The Future Is Here! But Is It Shocking?
Thirty years ago authors Heidi and Alvin Toffler sounded a warning bell for postindustrial society. Today the Tofflers take stock and look ahead to the Internet Age.
Published December 2000
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Thirty years ago Heidi and Alvin Toffler sounded a warning bell for postindustrial society. Today the Tofflers take stock and look ahead to the Internet Age
Few writers have been more influential in defining the late 20th century -- and the start of the 21st -- than Heidi and Alvin Toffler. Along with a few other midcentury intellectuals, notably sociologist Daniel Bell, the Tofflers shaped much of the early vision of the postindustrial, information-oriented society, which is only now becoming fully manifest.
A sure sign of the Tofflers' enduring relevance as an intellectual force is the continual reissuance of their seminal work, Future Shock, which was first published 30 years ago. (Although only Alvin's name appears in the byline, Heidi was his collaborator and should share the credit.) The book has been through 53 printings in its original American version and has been published in more than 50 countries. And long ago the term future shock entered the lexicon to describe, to quote from the book's introduction, the "shattering stress and disorientation" that human beings experience when subjected to "too much change in too short a time."
The Tofflers have followed up with several other books -- most notably The Third Wave, Powershift, and War and Anti-War -- that have deeply influenced a vast number of readers, including government and business leaders. Now septuagenarians, the Tofflers display the confidence and vigor of a couple decades younger. They contribute to their own consulting firm, Toffler Associates, whose headquarters is in Manchester, Mass., thousands of miles from their West Coast home. And of course, they are working on another book, about which they will say not a word.
But that doesn't mean they lack for conversation. On a sunny day late this past summer, contributing writer Joel Kotkin talked with Al, as he is known to his friends, and Heidi over lunch at a Los Angeles hotel. (Heidi had to leave halfway through the three-hour session to attend to personal business.)
An afternoon meal with the Tofflers, Kotkin reports, felt like a throwback to a more exciting intellectual era -- London during Samuel Johnson's time, Paris in the 1920s, or New York in the 1950s -- when ideas and debate crackled without the deadening encroachment of political correctness, cell phones, or pocket pagers. In their verbal jousting, the Tofflers mused on what they got wrong in Future Shock, as well as what they had right, and reflected on what effect tidal waves such as the Internet will have on us during the next 30 years.
Inc.: Future Shock conveyed an ominous sense that people were going to have an adaptational breakdown. Today I see a lot of technophoria: people talking about a 30,000 Dow, a society saved by the Internet, a long economic boom.
Heidi: How many people suffer from clinical depression? The feeling they are time-squeezed, harassed? The information overload is real. It's multifaceted. It's overwhelming.
Al: I would argue that there is an enormous amount of uncertainty, self-destructive decisions, confusion. Kids are faced not with the old problem of not being able to get a job. Now they don't know how to choose. What direction do you take? The environment has become infinitely more complex. The choices are more complex.
As for the stock-market euphoria, I don't necessarily believe in linear extrapolation. I therefore certainly don't believe in a long boom of 25 years uninterrupted by terrible punctuations.
Inc.: One of your most accurate predictions was the demise of the big organization. In 1970 that wasn't so obvious.
Heidi: I remember when IBM meant "I've been moved." The IBM employees revolted, and they said, "Look, I can't move my wife, my kids into a new school every year."
Al: You don't revolt when jobs are scarce.
Heidi: But also, you don't need that geographical mobility anymore. You can work at home. As long as you have your computer, you don't need to go into the office every day.
Inc.: We've seen the collapse of the regimented, hierarchical world of business.
Heidi: Not enough. There are many Fortune 500 companies that are still organized hierarchically and bureaucratically.
Al: But we've also seen exactly what we wrote about, the breakdown of bureaucracy. We've seen enormous changes in the organization of business.
Inc.: You were very accurate about the organization man, but you didn't have a lot to say about small business and the entrepreneurial revolution. Did that catch you by surprise?
