Future Shock by Alvin Toffler
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(Mass Market Paperback - Reissue)
- Pub. Date: June 1984
- 561pp
- Sales Rank: 71,537
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Product Details
- ISBN-13: 9780553277371
- ISBN: 0553277375
- Edition Number: 1
- Edition Description: Reissue
Synopsis
Examines the effects of rapid industrial and technological changes upon the individual, the family, and society.
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suparby Anonymous
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December 12, 2006: this book is the best i am only15 yrs old and i really like the book hope u read it to
Has been very influential...by Anonymous
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January 24, 2004: I found a copy of the book sometime in the winter of 2000/2001 at a used bookstore and it was already old and ragged. After I read it, I eagerly lent it to a friend to get his opinion - but his dog got to it before he had the chance to even look at it. Even though I don't have a physical copy of the book anymore, the ideas presented in it have been very influential in my thinking about the modern world - a world that is experiencing accelerating change and has been for about the last 150 years. Toffler gets a lot wrong when he tries to make specific predictions (like disposable clothes), but he gets the big picture right. He wrote the book in 1971, from the perspective of looking back on the tumultous 60's. As he started to look at the data, he saw what seems to be an incredible trend: over the scope of human history, the amount of change one can expect to live through has been on a very slow, nearly imperceptible climb. But quite recently - since about the start of the Industrial Revolution - there has been a sharp acceleration in the amount of change we experience during the course of our lives. There is also no sign that the pace of life is slowing down or even leveling off. As Toffler argues, this amount of change is something that we are poorly equipped to deal with and leads naturally to symptoms of anxiety and depression, a desire to withdraw. What he calls 'Future Shock'. Even in Toffler's time, people were complaining about never 'having enough time', so one could argue that there is nothing new. But it is also clear that Toffler was writing in the time before cable TV, computers, satellite news, cell phones, and the Internet - technologies that have undeniably sped up the amount of information we consume and with it, the pace of our lives. That makes looking at today's world all the more interesting because it is clear that the world has continued to accelerate in the 33 years since he published the book. It's kind of mind blowing when you think about the implications. How the heck are we supposed to adapt?
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