Future Shock

Rating:
Summary: A timely work
Review: Toffler saw something important. He in 1970 saw that the accelerated pace of technological development would have a profound effect on the daily life of individuals. He understood that the disjunction between the technological changes and the human adaptation to them would be the source of major problems.
He understand that a new era of customization was bringing a variety to human choice, a kind of freedom which might in another sense take away freedom. He saw too the importance of ' information' and how it would be at the heart of transforming the world economy.
Toffler went on to write a number of other works about ' social change in the future' but this is by far the most interesting and profound one.
'Future Shock' is now a part of mankind's vocabulary and a continual element in our everyday life - experience.
Who knows what will come next and how wonderful or terrible it will be for us all?

Rating:
Summary: He does lack historical perspective but...
Review: 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.