A way over-rated exercise in "futurology"

Alvin Toffler's Future Shock came out in 1970, around the time I turned 11 years old. I vaguely knew about it back then, and I think I read parts of it in my teens, and then in its entirety a few years ago. Orson Welles even narrated a documentary of that title in the 1970's, which you can find on YouTube. See the first part below:



I ran across an article about this book's 40th anniversary which reminded me of it.

Frankly, the experience of reading Future Shock left me underwhelmed. I can see why this book might have caused a sensation for a week or two back in 1970 because it seemed insightful, radical, edgy or whatever. I just don't see why it still has that reputation now, given the deceleration of technological progress in the last 40 years, indeed the collapse of progress in many areas.

The idea of widespread "future shock" probably sounded plausible to the generation of adults alive in 1970 who had come of age by 1950 or so, which included my father, born in 1927, the year Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic. (Dad even bought that copy of Future Shock I skimmed through as a teen.) Those adults grew up in a world before computers, antibiotics, the Pill, nuclear power, astronautics, television, etc. became "game changers" in the daily life of developed countries by the late 1960's, and led to many social changes which the older generations found anxiety-inducing. Hence Toffler coined the phrase "future shock," based on the analogy to "culture shock," to describe this anxiety and disorientation.

Fair enough. But Toffler overplayed his hand by arguing that "future shock" would become the normal state of human affairs from then on. And I have to call bullshit on that. I grew up with many of the things in my environment which allegedly caused "future shock" in my elders, so the exposure would presumably inoculate me from their effects. But hardly anything has come along since 1970 to give me future shock, and I turn 51 next month.

Look at the reality of our lives in our mysterious, far-future year 2010: Peak Oil, relinquished manned space exploration, relinquished supersonic air travel, the progressive failure of antibiotics to stop infections, bed bugs in five star hotels around the U.S., the inability to maintain the 20th Century's infrastructure legacy because public employee unions get priority claim on tax money, something like another Great Depression, etc. Do these sound like the characteristics of a society heading in a "futuristic," as in "science fiction-like," direction? I don't think iPads compensate for all the stagnation or regression we see in more important areas, including threats to our literal life support.