Future Shock [Mass Market Paperback]

Alvin Toffler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1984

Examines the effects of rapid industrial and technological changes upon the individual, the family, and society.

--This text refers to an alternate Mass Market Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Bantam (June 1, 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553246496
• ISBN-13: 978-0553246490
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,363,133 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

125 of 130 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must Reading For Any Concerned Citizen!, May 25, 2000

By 

Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Future Shock (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition) (School & Library Binding)

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.

72 of 77 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Shock This!!, December 3, 2001

By 

Jeffrey Leach (Omaha, NE USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Future Shock (Mass Market Paperback)

Alvin Toffler is one crackerjack sociologist. He wrote a series of books concerning the direction of society, the first being this book, Future Shock. Future Shock was written in 1970, and it must have caused a sensation at the time. Toffler examines so many sociological issues that the mere scope of this book is mind-boggling. Toffler went on to write The Third Wave and Powershift, both of which I have not read. While some of Toffler's theories in this book did not pan out, most the observations he makes are eerily true.

Toffler's main argument is that humanity, as of 1970, is in the midst of an enormous shift from an industrial society to a super-industrial society. This new society will be characterized by such things as an acceleration of images, words, ideas, and technologies that could possibly overwhelm mankind (Sound familiar? Watch the news tonight and see how many graphics float by on the screen). Mankind will suffer a serious disconnect when these new ideas reach their fruition (if not well before then). This disconnect is "future shock," an inability to process the enormous amounts of information and change associated with the super-industrial revolution. Toffler likens future shock to the same sort of disorientation that a person experiences when he moves to a new area, or a new country, and suffers a severing of all he has known. While some people can adjust with seeming ease to this kind of dislocation, most of us suffer various maladies from this "shock." Toffler ends up attributing most of societies ills to this jarring social shock. Crime, drug use, the disintegration of society, the burgeoning of quasi-religious movements: all of these are symptoms of a society that can no longer cope with the vast amounts of information and change that technology is bringing about.

These changes involve education, work, government and other dimensions of life. Toffler believes that we should not be afraid to scrap massive sections of any of these areas if doing so can improve our chances of adjusting and functioning within the new society. Toffler proposes forming numerous groups that would deal exclusively with trying to take charge of the situation so that a safer, slower future will come about. Toffler even supports oversight of technology so that any new products or ideas can be examined to determine their effects on society at large (a big no-no to big business).

Some of Toffler's visions are pretty impressive. Toffler predicts that work will increasingly be made up of short-range ad hoc committees that would tackle specific problems within a company. This is certainly true today, although the hierarchy is still alive and well in the business community. Toffler also saw the explosion in the entertainment industry, even though some of his ideas are pretty weird and have yet to be realized. Such ideas as genetic engineering and cloning are still in the formative stages, but Toffler mentions them here as well. One of the more interesting observations in this book concerns the structure of the family. Toffler sees divorce as a problem, and he proposes the idea of short-term contractual marriages as a possible solution. I whole-heartedly support this idea if it doesn't involve alimony payments! He also believes that children could be farmed out to families whose sole purpose in society would be to take care of kids. Kind of like daycare, except the little rugrats won't come home at the end of the day.

There really isn't any reason to read this book today unless you're a sociologist, interested in seeing the same old day-to-day stuff in a new way, or just interested in seeing how freaky some of Toffler's ideas are. Mr. Toffler does come off as a huge socialist, and that's a bit scary. Still, this is an intelligent book written in an easy style. You could do a lot worse than reading this one.

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Problems Creating "Future Shock" Are Still Unresolved, May 14, 2005

By 

Bugs "Patrick" (Los Angeles, Ca.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Future Shock (Mass Market Paperback)

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 Conspiracy". She somewhat took-up where Toffler left off and created a blueprint of where we are and where we should be heading to stave-off the trauma of future shock. She expertly delineates the "Paradigm Shift" or changes needed in our collective thinking and proffers an abundance of guidelines and resources for that objective.

The following year (1981), Duane Elgin comes out with his "Voluntary Simplicity", more guidelines for transitioning to a more harmonious existence. Elgin follows this with another similar book to "Future Shock" and "The Aquarian Conspiracy" with "Awakening Earth" (1993), then followed by "Promise Ahead"- a continuation of the paradigm shift of collective consciousness needed for survival into the future.

To all of these fine books, one should add Theodore Roszak's "The Voice of the Earth" and we then have a small, but potent collection of some of the most instructive and helpful books ever published for the immediate betterment of our existence on Earth. Excellent "How-to" manuals on global change in human perception of reality.