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Future Shock Paperback – January 11, 2022

by Alvin Toffler (Author)

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The classic work that predicted the anxieties of a world upended by rapidly emerging technologies—and now provides a road map to solving many of our most pressing crises.

“Explosive . . . brilliantly formulated.” —The Wall Street Journal

Future Shock is the classic that changed our view of tomorrow. Its startling insights into accelerating change led a president to ask his advisers for a special report, inspired composers to write symphonies and rock music, gave a powerful new concept to social science, and added a phrase to our language. Published in over fifty countries, Future Shock is the most important study of change and adaptation in our time.

In many ways, Future Shock is about the present. It is about what is happening today to people and groups who are overwhelmed by change. Change affects our products, communities, organizations—even our patterns of friendship and love.

But Future Shock also illuminates the world of tomorrow by exploding countless clichés about today. It vividly describes the emerging global civilization: the rise of new businesses, subcultures, lifestyles, and human relationships—all of them temporary.

Future Shock will intrigue, provoke, frighten, encourage, and, above all, change everyone who reads it.

Print length

624 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Ballantine Books
Publication date

January 11, 2022
Dimensions

5.14 x 1.22 x 7.98 inches
ISBN-10

0593159470
ISBN-13

978-0593159477
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From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Revealing, exciting, encouraging, brilliant.”—The Christian Science Monitor

“In the risky business of social and cultural criticism, there appears an occasional book that manages . . . to shape our perceptions of its times. Alvin Toffler’s immensely readable yet disquieting study may service the same purpose for our own increasingly volatile world.”—Newsweek

“Alvin Toffler has sent something of a shock-wave through Western society.”—Daily Express (London)

“To the elite . . . who often get committed to age-old institutions or material goals alone, let Toffler’s Future Shock be a lesson and a warning.”—The Time of India

About the Author

Alvin Toffler (1928–2016) was an American writer and futurist whose list of bestselling books includes Future Shock, The Third Wave, and Powershift. He was a cofounder of Toffler Associates, a consulting firm for companies and governments worldwide on advances in economics, technology, and social change. In France, where his work won the prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book Prize), Alvin was named an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

The 800th Lifetime

In the three short decades between now and the twenty-first century, millions of ordinary, psychologically normal people will face an abrupt collision with the future. Citizens of the world’s richest and most technologically advanced nations, many of them will find it increasingly painful to keep up with the incessant demand for change that characterizes our time. For them, the future will have arrived too soon.

This book is about change and how we adapt to it. It is about those who seem to thrive on change, who crest its waves joyfully, as well as those multitudes of others who resist it or seek flight from it. It is about our capacity to adapt. It is about the future and the shock that its arrival brings.

Western society for the past 300 years has been caught up in a fire storm of change. This storm, far from abating, now appears to be gathering force. Change sweeps through the highly industrialized countries with waves of ever accelerating speed and unprecedented impact. It spawns in its wake all sorts of curious social flora—from psychedelic churches and “free universities” to science cities in the Arctic and wife-swap clubs in California.

It breeds odd personalities, too: children who at twelve are no longer childlike; adults who at fifty are children of twelve. There are rich men who playact poverty, computer programmers who turn on with LSD. There are anarchists who, beneath their dirty denim shirts, are outrageous conformists, and conformists who, beneath their button-down collars, are outrageous anarchists. There are married priests and atheist ministers and Jewish Zen Buddhists. We have pop . . . and op . . . and art cinétique . . . There are Playboy Clubs and homosexual movie theaters . . . amphetamines and tranquilizers . . . anger, affluence, and oblivion. Much oblivion.

Is there some way to explain so strange a scene without recourse to the jargon of psychoanalysis or the murky clichés of existentialism? A strange new society is apparently erupting in our midst. Is there a way to understand it, to shape its development? How can we come to terms with it?

