Future Shock - Alvin Toffler

Book: Future Shock by Alvin Toffler, 1970

Alvin Toffler was a leading futurist and one of the world’s best-known social thinkers. Future shock just as the title describes how the emerging of super industrialization created the overwhelmed changes in every facet of our life. The book explore the changes in the future, how the changes impacted us physically and physiologically, what’s the consequences of victim of changes, and most importantly author also provide suggestion that how we can manage the changes and most importantly to increase our own adaptability in the future world. What’ll be happening to us, when the world that we’ve grow up with a set of predefined value, culture and believes system that we have been thought since young, where religion, family, community, professional have become root for most, where we will always fall back to in crisis were no longer available and transience in the pace of change, where our old rooted values no longer relevant, family values no longer applicable, till die do us part marriage no longer relevant, structure organizational system can’t keep up with the flexibility and paced and current education system not even prepare us for the future, can we as human race have the capability and adaptability to react to change and making viable choice for our future?

As the research done on 3000 navy man proved that there’re direct relation between changes and sickness, if you had enormous no of changes within short period it might overwhelm the physical coping mechanism thus man has limited capacity to cope with change and over loading the system will lead to serious breakdown of performance and ultimately give up trying to keep pace with the chances, thus they will become the victim of changes. Thus with the pace of change has grown so fast we must equip and prepare our self to be more adaptable and capable than before, learn new ways to anchor our self when our old roots are shaking under the hurricane impact of change, we’re to understand and accept the concept of transience and novelty in life. What we’ll come face to face tomorrow are diversity of options and choices that are so unfamiliar to us, so untested that our past experience will offer little clue to wisdom, hence to able to live in super industrial societies, we will need skills in 3 crucial areas: learning, relating and choosing. As individual, to prepare our self in the biggest changes in the human history we need to be more conscious in our own life pace and our own physical and physiological state only then we’re able to influence it by speeding it up or slow it down to make more conscious choice in creating the new stability zone outside of the instability zone. And to expand our capability and adaptability we need to delve into a transformation education, not only to prepare us and also our next generation for the unknown future.

Prepare our self through future autobiography using our present circumstances, and relating it to possible changes in the future, will at least give us some clues how are we moving forward. It will be an unknown future for sure; however it also opens up new areas of opportunities those who able seize the changes and relate the information, will be another plutocrat in making. Evaluation This is a must read book for anyone who are facing the future, for individual preparation, for parents who concern about their children’s future, for entrepreneur who wants to know about the future direction, for community leaders to prepare and strategize, for political parties to strategize and policy planning. What future hold is in the present of now. Must Read.

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Future shock is the best book if you want to read a good and effective than this book is very good for you.

I prefer and recommend this book to you to read this book. This book has the great quality to give information about different varieties of future related problems and opportunities.

It get motivated to different kinds of Information.This book has a good grammatical quality of the writer is as an effective and also its extract the readers which  are the different strategy of reading the book.

This is very nice book to read and the quality of content of this book is very nice. I like and I love this book.

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Future Shock' depends on the term'Society Shock' and Toffler's book manages how what's to come is coming at us so quick that we're all in a condition of stun from managing the progressions. His written work is great, frequently representing vast complex thoughts with reasonable cases, however he doesn't over-rearrange nor rehash himself.

Alvin Toffler has put a colossal measure of work in this book. It is fundamentally about change, and he examines it in each viewpoint. The book was composed 40 years prior, examining how change and mechanical advancements are molding the future and impacting our lives. Toffler got a great deal of acclaim for his exceptionally precise expectations without bounds. In fact he deserves the recognition, be that as it may he merits much more acclaim for his investigation of the subject.

Toffler closes his book with an invitation to take action. Improve everything whatever you can.

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Life is filled with future shock all the time. He who do not wake to the call of future has to suffer so much he becomes EXTINCT in the eyes of the forward people. CROWD NO MORE WATCHES YOU. Future shock I read 30 years back and I was shocked beyond because I was 31 years felt so much exhausted. I felt my time is over because the revelation of future in life was beyond I could believe.

I DID NOT KNOW WHAT IS MEANT BY COMPUTER. I had heard computer which housed so many moving parts and just could not believe the holes meant computer, it was so fearful to feel at that time and I never liked on it.

THE COMPUTER THIS ALVIN TOFFLER WROTE WAS. He wrote the future office would be home office, one can work from home and there was no need at all to have a office space, workers also would work from their home and this concept just shocked me.

HOW CAN HOME OFFICE WITH A COMPUTER THAT WAS DESK TOP. One may think this review of mine itself is outdated.

IS THIS REVIEW OUTDATED?

Yes if there are no comments and also he wrote third wave, after the effect of FUTURE SHOCK, but here the point is why not one apply in his mind FUTURE SHOCK. FUTURE MEANS. PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE.

This review is a past review for the reader in ms, and if he reads this become present reader, and the FUTURE GAIN depends upon if there is gain, if you find no use in reading means it is past outdated.

I AM BECOMING OUTDATED.

Yes I really find there is too much outdated and this realization itself is FUTURE SHOCK FEEL FOR ME.

1981 HOW DID CITY LIFE WAS. In the absence of mobile phones, in the absence of credit cards, ATM services, petrol was just 5 rs a liter, bullet costed just 6000 rupees, everything was so cheap and ok inflation has taken place, but none of us were prepared for future shock.

