“There are limits to the amount of change that the human
organism can absorb, and that by endlessly accelerating change without first
determining these limits, we may submit masses of men to demands they simply
can not tolerate. We run the high risk of throwing them into that peculiar
state that I have called Future Shock.” Thus wrote Alvin Toffler in 1970.
In articulating the effect of Future Shock, Toffler observed
that “US is a nation in which tens of thousands of young people flee reality by
opting for drug-induced lassitude, a nation in which millions of their parents
retreat into video induced stupor or alcoholic haze…”
Thankfully, this bleak vision of the future has not come to
pass. Indeed, the changes have continued to accelerate, perhaps faster than
what Toffler might have imagined. And yet the nation seems quite healthy, and
population thrives without “opting for drug-induced lassitude or retreating to
video induced stupor”.
What happened?
For one thing, human beings have proven to be much more
resilient than predicted in the face of onslaught of something new all the
time. Contrary to what Toffler said, the parents have not given up and “retreated
into alcoholic haze”, rather they have learned how to use FaceBook and iPad. Young people have not fled reality; rather
they have embraced it. They have shaped the future through imagination and hard
work. Not only have they coped; they have thrived.
And this is just the beginning, because the very technology
onslaught that Toffler feared is helping
us cope with itself. Our brain is no
longer alone; it now has plenty of help from the likes of Google and Wikipedia.
A new study confirms, what we intuitively feel, that Google is changing our
brain. It is changing how and what our brain chooses to remember, thereby
leveraging its existing capacity (Ref. “The Internet has become the external
hard drive to our memory” by Daniel Wegner and Adrian Ward, Scientific
American, November 2013).
We have not even talked about implants as a way to cope with
the accelerating future. Memory implants will not just leverage our brain; they
will expand it---increase capacity and processing power. The
Pentagon---DARPA---is already considering restoring combat memory loss using
implantable devices. How far do you think is the day when we can purchase
memory sticks for our brains from the local CVS?
The problem with predictions such as those made by Toffler,
or before that---much before that---Malthus, is that they extrapolate future from present, and do not take into account
human ingenuity to meet challenges.
They are the ones
getting shocked by the future.
Ashok, I am a little less sanguine about the impact of Future Shock on the older population, particularly people in their eighties and above. Sure, there are many among them who pick up on Facebook, and Smartphones and GPS’s, but I think there are also many who (at least in India) don’t want to have anything to do with things that are too complex to operate, and either withdraw, or if they have the comfort of younger folks around them, then they become dependent entirely on the younger generation. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that, and I certainly don’t think they are in any kind of shock, but they trim the use of the universe of functions around them, and some of them withdraw into a shell (those that don’t have younger people at home). Maybe the increase in senility and Alzheimer’s are all symptoms of “future shock”, and some people cope and others don’t. Young people almost never suffer future shock, because even if they come from some remote part of Africa or Asia, and have no exposure to the modern world, and move to the West, say, they pick up things and are able to adjust in months. So physical abilities and mental attitudes affect our ability to adjust to future shock, I think! But certainly, the kind of future shock envisaged by Toffler does not look like it will come to pass on the population as a whole.
ReplyDeleteThanks. That is a correct observation.
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