Back in 1970, Alvin Toffler wrote Future Shock, where he introduced the idea that too much rapid change could leave people feeling overwhelmed, stressed, and disconnected. He called it “future shock” — and honestly, reading it today feels almost eerie with how accurate he was.
Toffler believed we were moving from an industrial society to a “super-industrial” one, where everything would change faster than people could handle. The book was a huge hit at the time, selling over six million copies, but what’s crazy is how much of what he talked about feels even more true in 2025. Some examples:
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Disposable culture: He predicted throwaway products, and now we have single-use plastics, fast fashion, and gadgets that feel obsolete within a year.
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Tech burnout: Toffler said technology would become outdated faster and faster. Today, if you don’t upgrade your phone or update your software, you feel left behind.
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Rent instead of own: Services like Airbnb and Uber fit his prediction that we’d move away from owning things and toward renting everything.
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Job instability: He nailed the rise of the gig economy, freelancing, and how fast-changing industries make it hard to stay trained up and secure.
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Transient relationships: He warned about shallow, fleeting social connections — something social media, dating apps, and global mobility have absolutely amplified.
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Information overload: This term literally came from Future Shock, and if you’ve ever felt exhausted just from scrolling through your feeds or reading the news, you know exactly what he meant.
Toffler also talked about the “death of permanence” — not just products, but relationships, jobs, even identities becoming temporary and interchangeable. He warned it would cause “shattering stress and disorientation.” Looking around at the rising rates of anxiety, depression, and burnout today, it’s hard not to see what he meant.
I think about this book a lot when I read about some of the sick things happening today. Is this a warped perspective?
I’m absolutely shocked at how racist the future got.
i’m in my early 40s. back when i was a kid - even in the southern US - there was a clear message that racism was on its way out. tons of sitcoms even did special episodes about it! (/s) And because media was so controlled back then (ie you couldn’t just post something to the internet), a lot of people actually blelieved it. i know that i did as a kid who didn’t know any better.
Is this similar to violent crime? A lot of right wingers bemoan the increasing amount of violence in “blue states and cities”. Except, almost by any way you can measure it, violent crime has been on the decrease for years now. Is racism becoming worse, or are you just becoming more aware of it?
Same here. Grew up deep in the South. Kids got in trouble for racist talk in public school.
Nobody’s suggesting it wasn’t. But a lot of us have lived our whole lives with the idea that racism was generally frowned upon by most and that it was naturally dying out. I don’t think many of us could have predicted how readily it would come roaring back, along with god damn nazis, FFS.
Eh, I’m not surprised. I’m more surprised at how comfortable with people being racist in public.
Compared to 1970? Trump is making it worse but it’s not that bad yet.
Edit for the downvoters.
You kids have no idea how racist America was in the 1970’s.
1974, Boston:
https://segregationinamerica.eji.org/report/how-segregation-survived.html
Nope. The 1970s were better than the 60s, and worse than the 80s. And the 90s were better still. The early 2000s were even better… but here we are certainly backtracking from where things had been going.
But I didn’t say that the 70’s were worse than the 1960’s!!!
I said the 1970’s were worse than today.
