Alvin Toffler, Future Shock
(1970)
American expert on the future of organizations and people (pictured right).
This is the first part of Toffler's trilogy...
It was followed by:
1. The Third Wave (1980)
2. Powershift (1991)
See also...
Alvin Toffler in the Management
Gurus section.
Book summary
What is future shock?
Too much change in too short a time
It causes:
- problems for relationships (at home and work and in society).
To cope with future shock, people need stability zones i.e. stable relationships in life
and work.
Why is future
shock becoming more common?
- people’s experiences are so new they can’t learn from them.
Factors affecting the future
1. Change
(with the pace of life speeding up).
2. Innovation and technology (including biotechnology).
The adverse social effects of technology (like unemployment) must be dealt with (taming
technology).
3. New information and knowledge
(helped by computers, education, continual re-learning).
Education must:
- be relevant to people’s lives.
- teach how to learn and relate to others.
Decisions are made more difficult and stressful by
information overload.
4. Customer satisfaction
As people become richer, they want
- a better product experience from psychological benefits like brand image.
So organizations must become experience makers.
5. Individualism and diversity of values and
lifestyles
(with a surfeit of subcults).
6.The throw-away
society
(in which things are used and quickly discarded)
Toffler was the first person to use this now widely used phrase.
7.Transient relationships
These lead to:
- the Modular Man (or disposable person)
- broken homes (the fractured family).
8. The “ad- hocracy” organization
This is an organization structure that is:
- non-hierarchical (with project based teams).
9. The service economy
(in which people in service industries outnumber those in manufacturing).
Key quotes on change
Change is the process by which the future invades our lives.
Today change is so swift... that yesterday’s truths suddenly become today’s fictions.
The death of permanence (describing the future).
The rate of change has implications quite apart from, and sometimes more important than, the directions of
change.
Key quote on organization
structure
The introduction of Ad-hocracy increases the adaptability of organizations; but it strains the adaptability of
men.
Key quotes on education and
learning
By instructing students how to learn, unlearn and relearn, a powerful new dimension can be added to
education.
Tomorrow’s illiterate will be the man who has not learned how to learn.
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