Shocked by the future? An info pro explains how Alvin Tofer got it right

Information Outlook, Oct, 2006 by Cybele Elaine Werts

If the last 50,000 years of man's existence were divided into lifetimes of approximately 62 years each, there have been about 800 such lifetimes. Of these 800, 650 were spent in caves. Only during the last 70 lifetimes has it been possible to communicate effectively from one lifetime to another--as writing made it possible to do. Only during the last six lifetimes did masses of man ever see a printed word. Only during the last four has it been possible to measure time with any precision. Only in the last two has anyone anywhere used an electric motor. And the overwhelming majority of all the material goods we used in daily life today have been developed within the present, the 800th lifetime.--Alvin Toffler, in Future Shock (1970)

When Alvin Toffler published his breakthrough book Future Shock, I was seven years old and had a predilection for peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwiches. The nuts in the peanut butter usually got stuck in my teeth and maybe that's why I wouldn't use a computer for 16 years. "But wait," you might be thinking, "I remember that wild Apple Macintosh commercial that debuted during the 1984 Super Bowl, which would only be 14 years later--where the heck were you for two years?" I must have been distracted by the Super Bowl special five-layer taco dip because a Mac didn't show up in my office until circa 1986, and I remember my college buddies and me circling it like sharks around a hapless fluffernutter sandwich.

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The truth is, we really didn't know what to make of the box with the wee screen--only nine inches if you recall. Sure, we remembered that computer lab somewhere off in the bowels of our high school and college basements, but those were another planet really. There was a feeling of total mystery about what exactly this box was and what it did.

We couldn't even begin to know what to do with the mouse--the mouse that revolutionized everything because it gave you the ability to browse around and figure things out. In other words, you didn't have to already know computer programming, which was pretty arcane stuff. Even so, we learned achingly slowly because, in fact, we didn't even know what a menu was or what "Save" meant.

It was a feeling I would never experience again about technology, because once I understood that this computer thing was going to save me from ever re-typing a letter over and over, not to mention a lifetime of spelling errors, I fell in love with word processing, and that was the entry-level drug that led me to the hard stuff I'm on today.

Okay, so that's how we got from 1970 to 1986 to today; and you can see how there's a long lazy trip in there, far from the speedy millennium stuff we're going to look at ahead.

You might be wondering why I'm reading a book that's more than 35 years old, or how something this archaic might inform our work today as information specialists. Well, it all started when I was jawing away with a fellow information specialist one day, and it turned out we were both fans of Future Shock, which had changed our world-view in a very profound way, as it did for millions of other people at the time.

The idea of "accelerative thrust" has affected my sensibilities in a variety of respects, particularly because I've felt such a strong sense of it in my own life. Accelerative thrust refers to the concept that change is not just happening, it's happening at an accelerated pace. An example of a normal pace of change is having children. For the most part, we can only have children one at a time and we can't speed up that process any because of natural biological limitations.

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In contrast, consider how the television show All in the Family, which ran from 1971 to 1979, was not popular for the first few seasons, but the producers gave it time to find its audience, which, as we now know, it certainly did, Contemporary television shows are often given only one season to find their audience; and if they aren't successful, they're off the air. That's an example of accelerated change, where the process of a television show starting, finding an audience, maturing, and eventually declining and ending, has shortened radically.

Toffler adds: "Acceleration without translates to acceleration within." That means that because our lives are going faster and faster on the outside, it eventually causes us to be affected on the inside, or, in short: we experience future shock. That means we start having problems coping with life in a variety of ways, both on a personal and on a societal level. We might feel this way when a television show we've been watching during its first season is suddenly popped off the air without notice.

Tofer's ideas from 1970 are just as current as ever, and they are particularly relevant to us as information specialists.

We work so much in tandem with technology. More than any other area of our culture, technology is "acceleratively thrusting" toward the speed of light. I read Future Shock while I was off sunbathing in the beautiful White Mountains of New Hampshire; ironic actually, since I didn't have an Internet connection or cell phone service. Now, Toffler's book is a big tome, and talks about a variety of issues, most of which I cannot address here. What I do want to look at however, is the technological aspects and how they affect our lives in the information biz.