In 1970, the American writer and futurist Alvin Toffler insisted the western world was suffering from “future shock,” the challenge of the times, too much change, too radical a kind, too fast for our social brains. He tapped a nerve: an information technology revolution (Intel’s microchip, the basis of the modern computer, debuted in 1971) was underway. Today the “IT revolution” is old hat, and future shock has morphed into what author and documentarian Douglas Rushkoff once called “present shock.” As the subtitle of his 2014 book puts it, present shock happens when everything happens now. The common thread here is our hyper-technological consumerist society that happily ignores lessons of the past and dismisses history itself as a compendium of folly and evil — or just downright boring.

If you’re on the web and have a pulse, you’ve no doubt notice that things happen quickly. Memes, debates, topics, gripes, cancellations appear seemingly out of thin air, and responses and commentary follow almost immediately. Rushkoff is right; it’s a kind of “present shock.” We wake up to one world and go to sleep in another. But the idea that the world is changing too fast is juxtaposed by another that sings a different song. Scientific discovery and innovation aren’t on some exponential curve. Tweets are. And that’s a big difference. We see a rapidly changing landscape and assume we’re solving cold fusion or making flying cars as well. We’re not. Few stop to wonder if all that “change” is a lot of mindless gossipy chitchat. Might we be “exponentially” changing into a shallow and confused society? Seems a defensible position. For that matter, seems a worry.

The celebrated early humanist Petrarch’s recovery of the lost letters of Cicero marks a watershed moment in European history. Here a new world — the early Renaissance — was birthed and supplanted and improved by study of the old. It was as if humanity wanted to find and nurture the best of itself, so discovery of the greats of the classic Roman Greek world and innovating for the future joined forces. But our culture today seems unconcerned and even dismissive about humans and their potential. Studying the past isn’t some valiant pursuit. Studying ourselves in a positive light seems like signing on to study silly error-prone organisms with bias. What a drag. This sort of self-flagellation would make little sense in a healthy, humanistic world, but our modern obsession with the possibility of truly smart machinery keeps a self-important anti-humanism alive and kicking. If we, after all, are error prone, sort of stupid, and eminently biased, the quest for superior AI not only makes sense, but it also seems like a moral imperative. And. Here we are.

Big Data, data-driven AI, data analysis, and the like are clearly important as means to business or scientific ends, but it’s downright bizarre to view them as a replacement for human ingenuity and possibility.

But here we are. In present shock for sure.