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
Introduction | 1 |
THE 800TH LIFETIME | 9 |
THE ACCELERATIVE THRUST | 20 |
THE PACE OF LIFE | 38 |
THE THROWAWAY SOCIETY | 53 |
THE NEW NOMADS | 78 |
THE MODULAR MAN | 100 |
THE COMING ADHOCRACY | 131 |
A DIVERSITY OF LIFE STYLES | 319 |
THE PHYSICAL DIMENSION | 343 |
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DIMENSION | 362 |
COPING WITH TOMORROW | 391 |
EDUCATION IN THE FUTURE TENSE | 419 |
TAMING TECHNOLOGY | 451 |
THE STRATEGY OF SOCIAL FUTURISM | 470 |
Time Horizons | 483 |
THE KINETIC IMAGE | 161 |
THE SCIENTIFIC TRAJECTORY | 195 |
THE EXPERIENCE MAKERS | 230 |
THE FRACTURED FAMILY | 250 |
THE ORIGINS OF OVERCHOICE | 277 |
A SURFEIT OF SUBCULTS | 299 |
Anticipatory Democracy | 496 |
Acknowledgments | 515 |
| 551 | |
| 573 | |
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Common terms and phrases
acceleration accelerative thrust adaptive advance alter Alvin Toffler American become behavior Cedric Price Chindit choice cities cope corporations create culture decisions diversity economic engineers environment Eric Gunderson example experience fact faster forces future shock goals hippie human idea images impact increasing increasingly individual industry kinetic art less lives machines man-thing marriage mass mass media ment mental merely mobility move nomic novelty organization organizational overchoice pace past pattern percent political possible problems psychological quoted rapid rate of change reality relationships response revolution Reyner Banham says science fiction scientists sense sensory shift social society speed structure style subcults sumer super-industrial techno techno-societies technocratic temporary things Timothy Leary tion tomorrow transience ture turn turnover United urban values York young