If more and more news articles commingle the present and future tenses, it is only because more and more the pressure tense is where the consumer is living. That may seem presumptuous, but business pages have every reason for taking this approach. Virtually every stock has embedded in its present price the estimated value of a company s earnings for a year, or even much longer, into the future. While investors care about a company s present situation, the long-term future is often much more important in determining a stock price. Stocks live in the pressure tense as much as people do.
Industry also lives in the pressure tense.
In effect, anticipatory feedback takes the lessons of the past, projects them into the future, and asks people to act on them in the present. Twenty years ago, the approach might have been a good concept for a science fiction movie or a television series. Products live in the pressure tense. Your Oldsmobile Delta 88 broke down after 90,000 miles because that s when cars of that generation broke down. Your car s style broke down after 50,000 miles because General Motors made significant changes in the model s look every three years, to try to force you back to the showroom before the car wore out physically after five years.