It was 1982. Ronald Reagan was in the White House. Bill Clinton was elected governor of Arkansas for the second time, after losing his first re-election bid to Frank White two years before. (Arkansas’ gubernatorial terms back then were two years, not four.)

The economic, societal, international, and technological transitions that would take place in the 1980s were captured by Time magazine when it named not the traditional “Person of the Year,” but “Machine of the Year”: the computer.

There were mounting Cold War tensions as President Reagan began a military buildup and pursued a missile defense shield called the Strategic Defense Initiative. It was futuristic. “Star Wars,” critics called it. But the future was not necessarily on the minds of younger Americans. The decade of the 1980s embodied Yuppies, the MTV and Me Generations, and a self-centered focus supported by Reaganomic tax cuts and institutional deregulation.

A wildly popular, ubiquitously quoted best-seller was published in 1982: John Naisbitt’s” Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives.” And in 1983, Mack McLarty, who, 10 years hence would become chief of staff to the 42nd president of the United States, was president of the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce.

At that year’s Chamber of Commerce annual meeting, McLarty invited Naisbitt to be the keynote speaker. Naisbitt accepted; the meeting enjoyed the largest crowd ever to attend.

The megatrends Naisbitt identified 44 years ago and on which he provided ample evidence: from industrial society to information society; from forced technology to high tech/high touch; from national economy to world economy; from short term to long term; from centralization to decentralization; from institutional help to self-help; from hierarchy to networking; from north to south; from either/or to multiple option; and from representative democracy to participatory democracy.

In the years following, Naisbitt got most of them right, although we may have backslid as of late. Or advanced. You choose.

Today, it’s hard to identify “trends” or general directions. Changes occur in a matter of months. Or less. Much less. Shifts in perception may seem to occur inside days. The daily consumption of “breaking news” in 24-hour news narratives, and pervasive on-the-screen influencing, challenges hitherto-prevailing thought,........

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