Future Shock by Alvin Toffler Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Future Shock
Book Review: Future Shock by Alvin Toffler
Summary: 5 Stars
The world has changed in many of the ways predicted by Toffler.We are now in the throes of the super-industrial society
he spoke of in the early 1970s. For instance, computing power
has grown exponentially. There is a computer on every work
desk in most corporate offices. Children work with computers
at school. A growing number of people work at home. Electronics
has permeated virtually every part of society from home
calculators/computers to electronic panels in automobiles to super-stereo systems and advanced training systems in industry
and academe. Even childrens' games reflect the growing
sophistication of the super-industrialized world economy.
The internet has become the central repository of data.
Very few of these changes were imaginable from the perspective
of the early 1970s. The super industrial society will progress
technologically. Our challenge will require translating
the industrial progress into the creation of incremental
wealth for every segment of the society. Job re-design and
organizational dynamics have displaced workers and forced
re-training on the continued basis predicted by Toffler.
In fact, a central thesis of his book involved the fast rate
of change and its displacement of technical matter taught in primary school, high school and college. The super-industrialized
society will progress very much the way Toffler envisioned.
Our challenge will be to manage the change and utilize it to
improve the quality of our lives in every aspect previously
unattainable.
Book Review: Great analysis but the wrong conclusion
Summary: 4 Stars
Toffler's concern in Future Shock is the accelerating rate of change in society. Science is making new discoveries at an increasing pace. Societal mores are changing at an increasing pace. Our organizational constructs are also changing at an increasing pace.
The world we know today, he says, will be hopelessly outdated in the tomorrow. In this, he is absolutely right, and his analysis of current (in 1971) trends provides the proof of this fact. In addition, his forecasting of the future and what it holds is amazingly prescient some 35 years into the future.
For one example of future technology that is predicted take his "future news device" which he claims will cull news from user-appropriate sources and present them to the user at his leisure. Is this anything but the current explosion of RSS readers and other personalized news gathering programs?
Where this book fails is in its conclusion that this accelerating pace will cause the mental jarring of everyone, what he calls "future shock". Future shock is akin to Culture Shock which is the stress that an unprepared person who is thrust into an unfamiliar environment without sufficient familiar resources suffers. Taking a look around at the world today, it is far more technologically advanced more culturally askew from the world that Toffler was writing from. However, we don't see largescale mental stress in the population from these ongoing changes. Is there more stress? I doubt anyone can refute that, but to attribute it to the changes going on in society is hard to buy into.
The difference is that culture shock occurs because of a sudden replacement of an entire environment while the future approaches us as a continually evolving world. Though the rate of change does increase, our ability to adapt is also increasing.
Toffler does well to argue not simply against increasing the rate of change, but rather to direct that change in productive directions. Given the increasingly accelerating pace of cultural change, I wonder what direction he'd suggest as the most productive, though.
This is a great book, and well worth the time to read and understand. Many effects of the acceleration of change can be seen clearly with the right mindset, and Toffler's presentation does a good job of giving the correct perspective. While his theory of Future Shock may be another prediction that didn't work out, his analysis of the movement of society to more diverse and more intertwined societies makes this book worth 4 stars.
Book Review: He does lack historical perspective but...
Summary: 4 Stars
While Toffler here seems to lack some historical perspective on how science and technology will progress, his basic thesis is still unerringly on target. What I think is obvious is that he doesn't much consider how economic systems of the past (mainly capitalism) and economic class relations will affect how the accelerating change produced by science & technology will unfold. He doesn't forsee the many contradictions current economic relations will produce and he doesn't anticipate the power of the reactionary political and economic forces they will unleash, or he doesn't really pay enough attention to these forces in his speculations. Sometimes it seems in all his speculations about changes, he assumes that some things, mainly class realtions and economic power structures, will for no apparent reason, remain the same and not need any replacements or alterations. And he seems to ignore some major ways in which we are and probably will continue to fail to adapt. Also apparent is a lack of experience with the marketing industry, the real force behind his 'experience makers'. Either way though, the basic thesis of the book is an invalueable tool in understanding the present, and of course, making educated guesses as to the future. I would like to seen someone with more historical perspective and mre experience in the sordid world of marketing/PR rewrite this book today. People interested in the 'experiience makers' Toffler describes might find Wilson Brian Key's 'The Age of Manipulation' especially interesting, if sometimes vauge and (only slightly) over zealous.Book Review: High tech, High touch in the Internet society
Summary: 5 Stars
On the Internet, it's no longer true that 'no one knows you're a dog'. Early Internet communication usually took the form of email or online chat; now it's not enough. Intra-company and intra-joint-venture communication that uses the Internet as its main medium is increasingly shifting to voice. Stranglely, people want to talk to a real person and thereby 'personalize' and increase the intimacy of the relationship. High tech, high touch says Toffler; this is an example from 1998. The voice can be telephone or IP telephony from PC to PC. In any case it is a decrease in anonymity and an increase in humanization. Toffler continues to be correct.Book Review: Non Fiction
Summary: 3 Stars
Toffler's Future Shock is something similar to what science fiction writers have discussed many times. What happens when you throw advanced technology and concepts at a more primitive people (human/alien/mineral/vegetable) or whatever.
Here he is talking about us, and the seeming increasing pace of change, and the general inability of people to keep up with it. While this may be true for some, being in his 35 years ahead future now, with all the people on the planet wandering around with mobile phones, is this really the case for mankind in general?