Future Shock author Alvin Toffler, who foresaw digital age’s disruptions, dies at 87
Guru of the post-industrial age whose 1970 book was hugely influential, in China as much as elsewhere, was right about email and information overload, but not underwater cities or infinitely rising prosperity
Alvin Toffler, a guru of the post-industrial age whose million-selling Future Shock and other books anticipated the disruptions and transformations brought about by the rise of digital technology, has died. He was 87.
He died in his sleep at his home in the Bel Air neighbourhood of Los Angeles.
One of the world’s most famous futurists, Toffler was far from alone in seeing economies shift from manufacturing and mass production to a computerised and information-based model. But few were more effective at popularising the concept, predicting the effects and assuring the public that the traumatic upheavals of modern times were part of a larger and more hopeful story.
“Future shock”, a term he first used in a 1965 magazine article, was how Toffler defined the growing feeling of anxiety brought on by the sense that life was changing at a bewildering and ever accelerating pace. His book combined an understanding tone and page-turning urgency as he diagnosed contemporary trends and headlines, from war protests to the rising divorce rate, as symptoms of a historical cycle overturning every facet of life.
“We must search out totally new ways to anchor ourselves, for all the old roots – religion, nation, community, family, or profession – are now shaking under the hurricane impact of the accelerative thrust,” he wrote.