It's that time of the year when the incessant listing of the best things about Year x turns to predicting what Year x+1 will look like. In the search for what 2008 holds in store for "society at large," the new issue of WWD Beauty Biz turned to a handful of "forward thinkers," including Faith Popcorn, Paco Underhill, and Karim Rashid. We skimmed Popcorn's yin/yang-themed ramblings ("...2008 will continue to usher in an accent of yang. Though not in balance yet, the tiny ray of light in the darkness we are calling 'yin(g)'") to focus on what Rashid sees in his brightly-colored crystal ball. He's betting on the world's increased "casualization":

The world around us seems to be getting perpetually softer, more amorphous and more experiential, more tactile, more sensual. Our objects are softer, more human, and more engaging....Soft is metaphor for our forever-changing ever-vast organic system. This casualization of shape, form, material, and behavior is now a movement that elevates the physical world to be as engaging as the digital world.

We'll take tactile and sensual over an encroaching yang accent any day.