Much that now strikes us as incomprehensible would be far less so if we took a fresh look at the racing rate of change that makes reality seem, sometimes, like a kaleidoscope run wild. For the acceleration of change does not merely buffet industries or nations. It is a concrete force that reaches deep into our personal lives, compels us to act out new roles, and confronts us with the danger of a new and powerfully upsetting psychological disease. This new disease can be called “future shock,” and a knowledge of its sources and symptoms helps explain many things that otherwise defy rational analysis.

The Unprepared Visitor

The parallel term “culture shock” has already begun to creep into the popular vocabulary. Culture shock is the effect that immersion in a strange culture has on the unprepared visitor. Peace Corps volunteers suffer from it in Borneo or Brazil. Marco Polo probably suffered from it in Cathay. Culture shock is what happens when a traveler suddenly finds himself in a place where yes may mean no, where a “fixed price” is negotiable, where to be kept waiting in an outer office is no cause for insult, where laughter may signify anger. It is what happens when the familiar psychological cues that help an individual to function in society are suddenly withdrawn and replaced by new ones that are strange or incomprehensible.

The culture shock phenomenon accounts for much of the bewilderment, frustration, and disorientation that plagues Americans in their dealings with other societies. It causes a breakdown in communication, a misreading of reality, an inability to cope. Yet culture shock is relatively mild in comparison with the much more serious malady, future shock. Future shock is the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future. It may well be the most important disease of tomorrow.

Future shock will not be found in Index Medicus or in any listing of psychological abnormalities. Yet, unless intelligent steps are taken to combat it, millions of human beings will find themselves increasingly disoriented, progressively incompetent to deal rationally with their environments. The malaise, mass neurosis, irrationality, and free-floating violence already apparent in contemporary life are merely a foretaste of what may lie ahead unless we come to understand and treat this disease.

Future shock is a time phenomenon, a product of the greatly accelerated rate of change in society. It arises from the superimposition of a new culture on an old one. It is culture shock in one’s own society. But its impact is far worse. For most Peace Corps men, in fact most travelers, have the comforting knowledge that the culture they left behind will be there to return to. The victim of future shock does not.

Take an individual out of his own culture and set him down suddenly in an environment sharply different from his own, with a different set of cues to react to—different conceptions of time, space, work, love, religion, sex, and everything else—then cut him off from any hope of retreat to a more familiar social landscape, and the dislocation he suffers is doubly severe. Moreover, if this new culture is itself in constant turmoil, and if—worse yet—its values are incessantly changing, the sense of disorientation will be still further intensified. Given few clues as to what kind of behavior is rational under the radically new circumstances, the victim may well become a hazard to himself and others.

Now imagine not merely an individual but an entire society, an entire generation—including its weakest, least intelligent, and most irrational members—suddenly transported into this new world. The result is mass disorientation, future shock on a grand scale.

This is the prospect that man now faces. Change is avalanching upon our heads and most people are grotesquely unprepared to cope with it.

Break with the Past

Is all this exaggerated? I think not. It has become a cliché to say that what we are now living through is a “second industrial revolution.” This phrase is supposed to impress us with the speed and profundity of the change around us. But in addition to being platitudinous, it is misleading. For what is occurring now is, in all likelihood, bigger, deeper, and more important than the industrial revolution. Indeed, a growing body of reputable opinion asserts that the present movement represents nothing less than the second great divide in human history, comparable in magnitude only with that first great break in historic continuity, the shift from barbarism to civilization.

This idea crops up with increasing frequency in the writings of scientists and technologists. Sir George Thomson, the British physicist and Nobel prizewinner, suggests in The Foreseeable Future that the nearest historic parallel with today is not the industrial revolution but rather the “invention of agriculture in the neolithic age.” John Diebold, the American automation expert, warns that “the effects of the technological revolution we are now living through will be deeper than any social change we have experienced before.” Sir Leon Bagrit, the British computer manufacturer, insists that automation by itself represents “the greatest change in the whole history of mankind.”

