The boom and bust cycle of hopes and inflated expectations has been repeated frequently since the Second World War when industrialization gave it momentum and the impact of televised mass media took hold. Waves of technology-charged consumerism drove the economy to new heights until the 1990s techno-bubble burst and the Y2K balloon broke. But that didn’t stop the geniuses of the U.S. stock market from contriving ways to blow up what was left of the economy by creating another wave of false expectations around the housing market. Now we have another media-driven phenom in the making in the person of Barack Obama. How long can any mortal withstand the pressure he will be under?

Prophets of Boom

The usual cast of malingerers, psychics, mystics and star-gazers who have adhered to the prophetic tradition in any age were in ample evidence throughout the 20th Century. Cultists, levitators and prestidigitators of every religious and sectarian stripe pronounced their particular revelations to anyone who would listen and then quickly passed the hat before their zeal could backfire on them.
The future was one of the most prevalent themes in mass communications during the last half of the 20th Century. Entire bodies of literature, journalism, art, design and commercial promotion have shared prophetic themes. Marketers accentuated the obvious appeal of the future in order to merchandise everything from family sedans to household fans. Advertisers aroused and exploited the fevered postwar rush for consumer goods. Prophecy earned a new respectability from the postwar transformation of North American values. In this new universe, achievement took second place to embellishment. It became immensely more rewarding to trumpet the virtues of products, many not yet even invented, than to toil on the shop and factory floors. And the real price of all the hyperbole is just beginning to dawn on us.