Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Toffler, Alvin (1990), Future Shock, Random House LLC, Retrieved on 2013-12-19Source Material [books.google.com]
Folksonomies: social science Memes
19 DEC 2013
Specialization is Differentiation
The proliferation of subcults is most evident in the world of work. Many subcults spring up
around occupational specialties. Thus, as the society moves toward greater specialization, it
generates more and more subcultural variety.
The scientific community, for example, is splitting into finer and finer fragments. It is
criss-crossed with formal organizations and associations whose specialized journals,
conferences and meetings are rapidly multiplying in number. But these "open" distinctions
... 1 
notes
notesToffler explores the phenomenon of specialization in the sciences, producing subcults and subsubcults.
20 DEC 2013
It is Impossible to Keep Up with New Knowledge
No man's model of reality is a purely personal product. While some of his images are
based on firsthand observation, an increasing proportion of them today are based on
messages beamed to us by the mass media and the people around us. Thus the degree of
accuracy in his model to some extent reflects the general level of knowledge in society. And
as experience and scientific research pump more refined and accurate knowledge into society,
new concepts, new ways of thinking, supersede, contradict... 1 notes
notesThe growth of knowledge is too fast for anyone to keep on top of it, even in specialized fields. Is the solution for everyone to become generalists?
20 DEC 2013
Professional Parents
If a smaller number of families raise children, however, why do the children have to be their
own? Why not a system under which "professional parents" take on the childrearing function
for others?
Raising children, after all, requires skills that are by no means universal. We don't let
"just anyone" perform brain surgery or, for that matter, sell stocks and bonds. Even the lowest
ranking civil servant is required to pass tests proving competence. Yet we allow virtually
anyone, almost without... 1 notes
notesThe idea that we should have people who work as parents because they are good at it, like we have with day-cares.
20 DEC 2013
The Explosion of Sub-Cults
The techno-societies, far from being drab and homogenized, are honeycombed with just
such colorful groupings—hippies and hot rodders, theosophists and flying saucer fans, skindivers
and skydivers, homosexuals, computerniks, vegetarians, bodybuilders and Black
Muslims.
Today the hammerblows of the super-industrial revolution are literally splintering the
society. We are multiplying these social enclaves, tribes and minicults among us almost as
fast as we are multiplying automotive options. ... 1 notes
notesWe can see this phenomenon in online cultures, but I like how this passage ties it into the issue of personal identity. The cults/fandoms we choose are also a choice about how we are defining ourselves.
20 DEC 2013
The Death of Technocracy
What we are witnessing is the beginning of the final breakup of industrialism and, with it, the
collapse of technocratic planning. By technocratic planning, I do not mean only the
centralized national planning that has, until recently, characterized the USSR, but also the
less formal, more dispersed attempts at systematic change management that occur in all the
high technology nations, regardless of their political persuasion. Michael Harrington, the
socialist critic, arguing that we have rej... 1 notes
notesThis is not a dichotomy--there can be degrees of planning and emergence--but the problems with technocracy are true challenges.
20 DEC 2013
Meaning of Life in Super-Industrial Society
Technocrats suffer from econo-think. Except during war and dire emergency, they start from
the premise that even non-economic problems can be solved with economic remedies.
Social futurism challenges this root assumption of both Marxist and Keynesian
managers. In its historical time and place, industrial society's single-minded pursuit of
material progress served the human race well. As we hurtle toward super-industrialism,
however, a new ethos emerges in which other goals begin to gain pari...Folksonomies: technocracy planning
Folksonomies: technocracy planning
1 notes
notesTechnocrats look at the world purely in terms of economics, but post-modern society looks for other meanings.
20 DEC 2013
The Revolt Against Science
One response to the loss of control, for example, is a revulsion against intelligence.
Science first gave man a sense of mastery over his environment, and hence over the future.
By making the future seem malleable, instead of immutable, it shattered the opiate religions
that preached passivity and mysticism. Today, mounting evidence that society is out of
control breeds disillusionment with science. In consequence, we witness a garish revival of
mysticism. Suddenly astrology is the rage. Zen,...
1 Nostalgia and pseudo-science are a revolt against what they perceive as the strict rules of science and central planning, but the lack of rules and planning results in putting people at the whims of chaos, which is even more limiting.
20 DEC 2013
Social Fragmentation is Freedom
Urbanism—the city dweller's way of life—has preoccupied sociology since the turn of the
century. Max Weber pointed out the obvious fact that people in cities cannot know all their
neighbors as intimately as it was possible for them to do in small communities. Georg
Simmel carried this idea one step further when he declared, rather quaintly, that if the urban
individual reacted emotionally to each and every person with whom he came into contact, or
cluttered his mind with information about...People lament the watering-down of interpersonal relationships in social networks, but total relationships--with all their faults and positives--restrict our freedoms and overwhelm us.
19 DEC 2013
Accelerating Knowledge
The rate at which man has been storing up useful knowledge about himself and the universe
has been spiraling upward for 10,000 years. The rate took a sharp upward leap with the
invention of writing, but even so it remained painfully slow over centuries of time. The next
great leap forward in knowledge—acquisition did not occur until the invention of movable
type in the fifteenth century by Gutenberg and others. Prior to 1500, by the most optimistic
estimates, Europe was producing books at a...Toffler describes and quantifies the increasing production of information in human civilization and its implications.
14 DEC 2017
