02/21/2007 11:35:00 PM 
So we thought we would repost, since it's now more relevant.
As the recent new product launches at last week's CES show illustrate, technology is becoming smaller and more miniaturized at an ever-faster pace. We are getting more comfortable with personal objects like phones, cameras and personal music devices that are smaller and slimmer.
This is having a rub off effect on the other things in our lives that we use everyday. For example, newspapers and magazines; for the past year Conde Nast in Europe has been experimenting with small versions of its popular titles like GQ and Glamour and just last week one of the leading British Sunday newspapers, The Observer, announced a new smaller,more colorful format to go with its sister publication, The Guardian, that's already in compact format.
The more comfortable we become with smaller things, the larger the bigger things in our lives seem to look. We start to question is we really need to be consuming so much for the same thing. Bigger things are starting to project negative imagery that relates to irresponsible and selfish behavior. One example is with declining SUV sales resulting in some of the more progressive automakers ready to step in and seize the opportunity this creates with the launch of new smaller cars.
Although there has been much talk about the continued rise of McMansion style housing, the leading edge are getting interested in micro housing. Employers, worried about escalating health costs are going to demand that some of their employees slim down in size. Helping people manage their food and drink consumption will be the introduction of more single-serve portion controlled items.
Obsession with bigness is built into America's DNA, it seems a right that many in the country feel that they have earned. America's leading edge is realigning around smarter and smaller, it's just a matter of time before this ripple goes tidal. One big driver of this is that in many areas the space, that many of us took for granted, is shrinking as the US population booms.
Business is also embracing the idea of the small vs. the large and the corporate, with small autonomous teams achieving considerable successes. When you look at media in 2006, it's easy to believe that content along the Long Tail will create the biggest challenge to the giant incumbents. The year could also see a fair number of businesses being broken up into smaller parts as Wall St raiders swoop in.
With Rod Dreher's book, "Crunchy Cons" challenging the "bigger is better" perception of right wingers, due out next month, it could even start to impact the political scene and the agenda for the next election.
Economist EF Schumacher saw this coming in 1973, when he published his landmark book "Small is Beautiful" and wrote "Ever bigger machines, entailing ever bigger concentrations of economic power and exerting ever greater violence against the environment, do not represent progress: they are a denial of wisdom. Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful.".
It looks like 2006 ,OK 2007, will be the year when we see some of Schumacher's ideas finally take hold.
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