When I was in high school, a book I chose to read and report on was the 1970 novel, “Future Shock”. The authors defined future shock as, “a state of psychological trauma, disorientation, and physical stress caused by too much change in too short a period of time.” The author’s premise was that, even though humans have shown themselves to be adaptable over time, change was coming far too fast for people to physically and psychologically adapt. The resulting overstimulation would manifest itself as ever increasing anxiety, confusion, apathy, physical illness, and social isolation.
Have we arrived? I’m certainly seeing those things and more. I’ve decided to reread the book that 56 year old book from today’s perspective.
Having both kids and grandkids, I can definitely say that the younger generations are having absolutely no problems whatsoever adjusting to the changes from our generation. They just look at us like we are a bunch of old fuddy-duddies who have no clue how to get by in modern society.
This is just another name for The Singularity, just looked at from another angle. Yes, it’s happening. Yes, it will happen. It’s been happening, continually, for all of human history. Old people have future shock, while young people find the times to be normal. Until the young people grow old, and are now shocked by what the new youngsters consider normal.
Really? Haven’t you noticed the movement to limit social media usage among kids? Are you saying that movement is like the 1950s reactions from preachers and many other adults that “rock-n-roll is sinful”–that it is an over-reaction?
The question is what do you mean by “adjusting?” My daughter can sit and watch short-form videos all day as good as anyone. That doesn’t exactly prepare her for life.
Everyone expects Grandpa to be old and out of touch and no one expects Mom and Dad to be “cool”. They expect Mom and Dad to prepare their kids to become adults in the real world. I think it becomes a problem when change happens so fast that parents can no longer meaningfully prepare their children.
For example “go to a good college so you can get a good job after graduation” used to be good advice for decades.
Now college costs are so exorbitantly expensive and the sort of corporate jobs that
“I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary to me. It’ll happen to you!”
–Grandpa Simpson
Maybe, but I don’t think it’s the technology. I think it’s the social changes that have happened in the last 10 years. I can adapt to new tech easily*. The coarsening of society is a different story.
*. Not that I don’t have my moments of wondering about something like, say, present day video games compared to what games were like back in my day (the late 80s and early 90s). But I decided to test the hypothesis that it’s just me and not the games by busting out some of those old classics (Contra, Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and Castlevania to be specific). Sure enough, it turns out that it isn’t those gosh darn new fangled modern games, it’s that now that I’m almost 50, I just don’t have the reflexes and patience for gaming that I did at 10 or 15.
It was good advice, at the time when the actual advice most parents were giving their kids was “Grow up to get a good factory job like mine”. Those parents weren’t giving their kids good advice, either.
I first learned about Futsies, individuals suffering from future shock, in Judge Dredd stories from 2000 AD. To some degree, sure. Many years ago, if you told me Chuck was a nice guy I’d just think he was a nice guy. Now a “nice guy” is someone who only pretends to be nice to get into someone’s pants. Language of course evolves and I can usually evolve with it, but sometimes I don’t bother and just continue using phrases as I’ve always used them.
I do not think anybody cares what kids are doing online, but they do care about corporations and other predators subsequently exploiting them, which is not a bad thing to care about.
Yeah, I have to agree. I guess that, when the first European ships approached the shores of Japan, that was an example of “future shock”. Since every day we wake up is “today”, that means every tomorrow is the “future”.
Future shock is more like people no longer understanding how their own world actually works. Like people deciding to pursue careers as “influencers” or in “cryptocurrency”. Like that seems like such nonsense to me that those are actual jobs. Or how people are frustrated with online dating sites longer go out and meet people in bars and clubs.
Like a lot of that seems incomprehensibly odd and bizarre to me. Even if it’s a relatively small percentage of participants who make a living, let along a lucrative one doing this, it doesn’t seem like something that actually creates value for society. Unlike, say, Amazon which created an entire virtual marketplace and supply chain where you can pretty much purchase any object and have it shipped to you in days or hours, saving a huge amount of time and cost for most people, influencers and crypto bros have not created anything of value.
I think that qualifies. I don’t believe we “no longer have a future”. But AI is certainly introducing technology that would seem to fundamentally alter much of how we currently do things.
These are sorts of things that make me question if I am giving my children proper parenting advice.
Also, in my mind, NYC should still look like this image of the classic skyline from the 80s:
The actual modern skyline looks like something out of a sci-fy film from the not too distant future.
