“Alvin Toffler is not currently open to receiving Introductions or InMail™.”

Alvin Toffler is not currently open to receiving Introductions or InMail™. Grrr. Not very futuristic of you Mr. Toffler.

The Speed of Convergence

I suppose I am somewhat of a social determinist.  I believe in technology.  I’d like to believe that I am tech savvy.

Technology, like most elements in life, lives in a symbiotic relationship with other elements of the universe.  So where there is change there is often confusion; and where there is positive change there also exist the chance of unforeseen consequence.  So I tell myself, and I try to teach my students,

Future Shock – McGraw Hill’s Attempt at an Orsen Wells Kung Fu Movie

Those of you posting about Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, if you haven’t already, check out the five-part McGraw Hill (1972) documentary on the book that starred Orsen Wells: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ghzomm15yE.  While the narrative did an adequate job summarizing the ideas presented in Toffler’s Future Shock (1970), it did so bringing to the table all the over-the-top elements of production of a cheesy 1970’s kung fu film (or porno).  From the soundtrack to the special effects and narrative style of Orsen Wells, this film which very accurately describes the future is ironically

Education = “hopeless anachronism”

When Alvin Toffler wrote his book Future Shock in 1970 he was projecting what the future would be like in regard to the human race, technology, education, and many other parts of the world.  The majority of the book seems to focus on the changes that will occur and the adjustments that humans will have to make in regard to technology and the human race.   Toffler however does discuss his views on education in the book as well.   In his opinion, “what passes for education today, even in our ‘best’ schools and colleges, is a hopeless anachronism”.   According to Meriam Webster Dictionary anachronism is “the state or condition of being chronologically out of place”.  Toffler went on to state that schools face backward in the direction of a dying system, rather than forward toward a developing  system.

The Effect of Transience on a Small Town

Like some of my colleagues, I have been able to read only a portion of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock. So far, I have found myself agreeing with a few of his ideas and disagreeing with most. On page 38, Toffler writes that “time passes more swiftly for the old,” then goes into a detailed explanation of why that is the case. Personally, I couldn’t agree with that more. As a young boy, there were plenty of times when two hours felt like twelve hours. Nowadays, depending on what I’m doing, two hours can feel like two minutes. Then, there are other ideas of his, such as the concept of “parental professionals” on page 216, which I feel are way out there. Of what I have read so far, Toffler’s depiction of transience is one that I can relate to and that I am a part of. On page 74, Toffler states that “the professional and technical populations are among the most mobile of all Americans.” After all, I consider myself a professional and I have moved five times in my life. (Granted, a couple of the moves were for the sole purpose of getting out of an apartment and into a house, but they were moves nonetheless, and I think five moves is a lot for a guy who’s only 40.) For this post, however, I want to take his idea of transience in a different direction.

Loose connections? A not-so-shocking future…

In Future Shock, Alvin Toffler presents us with his view of how people can easily become overwhelmed by change in the world around them including family, work, education, and technology.  The most compelling part of his argument comes in parts one and two of the book entitled “The Death of Permanence” and “Transience”, respectively.  In these sections, Toffler looks at the changing world in respect to the