Future Shock by Alvin Toffler Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Future Shock
Book Review: Are we falling apart??
Summary: 2 Stars
I had to read this in high school, thought it was interesting and maybe possible (people not being able to handle rapid change), but now it's 38 years later...well, where are all the people coming apart at the seams cause of technological change? We seem to handle it no prob, and plenty of people still lead simple lives if they want to, it just didn't happen Alvin, sorry, but you keep on self-promoting, this is America after all..Book Review: Books
Summary: 5 Stars
This older book was in excellent condition, like new.
It came quickly in the mail. Will order from seller again.
Book Review: Brilliant idea, but poorly developed.
Summary: 3 Stars
The idea of "future shock" is one of those rare concepts that has become *more* pertinent with the passage of time. The notion that an entire populace in a post-industrial society could find their capacity to adapt to their own (especially technological) developments outstripped by the very pace at which these devlopments occur is an idea that is even more supremely relevant today than when Toffler first identifed the phenomenon back in 1970.What a pity then, that he did not do his own thesis more justice. The book is divided into seven parts. Part I is a gripping read, sensibly argued, and a superb outline of the book's central point. In the next five parts, however, Toffler seems to get carried away, and the book gradually descends into unwarranted generalisations, wild speculations, unrestrained alarmism and recommendations that sometimes border on the surreal. By the final chapter, the reader will long have lost faith.
I am not making the captious objection that a man writing almost thirty years ago about the rapid rate of change in the industrial world failed to predict correctly (a virtually impossible task for a book so long): I am simply saying that Toffler failed to predict *sensibly*. In short, he identified a palpable phenomenon, perhaps even *the* zeitgeist of the latter half of this century, but the claims that he made for its importance were so exaggerated and poorly thought out that the idea itself was not done any justice: one can almost hear the concept tearing at the seams as Toffler mangles it to fit his predictions.
Read the book: the idea is certainly terrific, and you'll probably agree with the central concept. As regards Toffler's implications, you'll likely find yourself making up your own mind.
Book Review: FUTURE SHOCK:INTRODUCTION TO AMERICA'S TECHNOLOGICAL MIRACLE
Summary: 3 Stars
Alvin Toffler's Future Shock is by now almost a quarter of a century old.Yet the concepts and issues it tackles is amazingly relevant even today. Coming from my native India, I literally finished Future Shock only a day before I left.
I have found that the issues of technological transformation that Toffler studies in the Future Shock are relevant not just to the United States but in many ways to the world. Because willy-nilly or for ad-hoc fashionable Americanism most societies in technological transformation do take their cues from America. The symptoms of a society in technological transformation are increasingly being felt and seen ... not just the U.S. even in India and other countries.
Alvin Toffler may not be entirely objective in his evaluation of the phenomenon of future shock but he surely is a pioneer in the sense that he has identified the pulse of the 20th century techno society.
Walking down Manhattan from Port Authority, if you are a first time visitor to New York City, you will see happening in front of your eyes the crazed, frenzied and technology driven phenomenon that is future shock. If you live in this system for a signigicant number of days you would also realise that you can adapt to it faster than you think.
You would also realise that Future Shock doubles up as a manual to understanding and interpreting in a general manner the phenomenon of urban, techno-driven American megacities. Something, that all newcomers to America would do well to know and apply ... not in full and absolute ways but as a general framework to build their own thesis on future shock.
Future Shock, will most probably be treated as a seminal work in social psychology for a number of decades. But it does not make every proposition of Toffler's, an inviolate principle. It is at best, even after two and a half decades, an advanced and "work in progress" hypothesis ; as future shock still continues to unfold itself in our daily life. Whether it becomes a viable and consistent theory, remains to be seen. But most would agree, that it shall never quite become law, because America is a technology driven civilisation ...the youngest civilisation. Tomorrow the driving civilisation (or civilisations) of the world, might not be thoroughly technologically driven. It may have as its driving engine not just technology but something entirely different to anything presently known to humanity.
Read this book but realise, it is not a manual, it is a rough guide. It is still hypothesis, not a cause and effect system. And above all, judge things for yourself, not through Toffler's eyes. You will realise that things that seemed weird around you begin to make a lot of sense.
Book Review: Forward to the Past: an early classic in futurology
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a masterful early study of the consequences of fast change in social life. It is a rare feat -- an original synthesis of what the future holds in stock. Thirty-five years on, few of Toffler's arguments are outdated, though many of his best policy proposals have been ignored.
Pieter Vanhuysse, PhD (LSE), University of Haifa