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“Academic futurist Stuart Candy says the Tofflers were wrong to predict widespread ‘future shock,’ as a form of societal illness or breakdown. Alvin Toffler says it may be that younger generations have simply become more adapted to change, that it is their culture. “The accelerating change doesn’t seem to be driving people crazy, as was predicted by Future Shock. Toffler wrote in Future Shock that he wasn’t making predictions, but more “first approximations of the new realities.”Īnd while some people in modern society these days undoubtedly feel overwhelmed by information overload, others have adapted. In a 2010 interview, she told NPR’s Martin Kaste, “Anybody that tells you they know what’s going to happen, don’t believe a word they say!” This wasn’t a surprise to him or to his wife and editor, Heidi Toffler. He foresaw the development of cloning, the popularity and influence of personal computers and the invention of the internet, cable television and telecommuting.”Īt the same time, envisioning the future is a tricky business and not everything Toffler imagined has come to pass. “His predictions about the consequences to culture, the family, government and the economy were remarkably accurate. While Toffler wrote that Future Shock was concerned more with the human condition than with the specifics of technological advancement, he still made some striking predictions about both. As The New York Times notes: “His 1964 Playboy interview with the Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov was considered one of the magazine’s best.” He went on to work for Fortune magazine and later wrote some highly regarded freelance magazine articles. Toffler began his career in journalism working in the manufacturing trade press. Ted Turner credits Toffler’s works with inspiring him to start CNN in 1980, according to the Toffler Associates website. Prominent entrepreneurs, technologists, and top executives sought Toffler’s counsel as well. Over his lifetime, Toffler’s books not only sold millions of copies, they also influenced political leaders across China and Asia, Russia, and here in the U.S. The book was the first in a trilogy that included the best-sellers The Third Wave and Powershift. Change is the process by which the future invades our lives, and it is important to look at it closely, not merely from the grand perspectives of history, but also from the vantage point of the living, breathing individuals who experience it.” “What joins all these - in the book as in life - is the roaring current of change, a current so powerful today that it overturns institutions, shifts our values and shrivels our roots. Strange new subcultures and life styles are investigated, along with an array of other subjects from politics and playgrounds to skydiving and sex. The future of friendship and family life is probed. They deal with common, everyday matters - the products we buy and discard, the places we leave behind, the corporations we inhabit, the people who pass at an ever faster clip through our lives. Moreover, they concern themselves with the steps by which we are likely to reach tomorrow. These pages, by contrast, concern themselves with the ‘soft’ or human side of tomorrow. Yet, for the most part, books about the world to come sound a harsh metallic note.
It is about the ways in which we adapt - or fail to adapt - to the future. “This is a book about what happens to people when they are overwhelmed by change.