because of concern about hearing loss, according to “The American Forecaster.” He notes that at the same time, over-amped car sound systems are booming.

Among drinkers, the Mexican beer fad will be on the way out, he predicted. Liquor with lower alcohol levels and “wet” beer, a brew served on the rocks, will debut in 1990, while low-alcohol beer will continue to founder, Long said.

Long’s book, which sells fewer than 10,000 copies despite all the interest it stirs up, may be in for some high-tech changes itself. In the works is a possible video version with computer animation, and Long is exploring use of a computer database and facsimile machine to dispense his prognostications.