Future ShockNEW 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. |
Contents
| 9 | |
| 19 | |
THE PACE OF LIFE | 36 |
THE THROWAWAY | 51 |
THE NEW NOMADS | 74 |
THE MODULAR | 95 |
THE COMING | 124 |
THE KINETIC | 152 |
A DIVERSITY OF LIFE STYLES | 303 |
THE PHYSICAL | 325 |
COPING WITH TOMORROW | 371 |
EDUCATION IN THE FUTURE | 398 |
19 | 428 |
20 | 446 |
Acknowledgments | 488 |
25 | 496 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
acceleration accelerative thrust adaptive advance Alvin Toffler American become behavior Chindit choice cope create culture decisions diversity economic engineers environment Eric Gunderson example experience fact faster forces future shock goals hippie human ideas images impact increasing increasingly individual industrial kinetic art less lives machines man-thing marriage mass mass media ment mental merely mobility move nomic novel novelty organization organizational overchoice pace past pattern percent person political possible problems production psychological quoted rapid rate of change reality relationships response Reyner Banham says science fiction scientists sense sensory sensory deprivation shift social society speed Stanford Research Institute structure style subcults sumer super-industrial super-industrial revolution techno-societies technocratic temporary things tion tomorrow transience turn turnover United urban values York young