NOW THE RATIO IS ONE IS TO 30

Each year now onward life style, speed will be thirty times faster than before. IS IT WORTH TO READ THIS BOOK. Certainly yes, because when you read, you find the author is outdated, just like you rate me, same feel if it comes to your mind that means FUTURE SHOCK yourself can analyse and gain also.

THINK OF FUTURE AND THAT WILL BE SHOCK FOR OTHERS.

It is time each of us not to talk or write the way used to be, what is the use becoming outdated the moment the ink is not yet dry.

SPEED IS EVERYWHERE AND GOING NO WHERE.

JUST OBSERVE PEOPLE THEY ARE SPEEDING AND NO GOAL, BUT YOU HAVE A GOAL THAT IS FUTURE SHOCK FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD.

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Name of the Book: - Future Shock

Author: - Alvin Toffler

Theme: - Visionary

About the Author

Alvin Toffler a world – renowned scholar and futurist, he is the author of highly influential works read in over 50 countries. Future Shock which deals with the acceleration of change won the prestigious “Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger” in France and drew comments from White House.

1. Future Shock **Author coined this term in an article in Horizon in 1965, to describe the shattering stress and disorientation that are induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.

2. Super-industrialization era.People are running blindly in the overpowering thrust of accelerating change, thereby leaving every thing behind to which they were earlier attached.

3. Transience Its being the key word, man’s relationships with the things are highly temporary. Organization is more lateral .Knowledge is less permanent as weekly and one shot magazines are in. In arts also the relationship with symbolic imaginary are growing more and more temporary. All these frequent changes demand new level of adaptability and they stage a new set of devastating social illness-Future Shock.

4. Novelty  **If transience is the first key to understand the society then novelty is the second. Day by day difference is decreasing between familiar and unfamiliar, between routine and non routine and between predictable and non-predictable.

5. Diversity When diversity converges with transience and novelty it rocket our society to historic crisis of adaptation which threatens millions with adaptive breakdown. This breakdown isfuture shock*.

6. Physical and psychological dimensions Author then describes the physical and psychological dimensions of adaptability. Author expresses future shock as both physical and psychological distress that arises from an overload of the human organism’s physical adaptively systems and its decision making processes.

7. How to surviveBy consciously accessing our own life style, building personal stability zone, situational grouping and half way houses to adjust in the super industrialization. Train young people in the perspectives and techniques of scientific futurism, inviting them to share in the exciting Venture of mapping probable future.

SummaryAlvin in 1965 provided a liaison with the future. To readers surprise some of the author’s imagination are today’s reality. The book is not about stories or events, its about the concept of change, and how humans adapt to it. Today we are in a state of hyper drive, and I think reading this book can give you a clear insight on what change is and how to adapt to it. Book contains the power to intrigue, provoke, frighten, encourage and above all it can change everyone who reads it.

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Everybody would have a list of books which has touched them or changed them, Future Shock is definitely one such book. Even though a lot has been written about the visionary book, but I am forced to write here to compensate the negative review (the user totally misses the point).

Future Shock was released written more than 3 decades ago, but is more relevant today than ever. The book is not about stories or events, its about the concept of change, and how humans adapt to it. Today we are in a state of hyperdrive, and I think reading this book can give you a clear insight on what change is and how to adapt to it.

It is not about technology or computers or any one specific revolution. It demonstrates how we can predict the near future using the happenings of the near past. A lot of the future scenarios discussed in the book have come to life.

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It did not take me long to conclude that Future Shock is one excellent modern trash. The hidden theme is: ''Let us return to the caves!''

The reader should not be misguided or disoriented by the fact that Mr.Toffler is a scientific writer, and that his books appear quite convincing. In this book, he raised the issue of ''change,'' and how it affects us.

He has borrowed a vast array of opinions from many doubtful scholars just to give a scientific touch to his thesis. But the plain, homegrown manure fact is that his theory does not explain the meaning of change at all, let alone the problems created by change.

His basic and perhaps his only structure of argument is that humans have made a sudden, swift jump to technological innovations, which in turn has crept into every spheres of our lives, creating havoc and confusion. (Later he inserted a paragraph saying change is purely psychological and not technological, thus contradicting his own theme!)

He says we must slow the pace of development (which means we must stop thinking). He says people in the past lived a simpler, more peaceful life than we live today. Quite true. But he suppressed and ignored the fact that they lived in a technology-less society, where due to this absence, human beings died unnecessarily in untold numbers and believed in demons.

Change, according to him, is purely a technological result (what about behavioral change in religious extremist groups?). This means, to save ourselves from change, we must deliberately and intentionally slow technological advance (but the only way to do this is by killing the brain; or how about throwing away our cell phones to slow our pace of living; or how about banning the use of Internet because it makes life go damn fast, eh!)

He bombarded his book with countless ridiculous examples to confuse readers, thus leaving them handicapped and opinion-less. He scares readers by shouting,''Look! I am a Ph.D. How can you be so sure that I am wrong?''

The pages of Future Shock smell of burnt plastic.

I think change is something that we must face. Whether related to technology or not, it does not matter. And change in reality is largely an attribute of human nature, but entirely not of pig-iron machines.

To fall prey to change is a common personality trait of drunkards, drug abusers, lunatics, and all those who have discarded their mind. My final advise to the good reader is, he or she must approach this book using a first-hand judgment. Succumbing to some tall claims made by a posturing science man is not a healthy decision for those who love literature and life as well.

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