Future Shock

Future Shock
AuthorAlvin Toffler
LanguageEnglish
SubjectSocial Sciences
PublisherRandom House
Publication date
1970
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
ISBN0-394-42586-3 (original hardcover)
Followed byThe Third Wave 

Future Shock is a 1970 book by American futurist Alvin Toffler,[1] written together with his wife Adelaide Farrell,[2][3] in which the authors define the term "future shock" as a certain psychological state of individuals and entire societies, and a personal perception of "too much change in too short a period of time". The book, which became an international bestseller, has sold over 6 million copies and has been widely translated.

The book grew out of the article "The Future as a Way of Life" in Horizon magazine, Summer 1965 issue.[4][5][6][7]

  1. ^ "Alvin Toffler: still shocking after all these years - Interview". New Scientist. 19 March 1994.
  2. ^ Schneider, Keith (2019-02-12). "Heidi Toffler, Unsung Force Behind Futurist Books, Dies at 89". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-01-08.
  3. ^ "Future Shock at 40: What the Tofflers Got Right (and Wrong)". Fast Company. 15 October 2010.
  4. ^ Toffler, Alvin, "The Future as a Way of Life", Horizon magazine, Summer 1965, Vol VII, Num 3
  5. ^ "For the love of reading: Horizon Magazine hardcover issues 1959 - 1977 table of contents". September 8, 2013.
  6. ^ Eisenhart, Mary, "Alvin And Heidi Toffler: Surfing The Third Wave: On Life And Work In The Information Age", MicroTimes #118, January 3, 1994
  7. ^ "Alvin Toffler: still shocking after all these years: New Scientist meets the controversial futurologist" Archived 2009-02-10 at the Wayback Machine, New Scientist, 19 March 1994, pp. 22–25. "What led you to write Future Shock? – While covering Congress, it occurred to us that big technological and social changes were occurring in the United States, but that the political system seemed totally blind to their existence. Between 1955 and 1960, the birth control pill was introduced, television became universalized, commercial jet travel came into being and a whole raft of other technological events occurred. Having spent several years watching the political process, we came away feeling that 99 per cent of what politicians do is keep systems running that were laid in place by previous generations of politicians. Our ideas came together in 1965 in an article called 'The future as a way of life', which argued that change was going to accelerate and that the speed of change could induce disorientation in lots of people. We coined the phrase 'future shock' as an analogy to the concept of culture shock. With future shock you stay in one place but your own culture changes so rapidly that it has the same disorienting effect as going to another culture"

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