Week’s Citation ClassicToffler A. Futureshock.New York: RandomHouse,1970. 505 p.

Future Shock argues that people overwhelmed bychange suffer not only concrete biochemical con-sequences, but also marked psychological dis-tress—disorientation, confusion, occasionallylapsing into violence or apathy. It analyzes thesocial, psychological, and political implications ofaccelerating change and recommends changes ineducation, control of technology, and a new formof political process termed anticipatory democra-cy. (The Science Citation Index~(SC!

5) and the

Social Sciences Citation Index5

’ (SSC15

) indicatethat this book has been cited in over 1,195 publica-tions since 1970.]

Alvin Toffler40 East 78th StreetNew York, NY 10021

September 13, 1982

“Future Shock1

is a book of social analy-sis and criticism. Its subject is change, theacceleration of change, and our attempts tocope with it. Rapid technological and socialchange translates into more transience,novelty, and diversity in the environment. Inturn, this places heavy pressure on people toadapt.

‘Yet, there are, at any time, certainbiological and cultural limits to the speedand complexity of our adaptive decision-making. When accelerating technological,social, and cultural changes demand toomany (or too complex) adaptive decisions intoo short a time, our decision-making com-petence deteriorates. We may become ‘irra-tional.’

“In writing not merely on the effects ofsocial and technological change on individ-uals and organizations, but more specifical-ly on the effects of the acceleration ofchange, Future Shock approached the ques-tion of human adaptation in a novel way.

“The problems of maladaptation to rapidchange first came to my notice in thelate-i 950s when I was a political correspon-dent in Washington. It became clear to methat the government lacked adequate sens-ing mechanisms with which to monitor andcope with rapid change.

“In 1965, I was invited by Horizon maga-zine to write an article about our unread!-

I. Toffler A. Future shock. t4

ew York: Bantam Books, 1981. 517 p.

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ness for the future. In preparation, I beganreading about ‘culture shock’—the disloca-tion travelers experience when suddenlyplunged into an alien culture. An analogyoccurred to me: if people could be, so tospeak, dislocated in space, why not in time?If accelerating techno-social change wascreating an alien society in our very midst,perhaps much of the widespread disorienta-tion, alienation, psychological stress, andeven breakdown we see is the result of adap-tational failure. Perhaps people could sufferfrom ‘the premature arrival of the future’and go into ‘future shock.’

“This analogy started me and my wife(who is also my colleague, editor, and intel-lectual companion) on five years ofresearch.

“Future Shock first appeared in July 1970and clearly struck a very raw nerve. Sincethen, some 7,000,000copies have been soldin more than 50 countries, and it has beentranslated into two score languages fromArabic and Hebrew to Greek, Chinese, Pol-ish, Rumanian, Finnish, as well as, of course,French, Spanish, Japanese, and German. It isnow used in hundreds of university coursesin many different disciplines from sociologyto biology, religion, jurisprudence, philoso-phy, and experimental psychology. Numer-ous experiments have been triggered by it. ithas been quoted by presidents and primeministers, as well as scientists. Many periodi-cals have commented on it, from scientificjournals in the US to Pravda in Moscow andLe Monde in Paris. The term ‘future shock’has also made its appearance in various re-cent dictionaries, and ~he book has won thePrix du Meilleur Livre Etranger as well as theMcKinsey Foundation Book Award for its‘distinguished contribution to managementliterature.’

“I suspect there are several reasons whyFuture Shock has been so widely cited in thescientific literature. First, it is interdisciplin-ary. Second, the issues it deals with are in-herently international. Third, it looks at theproblems of change and adaptation in anovel way—cutting across conventionallines of analysis. And finally, the basic phe-nomenon—accelerative change—is feltstrongly in science itself, so that many scien-tists have a personal experience of the veryprocess described.”

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