Word: toffler
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...unfamiliar foods, languages and customs. In one extreme case, a girl Peace Corps volunteer arrived on an island in the Far East and within hours found herself unable to breathe, eat or drink; she was shipped right back home. Yet culture shock is mild by comparison with what Alvin Toffler, a scholar and former FORTUNE editor, identifies in a striking new book (Random House; $8.95) as Future Shock. The term, likely to become part of the American language, is defined by Toffler as "the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future. It may well...
What brings on future shock, according to Toffler, is a rate of social change that has become so fast as to be impossible for most human beings to assimilate. "The malaise, mass neurosis, irrationality and free-floating violence already apparent in contemporary life are merely a foretaste of what may lie ahead unless we come to understand and treat this disease," Toffler argues. "Future shock arises from the superimposition of a new culture on an old one. It is culture shock in one's own society. But its impact is far worse. For most travelers have the comforting knowledge...