Future Shock

Bought this book after it was recommended to me by a sustainability professor at my university. It is incredible to see the parallels from the 70s to now and apply what Toffler was observing to a more modern scene. More people should read this book.

i suppose it was insightful back in the day, however all the example evidence is still interesting enough

This is a masterful early study of the consequences of fast change in social life. It is a rare feat -- an original synthesis of what the future holds in stock. Thirty-five years on, few of Toffler's arguments are outdated, though many of his best policy proposals have been ignored. Pieter Vanhuysse, PhD (LSE), University of Haifa

This book was first published in 1970 and was a call to take heed of the looming "Future Shock" or backlash of humanities biggest, unresolved dilemmas such as: the widening disparity between rich and poor, ie, the wealth of the world being monopolized by smaller and smaller percentage of the world human population, while the growing number of poor or outright poverty stricken are growing by leaps and bounds; burgeoning human population pressures with it's ever-increasing demands on limited resources; pollution of the food chains; technology with it's blessings and baggage of intrusive, dehumanizing side-effects; world health crisis, etc. While humanity is currently preferring to live in a state of denial about the impending backlash of the mostly human-caused problems facing our present and immediate future, there is a growing accumulation of data never historically available to us before on how to deal with our problems. Will we put this knowledge to use in time? So what exactly is "Future Shock"? Toffler explains: "We may define future shock as the distress, both physical and psychological, that arises from an overload of the human organism's physical adaptive systems and it's decision-making processes. Put more simply, future shock is the human response to over-stimulation". Overload= breakdown! The socio-political, economic and environmental bills are coming due and they WILL be paid, shocking or not! Toffler sees that our time consuming, stressed-out, hyper-industrial, compulsive consuming society is leaving parents no time for proper child rearing- as if they were qualified for the task in the first place. Un-guided, un-taught, un-disciplined children set themselves and society up for another of the many aspects of future shock with their aberrant behavior expanding as they get older. "We don't let just anyone perform brain surgery or for that matter, sell stocks and bonds. Even the lowest ranking civil servant is required to pass tests proving competence. Yet we allow virtually anyone, almost without regard for mental or moral qualifications to try his or her hand at raising young human beings, so long as these humans are biological off-spring. Despite the increasing complexity of the task, parenthood remains the *greatest single preserve of the amateur*." Toffler suggests that society should "professionalize" child rearing and parents should be educated by mandate of society. That along with every other level of society for a literate, more successful society. Guidelines for instituting "appropriate technology" vs. irresponsible, runaway technology are covered. "Utopian" models for society should always be considered as guidelines for future adjustments and upgrades to consider- and think-tanks for that very purpose should be established. This along with "sanctuaries for social imagination"- sounds like ancient Greece, eh? Ten years after this book was published, Marilyn Ferguson came out with her block-buster book, "The Aquarian C

Toffler saw something important. He in 1970 saw that the accelerated pace of technological development would have a profound effect on the daily life of individuals. He understood that the disjunction between the technological changes and the human adaptation to them would be the source of major problems. He understand that a new era of customization was bringing a variety to human choice, a kind of freedom which might in another sense take away freedom. He saw too the importance of ' information' and how it would be at the heart of transforming the world economy. Toffler went on to write a number of other works about ' social change in the future' but this is by far the most interesting and profound one. 'Future Shock' is now a part of mankind's vocabulary and a continual element in our everyday life - experience. Who knows what will come next and how wonderful or terrible it will be for us all?

The world has changed in many of the ways predicted by Toffler.We are now in the throes of the super-industrial societyhe spoke of in the early 1970s. For instance, computing powerhas grown exponentially. There is a computer on every workdesk in most corporate offices. Children work with computersat school. A growing number of people work at home. Electronicshas permeated virtually every part of society from home calculators/computers to electronic panels in automobiles to super-stereo systems and advanced training systems in industryand academe. Even childrens' games reflect the growingsophistication of the super-industrialized world economy.The internet has become the central repository of data.Very few of these changes were imaginable from the perspectiveof the early 1970s. The super industrial society will progresstechnologically. Our challenge will require translatingthe industrial progress into the creation of incrementalwealth for every segment of the society. Job re-design andorganizational dynamics have displaced workers and forcedre-training on the continued basis predicted by Toffler.In fact, a central thesis of his book involved the fast rateof change and its displacement of technical matter taught in primary school, high school and college. The super-industrializedsociety will progress very much the way Toffler envisioned.Our challenge will be to manage the change and utilize it toimprove the quality of our lives in every aspect previouslyunattainable.

It is a pleasant surprise to see that this book has been reissued as a hardcover. In the thrity years since its original publication, the basic truths and awesome prognositications have largely come to pass. Of course, in the process Mr. Toffler has become something of a cottage industry himself, since publishing several sequels (The Third Wave, Power Shift, etc.). Yet nothing surpasses the sheer magnitude of the argument forwarded here. Toffler marshalls a virtual mountain of evidence illustrating his claim of a rising flood of techniological, social, and economic change, largely emanating from the increasing influence of science and technology into every area of contemporary life. Toffler's main concern is with the recognition that while a human being's capacity to adjust physically, psychologically, and socially to this torrent of change is finite and quite limited, the pace of change is increasing and expanding into more and more areas of individuals' lives. Moreover, no one is asking for these profound and endless changes; they stem more from the economic impulses of the marketplace than from any kind of consumer demand, and perhaps we should be asking to what extent this flood of innovations actually enhances our lives, and personal convenience associated with all these innovations and technological improvements are worth the social, economic, and political change that follows in its wake.The term "future shock" refers to what happens when people are no longer able to cope with the pace of change. All sorts of symptoms and maladies results, ranging from depression to bizarre behavior to increases in susceptability to disease to absolute emotional breakdown. Thus, Toffler accurately anticipated many of the sorts of psychological, social, and economic maldies and turbulence of the last thirty years. Yet, to date literally no one seems to pay much heed to his thesis, or to ask what it means for the quality of life in our own futures. This is an important book raising critical and fundamental questions about the social, economic, and political impacts of technologically-induced innovations within contemporary society and the way they are flooding uncontested and unhampered into our social environment. This is a must-read for any serious student of social science.