Watch out for the Michelin man!!!!
William Gibson's last novel Pattern Recognition was about a "coolchaser", a woman whose career was based on her instinctive ability to know what was going to be hip - (just as long as she didn't run across the image of her dreaded enemy, Bibucon the Michelin Man). Turns out that as usual Gibson was reporting from 10 minutes into the future. Apparently scientists can use MRIs to determine what's cool and who catches on to it first. Jennifer Kahn reports the whole story in the current issue of Wired.