Meet the DINKWADs: The Family Trend Changing Everything! Dion Chang on future trends...

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This week on Good Things with Brent Lindeque, I sat down with one of South Africa’s best-known futurists and trend analysts, Dion Chang.

I thought we were going to spend the whole conversation talking about business, technology and artificial intelligence (AI).

And we did talk about all of that... but so much more!

Dion has built an incredible career spotting the signals that tell us where society is heading. He started out in fashion and media before founding Flux Trends in 2006, and today he describes himself as a “professional cage rattler”, helping businesses understand the cultural, economic and technological shifts happening around them.

But we also spoke about pups.

Dion has been tracking the rise of the DINKWADs (Dual Income, No Kids, With A Dog). It describes couples who are choosing pets over children, but it also points to something much bigger: the changing definition of family and the increasingly important place our animals hold in our lives.

Dion is also trained as an end-of-life companion doula and has done work around pet bereavement, so we spoke about how losing a beloved pup can genuinely be one of the hardest losses a person experiences.

So yes, we spoke about what the future might look like, but one of the loveliest trends Dion is watching has nothing to do with technology at all.. it has four paws, probably sleeps on your bed and is already very much part of the family.

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2 Sep English South Africa Society & Culture · Daily News

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