The Present Shock We’re Experiencing
Our modern obsession with the possibility of truly smart machinery keeps a self-important anti-humanism alive and kicking.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 Read More ›