Nor are the men of science and technology alone in these views. Sir Herbert Read, the philosopher of art, tells us that we are living through “a revolution so fundamental that we must search many past centuries for a parallel. Possibly the only comparable change is the one that took place between the Old and the New Stone Age . . .” And Kurt W. Marek, who under the name C. W. Ceram is best-known as the author of Gods, Graves and Scholars, observes that “we, in the twentieth century, are concluding an era of mankind five thousand years in length . . . We are not, as Spengler supposed, in the situation of Rome at the beginning of the Christian West, but in that of the year 3000 b.c. We open our eyes like prehistoric man, we see a world totally new.”

One of the most striking statements of this theme has come from Kenneth Boulding, an eminent economist and imaginative social thinker. In justifying his view that the present moment represents a crucial turning point in human history, Boulding observes that “as far as many statistical series related to activities of mankind are concerned, the date that divides human history into two equal parts is well within living memory.” In effect, our century represents The Great Median Strip running down the center of human history. Thus he asserts, “The world of today . . . is as different from the world in which I was born as that world was from Julius Caesar’s. I was born in the middle of human history, to date, roughly. Almost as much has happened since I was born as happened before.”

This startling statement can be illustrated in a number of ways. It has been observed, for example, that if the last 50,000 years of man’s existence were divided into lifetimes of approximately sixty-two years each, there have been about 800 such lifetimes. Of these 800, fully 650 were spent in caves.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ballantine Books (January 11, 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 624 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593159470
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593159477
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.14 x 1.22 x 7.98 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #789,264 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #621 in Social Aspects of Technology
- #693 in Customs & Traditions Social Sciences
- #2,900 in Cultural Anthropology (Books)

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Customers find the book important, knowledgeable, and relevant to the times. They also say it contains interesting theories and is still relevant. Customers also describe it as one of the most intelligent and informative books they've ever read.

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Abner Rosenweig

Great commentary, eminently readable

Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2015

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Hard to believe this was written 45 years ago. It was phenomenally prescient, and it still feels representative of the modern era and well-positioned to predict the future. Toffler's premise that the accelerating rate of social change (including ever-greater transcience, novelty, and diversity) is outpacing man's ability to cope comes with a dour imperative: adapt or die.

We, as individuals and as a civilization, need to understand "the accelerative thrust triggered by man has become the key to the entire evolutionary process on the planet," and Toffler suggests we need to seize control over the rapid waves of change headed our way before they overtake us. Sadly, society does not yet seem to have heeded Toffler's calls to action, and much of our lives are filled with idle, ephemeral distraction while the ground shifts beneath our feet. Climate change science was not as abundant or conclusive in the early 1970s as it is today, so while they're no mention of it in the book (it's also a natural phenomenon, while Toffler focuses on the accelerative thrust of tech), it is a perfect example of how humans need to be more future-oriented and prepared for massive change.

Toffler's writing is well-researched and fast-paced. It reads almost like an action thriller. His descriptions of the accelerative wave of change sweeping through society actually made me anxious as I read--today the force of change is almost tangible; you can feel its pressure everywhere you turn, with all of the complex decisions we're faced with and the new information we're required to process on a daily basis. I'm sure Toffler would find it ironic that I was speed-reading his book--with so much to keep up with, I feel there's no time to read at a leisurely pace anymore.

I appreciated Toffler's self-criticism throughout. He acknowledges that no single idea is "omni-insightful" and that, while some of his suggestions for solutions may appear naive, such as transforming our economy to pay more attention to social and environmental welfare, they are also critical to the survival of the human race.

Do not underestimate Future Shock. Its message is clearly a driving force behind Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity Is Near"; billionaire Carlos Slim identified it as a key resource that helped him anticipate the future.

If you're fascinated by culture and want to understand the strange, fast-paced compression of modern life, this book is essential.

58 people found this helpful

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Barron Laycock

Must Reading For Any Concerned Citizen!

Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2000

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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.

