As you know, I liike reviewing predictions of the future made in the past.
I don’t know whether Future Shock by Alvin Toffler actually falls into that category or not?
Got any opinions about it as a book?
Just a side note here, “The shock of the new” from 1980 has near zero overlap with the book “Future Shock”.
The book was first published in 1970. It deliberately deals only with the humanities, not with technology. So, how well has it held up 50+ years later?
Toffler: “To understand what is happening to us as we move into the age of super-industrialisation, we must analyse the process of acceleration and confront the concept of transcendence”
Mollwollfumble. Toffler’s book is not really about looking forward, it’s about looking back at the changes between 1950 and 1970. Back then, it looked as if we were moving into an age of super-industrialisation, but it never happened. A much smaller percentage of people now are working in industrial plants than were working there in the 1970s. In the present age, work life is dominated by employment in the humanities – customer-based and government-based jobs, with fewer people in factory jobs.
Toffler, “The parallel term ‘culture shock’ is immersion in a strange culture, which results in much bewilderment, frustration and disorientation. Yet culture shock is relatively mild in comparison with the much more serious malady, ‘future shock’.
Mollwollfumble. Culture shock is a symptom of ignorance. As information on world cultures becomes much more readily available the culture shock becomes and has become much less severe. And it seems to me that the bewilderment, frustration and disorientation ‘future shock’ has never been and never will be as serious as cuture shock was in the 1950 to 1970 era. In culture shock there is an immediatre and sudden change from one culture to another, which causes the disorientation. In ‘future shock’ nothing is immediate and very little is sudden. Except in war.
Toffler. “Change is accelerating, it has been particularly noticeable in the past 300 years. … population growth, … energy consumption”.
Mollwollfumble. 300 years is a long time. As regards population growth, the total fertility rate has been below sustainability levels in the USA since about 1970, below sustainability levels in Europe since the 1980s, below sustainability levels in China and Russia for a while, and falling to sustainabuluity levels throughout the rest of the world. The increase in energy consumption is still rising throughout the world.
Toffler. “The pace of life is increasing”.
Mollwollfumble. Well, not mine. Not those in unionised jobs who work fewer hours than they used to. Not in peak hour traffic.
Toffler. “The throw away society, typified by the paper wedding gown.”
Mollwollfumble. I don’t see people getting married in paper wedding gowns these days. Disposible clothing was a short term novely in the 1960s, not a future trend. Even back in the 1960s there was a trend towards longer-lived buildings, a trend that has continued. The throw away society is transitioning to the recycling society. I keep my fingers crossed that the present recycling society will also be short-lived, transitioning into a re-use society.
Toffler. “The fad machine. Fast-shifting preferences, flowing out of and interacting with high-speed technological change. Changing popularities of products and brands … flood of novelty”.
Mollwollfumble. No comment. Except that I see a movement of fads away from the materialistic one-upmanship ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ brigade towards the moral one-upmanship ‘land rights for gay whales’ brigade.
In Toffler’s book “ad-hocracy” means the increase in temporary employment and more rapid turn-over of staff.
Fair enough. But at first I thought he meant the control of the advertising and entertainment industries over the press, internet and politics.
Toffler: “The fractured family. The family is dead except fot the first year or two of child raising.”
Mollwollfumble thinks Toffler got that one right. Now we see a plethora of family types reminiscent of the plethora of religious cults centred on the 1970 to 1990 era.
Toffler: Tending towards a society with too much choice.
Mollwollfumble. HG Wells in “The shape of things to come” dealt with this as well. But Wells thought that this would be over before the year 1940. Toffler has a clearer vision here. The more rapid access to information has made the problem of too much choice less of a problem, because now we can compare 100 products within 5 minutes.
Toffler: “A surfeit of religious cults and street gangs”.
Mollwollfumble. Those eras are over now.
Toffler: “Celebrities become trend setters”
Mollwollfumble: Yes. Still occurs way too often.
Toffler: “We define future shock as the distress, both physical and psychological, that arises from an overload of the need to adapt and decide”.
Mollwollfumble: Good definition.
Toffler: Up to page 297, to be continued.