Is Future Shock real and if so, how bad is it?

[tom_paine]

Is Future Shock here, and if so, how bad is it?
I don't know how many DUers have read Alvin Toffler's first book (written in the late 60s or early 70s, I think), called "Future Shock", but here is the overarching theory synopsized:

Note, all of these things make perfect sense with continuity, when he first wrote them and even more so now, with the Internet and all the input that brings

That looking in the last cnetury, and more particularly the last 50 years the pace of change has been exponential. Toffler, I recall, used Gross National Product as a mathod of measuring change. Crude, but this was 40 years ago.

Ultimately, his argument was that the pace of technological change was accelerating in the same kind of curve as CO2 in the atmosphere (minus the seasonal variation) or human population

NOTE TO SELF: This common theme running through many human affairs and now environmental affairs, the exponential curve, warrants further looking at.

and that the human mind and soul would be taxed in keeping up with the pace. He further asserted that, if we continued to increase the PACE of change (we are talking technologically here as it relates to mentality, such as how the Internet gives us access to exponential increases in information sources, among others) we may run up against the limits of the human psyche to adapt.

Consider: The world a man born in 1900 was born in, and the one he died in by 1970. Like another planet, so fast are we moving now. But what about the baby born in 1970? His or her world NOW, roughly at the midpoint of life, is far more different, the pace of change and information and things to remember etc. etc. etc. from the world of 1970 than the

There is more at the links below, if you are interested.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22Future+Shock%22+Toffler+review

http://www.amazon.com/Future-Shock-Alvin-Toffler/dp/B000ER36GO/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-5483683-2041754?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1184121076&sr=8-1



Ok, so now you have the theory. Clearly the Internets are the biggest single exponential booster of all, but Toffler never could have dreamed of it when he was writing his book.

And now...the poll!

Here is the full text of the choices, in case the character limit cuts 'em off.

Choice 1 - No Future Shock. The human being is an incredibly adaptabile being who will thrive in any future we create.
Choice 2 - A little Future Shock: things are pretty wiggy, but we can handle it.
Choice 3 - 10X Future Shock: Most people can handle it, but we are seeing some very negative trends that may indicate people are at the breaking point of how much shit they can absorb.
Choice 4 - 100X Future Shock: Whoa! Mega speed up ahead. Brainstem linked internet and programmable dreams. Can we handle it? Most people but far from all. Lots more crazy ultra-violence, though and other unpredictable repercussions.
Choice 5 - 1000X Future Shock: We are overwhelmed. That is why the world is going crazy these days because it is frying the the burning synapses of it's collective consciousness!

[Orrex]

1. In this regard, Toffler was something of a fear-monger

By the way, my edition of Future Shock shows the original copyright date as 1970, but I wouldn't say that's definitive.

[Guaranteed]

2. It- we- are

INCREDIBLY adaptable.

I understand the concept, but it's not technology that will outgrow us, if anything will. Think of the social effects of technology. It's the changing social dynamic that may become too much.

[vixengrl]

3. O crap, you've found one of my favorite hobby-horses--

and damned if I don't feel like riding it. I recall reading Future Shock back in the late-80's when, well, it was already kind of old, just about the same time as I paged through Marshall McLuhan. I was raised in a house with color television and already had a familiarity with computers. The idea of technology being overwhelming as opposed to being either useful (=adoptible) or non-useful (=beta) was something I couldn't quite grok.

I wasn't sure if I really agreed, then, but then, I was already living in the "Future" of that future. I read Kurzweil and Michio Kaku on the subject of what was to come a decade later, and felt comfortable, personally, with the concept of the rate of at technological change. I think I still do--after all, we're on a thing called the internet, and most of us have cell-phones, and a good number have digital cable and don't need a box to Tivo. (Shoot, if I use Tivo as a verb, you know what I mean, no?) This common kind of technological advance hasn't really had an overwhelming negative change for society--I find we've taken the tools we're given, and, like the tool-using primates we are, made them do the things we need or want.

Our societal problems are not the result of technology so much as they are the side-effect of both an information-intensive paradigm-change and an economic-base shift. The upheavals noted in the '60's had to do largely with the television broadcasting the picture worth a thousand words of, say, civil rights injustice to people who may not have felt the injustice that way before, or brought the horror of war into people's living rooms in a way they did not anticipate. It's not techno-shock, exactly--it's information made immediate and real, a side-effect of one possible use of a tool. And the upheavals from time to time are necessary (Protestantism, schism--Guttenberg's Bible and the printing press--flash-forward, Franklin, colonies, Tom Paine, democratic samizdat?). The economy has gone from from industrial to information tech and services-based--there is a gap where experience and education in the new technologies create inequalities, maybe--but the technology itself isn't the problem, the underlying old economic-class/accessibility problem is the same. The cutting edge costs more.

Hey, here's a link to the blog of one of my favorite authors who really had a neat observation about the "talking about the future" question:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/07/unpacking_the_zeitgeist.html

(The comments are fascinating.)

[Swamp Rat]

4. Yes, but most do not realise it.

It's as if we are all breathing ether, and therefore numb to the slow, creeping changes.

Within 10-20 years I expect this to be the norm for industrialised nations:

Real ID
RFID chips in newborns
Private/Corporate Armies
Cameras on every corner, 'eyes in the sky' and cyberspace
DNA profiles used to decide who lives and who dies
Private control of Earth's water and all other natural resources