211 people found this helpful

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Chad Burden

Stunningly relevent

Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2024

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A must read for today's democratic citizen. It makes sense of our works like it was written this year. Part sociology, anthropology, technology, psychology, economics, education, political....wow.

2 people found this helpful

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David J. Mulholland

Interesting - but not sure the shock really ever happened

Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2016

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Interesting book. I remember my dad reading this book when I was little. I bought it at the recommendation of a colleague. There are some interesting theories in the book, especially looking back to see how some of them played out. I am not sure that the "shock, distress, and overload" that Toffler predicted has come about. His theory that there will be immense changes based on technological and other advancements was not a far reach. However, his prediction that society will ultimately not be able to adapt to, process, or manage al the new capabilities and the changes that they bring may not be wholly accurate. The shock seems to be more on the older generation (for example, not understanding how the younger generation will communicate by text rather than spoke word, even within direct proximity to each other) and the overload also seems to be on the older generation (watching some seniors try to program a GPS can be interesting), but the younger generation seems to be processing and adopting very well. In my generation, one was hard pressed to get to typing 60 words per minute in a typing class, focusing on one paragraph within one single subject - yet the technology of today has taught small children to type just as quickly while managing multiple conversations at one time. There are some good lessons to consider in this book, so it's not a waste of time to read.

7 people found this helpful

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Thrifty Shopper

Given as a gift !

Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2023

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It was given as a gift that was well received. It is a great read. It reveals much of what we are witnessing today, which was a prediction for the future years ago

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Amazon Customer

He knew more

Reviewed in Canada on November 26, 2022

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he was knowledgeable.

Shrikant Shringarputale

The leader is one who ushers in CHANGE in a smooth manner.

Reviewed in India on June 6, 2021

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That's the book that deeply impressed me as a youth in 1970. I wish all the researchers emulate Toffler. It shaped the philosophy of my life, and made me adapt to the inevitable changes coming my way without a shock.
We are lucky to have Modiji amongst us as our leader ushering in the change in the most acceptable manner, making India resilient.
Toffler certainly has immensely contributed in the progress of humanity in the 20th and the 21st Century.
As predicted by him the pace of change now is very high and, now in my seventies, I appreciate the nature in restricting the longevity of all living beings. Yes, the change is imminent and must be maneuvered by the leader to be smooth, and the society should be systematically transformed into a resilient society.

2 people found this helpful

NikeX

Das Limit der Anpassung und Aufnahme

Reviewed in Germany on March 14, 2020

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Wenn die Augen sich weiten, das Hören besser wird, weil eine Gefahr droht, dann müssen wir entscheiden. Kampf oder Flucht. Das Gehirn, das ZNS, die sogenannte Psyche, das Individuum, die Bevölkerung, sie reagieren auf Reize, sie versuchen sich anzupassen. Wenn zu viele dieser Schocks aufeinanderfolgen, bleibt keine Zeit, oder eine Fehlanpassung vollzieht sich.
Lethargie, Lähmung, Ausblenden, Vereinfachen oder blinde Gewalt sind die Folge / Strategien. Entscheidungsstress und Distress macht Handeln unmöglich. Schizophrene Personen handeln ebenso, wie eine Gesellschaft, auf welche zu viele Änderungen einwirken.
Wir versuchen immer stets gleich zu handeln, entwickeln ein Schema, einen Rhythmus für den Alltag. Wird dies zerstört, bauen wir neu auf, aber wenn es nie zu einem Aufbau kommen kann?
FUTURE SHOCK.

