Future Shock
Book by Alvin TofflerWikipedia
32
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13
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13
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Search complete. 32 mentions across 13 episodes found for "Future Shock".
Sep 7, 2026
Bryan O'RourkeGUEST
And in today's world, because of all the change that goes on, it's very hard to connect the dots.
Bryan O'RourkeGUEST
In Mark Miller's book on common greatness, why this is so important to you, is that he says that it is our responsibility to be able to define and shape the future.
Bryan O'RourkeGUEST
So we have to understand what it is chaos means and represents so we can navigate it for our organizations.
Bryan O'RourkeGUEST
Of course, connection is the connection, the mutual understanding and respect, the thing that we deliver through experience.
Bryan O'RourkeGUEST
And when people work together, like Greta said earlier, good things happen.
Bryan O'RourkeGUEST
So chaos to connection.
Bryan O'RourkeGUEST
What's important about connection, if you haven't read the book, the Book of Joy, the Dalai Lama, he talks about when we feel love and kindness toward others, it makes others feel that way and it makes us feel that way as much.
Bryan O'RourkeGUEST
And that's what we do every day.
Andros PayneGUEST
And Those have been times where there's been a lot of insecurity in organizations, a lot of questioning.
Andros PayneGUEST
There's a fantastic book called Future Shock, written in 1970 by Alvin Toffler.
Andros PayneGUEST
And he describes the shock that the world was feeling at the time where the semiconductor was then really coming of age.
Andros PayneGUEST
Computers were just on the rise.
Andros PayneGUEST
And that's how he characterized his future shock, that the change was so rapid.
Andros PayneGUEST
that people didn't have time to adequately adapt to it.
Andros PayneGUEST
And that created a lot of fear in organizations.
Sophie WadeHOST
You know, we're dealing with so much, so much that is overwhelming.
Sophie WadeHOST
Alvin Toffler is a futurist who I admired tremendously, and he wrote Future Shock and The Third Wave.
Sophie WadeHOST
And the Future Shock he wrote first in 1970, saying that all the changes that are coming, that are starting and coming, and he saw basically all of the stuff that we're dealing with now, is too much for us.
Sophie WadeHOST
It's too much for us humans.
Patrick ReganGUEST
Yeah.
Sami ShahHOST
And all along, the 70s also had their own information apocalypse.
Sami ShahHOST
In 1970, Alvin Toffler published Future Shock, arguing that people were being overwhelmed by too much change arriving too quickly.
Sami ShahHOST
The book sold millions.
Sami ShahHOST
In 1972, it became a documentary narrated by Orson Welles, who wandered through airports smoking a cigar and explaining that humanity was being psychologically destroyed by technology.
Robert T. LeeGUEST
So I'll stop there, you know, because everyone I think can see there's a clear benefit, but then everyone looks at, you know, what is it going to mean for my job? And I will tell everyone, I feel your job, regardless of what you're doing right now, is going to 100% change so rapidly that you're going to feel uncomfortable with it.
Robert T. LeeGUEST
And one of the best books out there is called Future Shock by Alvin Toffler.
Robert T. LeeGUEST
It talks about how society has a hard time adopting to new technologies quickly.
Robert T. LeeGUEST
And the only analogy I'll make that to is I think a lot of folks out there forget how fast they went from going into the office and working from home during COVID.
Matt PoepselHOST
Mm-hmm.
Steve FarberGUEST
Do you remember a book called Future Shock?
Matt PoepselHOST
Yeah, I know it by title.
Steve FarberGUEST
He was a futurist, and one of the dynamics that he described, this was in the '70s, okay? He called it high tech, high touch, that the more technological the world gets, the more our desire for touch, human-to-human connection, the greater that desire will become.
Adam ZimmanHOST
But it's funny because this was one of the things that we encountered when we were writing Progressive Delivery.
Adam ZimmanHOST
was one of the books that we found to be kind of the greatest echo of what we were encountering in writing was actually a book called Future Shock that was written back in the 60s.
Adam ZimmanHOST
And so this was literally like Alvin Toffler was talking about the fact that the pace of change was moving so fast at that point in time that people were going to develop a medical condition where they were actually shocked into being debilitated because the pace of change was moving faster than their bodies could handle.
Adam ZimmanHOST
Their bodies.
Adam ZimmanHOST
But it's funny because this was one of the things that we encountered when we were writing Progressive Delivery.
Adam ZimmanHOST
was one of the books that we found to be kind of the greatest echo of what we were encountering in writing was actually a book called Future Shock that was written back in the 60s.
Adam ZimmanHOST
And so this was literally like Alvin Toffler was talking about the fact that the pace of change was moving so fast at that point in time that people were going to develop a medical condition where they were actually shocked into being debilitated because the pace of change was moving faster than their bodies could handle.
Adam ZimmanHOST
Their bodies.
Mitch JoelHOST
Let's get on with the conversation.
Mitch JoelHOST
[upbeat music] What if the real challenge of the AI era isn't artificial intelligence, but human adaption? For more than 50 years, we've had a name for the feeling that too much change can create: future shock.
Mitch JoelHOST
Check out the book by Alvin Toffler.
Mitch JoelHOST
But today, with AI accelerating nearly every aspect of work and life, that idea feels less like a prediction and more like a diagnosis.
Mitch JoelHOST
That's where this conversation with Frederick Marshall begins.
Mitch JoelHOST
Fred is an entrepreneur, AI investor, founder of Quantum Learning, and a strategic advisor who has spent decades helping leaders navigate technological change.
Mitch JoelHOST
In his new and excellent book, Thrive: The Antidote to Future Shock, he argues that the greatest risk isn't AI itself, it's allowing the pace of change to overwhelm our ability to think clearly, choose intentionally, and build a meaningful future.
Mitch JoelHOST
This is a conversation about technology, but even more so, it's a conversation about building a life that can flourish in the middle of this relentless change.
Nick KnightGUEST
One was James Lovelock's Novacene.
Nick KnightGUEST
My book I founded a lot of my thoughts on was Alvin Toffler's books from the 1970s, um, is Future Shock and The Third Wave There also propose a future.
Nick KnightGUEST
This was written in the 1970s, and what he wrote in the 1970s is all coming true in varying degrees.
Nick KnightGUEST
He talked about a great societal change, and he said during that great societal change, it's not going to be a smooth road.
3 more episodes mention Future Shock.
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