In front of me, Lucy, the Golden Retriever, is whirling in circles across the room attempting to get a good chomp on her tail. It dawns on me, tail chasing makes a great metaphor for human chasing of technology.
Alvin Toffler wrote in the Introduction to his book Future Shock, “In 1965, in an article in Horizon, I coined the term “future shock” to describe the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.”
Future Shock was required reading in many a college course when I was in college. Up until last summer, I would probably have lumped it in with a bunch of other pretentious and overwrought books of the 70s.
However, decades later, leafing through my dust-covered copy, I ended up sitting on the garage floor for an hour reading and saying, “oh wow.” I guess being older and more experienced, I was struck by Toffler’s message that changes in technology and computers were going to drive a whole new level of future shock.
Consider that, prior to 1920, the time elapsed between invention and full implementation for such appliances as vacuum cleaners and electric stoves was about 34 years. By the time Toffler wrote his 1965 article, the invention to full societal acceptance had gone down to eight years for things like television and combination washer/dryers.
By 1971, when Future Shock was published, computers were shrinking from the size of small houses. They were, however, still bulky and operated by mysterious acolytes known as programmers or system analysts.
As I write this in 2019 I’m ignoring my one and quarter inch wide one quarter inch thick wristwatch that is stridently trying to tell me my heart rate, provide me with an incoming text message from my brother 2,000 miles away, show me the weather forecast, oh, and, coincidentally, tell me the time.
These watch functions are great and useful, but my personal future shock is I never seem to have time to master them. Nor do I really have a handle on the tools and apps afforded by my Galaxy S7 phone, my personal Kindle Fire tablet, my work iPad. any one of three laptops, my recently built desktop computer, or even my five year old digital SLR camera, which could probably be taught to communicate with the watch, if I had the time to ponder the connection.
Like Lu, I’m still trying to sink my teeth into that technological tail and stop the spinning. Once upon a time I toyed with the idea that tech would eventually allow me to ride my moving sidewalk up to the house, have technology open the door, greet me with music, adjust the blinds for the optimum sun exposure, feed the dogs, cook up a tasty meal, and shovel it into my mouth.
Some of my above list is already available. All of it could be done. But at what price? The 50s and 60s dream of the future that we would all become great minds mounted on flaccid bodies has proven to be quite wrong. Factoring out certain geniuses like Steven Hawking, research and life experience has shown that our minds work best when our bodies are fit.
Our minds also work best, and I think Hawking was a good example of this, when they are challenged. Letting tech do all the thinking is, in my humble opinion a bad, probably very bad, idea. Using tech to supplement human thinking is good.
How to determine how much to supplement is a challenge we can all take on in our personal and societal use of technology.
Having failed to catch her tail, Lucy has lost interest and fallen asleep. I, however, could say so much more. But we future shocked humans seem to want to read only so much. Succinct writing is not a bad thing, by the way. It just means I need to break up observations from re-reading Future Shock into more frequent, shorter, pieces. Stay tuned.