3 people found this helpful

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Jean-paul Lacharme

Excès d'optimisme dans une société optimiste

Reviewed in France on August 29, 2019

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Le travail du futurologue est toujours risqué. La confrontation entre le futur prédit et le présent accompli peut être dévastatrice. Pour autant, cet ouvrage d’Alvin Toffler demeure encore lisible 50 ans après sa publication.
L’auteur le rédige à l’apogée de la civilisation américaine. Le rêve américain brille alors comme un soleil. La saga lunaire a fait oublier les horreurs du Vietnam, le dollar est encore accroché à l’or et les trente glorieuses en ont pour trois ans à vivre. La Chine est un grand pays sous-développé ravagé par la révolution culturelle, l’URSS est rongée par le cancer bureaucratique.
Toffler caractérise la société d’alors par trois facteurs : précarité (non pérennité), nouveauté, diversité. Les premiers chapitres du livre (3/5) dépeignent le rôle de ces facteurs dans tous les domaines : la famille, le milieu professionnel, la mobilité géographique, la production de biens consommables, l’éducation, les relations humaines, les structures, les modes de vie, la guerre, etc. Même les religions sont bousculées. Rien n’échappe à ce mouvement turbulent. Pour l’auteur, c’est signe d’une société libre et évoluée qui s’oppose à la société archaïque paternaliste cyclique et rigide. C’est un bien absolu.

Toffler est cependant lucide qu’une mutation générant un volume important de stimuli chez les individus peut être pathogène. Jugements et décisions ne doivent subir aucun délais. Les problèmes environnementaux sont effleurés pour être oubliés. C’est ce qu’il appelle le choc du futur. Cette partie de l’ouvrage n’est pas particulièrement futuriste : l’auteur anticipe simplement que les choses vont continuer ainsi en s’accélérant. Il préconise ou prévoit que pour se maintenir, la société devra mettre en place d’une part des lieux protégés de ce changement (comme le territoire des Amish), sortes de chambres de décompression, et d’autre part des structures éducatives préparant intensément la population à un futur qui devra être systématiquement magnifié par rapport au passé. Trente ans plus tard Internet ne bousculera pas trop ce schéma.

On atteint ici les limites de la perspicacité et de la lucidité de l’auteur. Il ne nous a pas expliqué d’où venait le caractère précaire, novateur et diversifié de la société américaine, le mot ‘capitalisme’ est d’ailleurs presque absent dans son vocabulaire. Ses préconisations permettant d’adoucir le choc de ce futur n’ont jamais été mises en place. Le système évolue par sa dynamique propre quoi qu'on fasse : seule une catastrophe pourra l'arrêter.
Depuis 1973, la dette -privée et publique- gonfle partout comme un cancer, les inégalités croissantes paupérisent une partie des classes moyennes alors que la Chine fait sortir des centaines de millions de gens de la pauvreté selon un schéma différent, enfin et surtout, à moyen terme, les enjeux climatiques laissent prévoir un arrêt définitif à tout développement exponentiel de la production de biens matériels. La croissance mondiale réelle ralentit de façon drastique. Le système bancaire est sous perfusion. ‘Game Over’ ! Toffler qui n’a pas anticipé cette inflexion bien marquée a péché par un excès d’optimisme exprimé dans une époque optimiste. En outre, sa vision du temps est incomplète : ainsi, par exemple, la lecture de son livre demandera toujours entre 14 et 18 heures (1,5 à 2 min par page). La pertinence de son modèle touche à sa fin sans qu’on voit encore ce qui pourra le remplacer.

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Edward B. Crutchley

A book of a lifetime

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 13, 2017

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It’s easy to forget how much the sixties were seen at the time to be an era of rapidly accelerating change. The throw-away, transient world of short-span attention and slackening of morals had arrived. There was an explosion of mass media, of scientific and technological innovation, of job mobility and migration, first signs of over-choice and a super-industrial ephemeral society. The author takes no prisoners as he inundates his arguments with gee whiz facts, most of which would by themselves make good conversation pieces. Several predictions may have proved to be off the mark, but the raw fact is that the rate of acceleration has dramatically increased ever since. So when the author talks of a left-behind segment of society, people overwhelmed by the rate of change to become Deniers and Revisionists, this is even more relevant today. The resurgence of populist politics, the Tea Party, Brexit, and all the other current reactionary movements seem to have been predicted. This is a book of a lifetime, even better after nearly 50 years.

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Future Shock Paperback – January 11, 2022

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