Frazzledrip Overdrive
by Mark E. Jeftovic
January 19, 2025
https://bombthrower.com/frazzledrip-overdrive/

[snip]

In 1970, futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler released the first of three seminal books about the trajectory that America, and the world was on. They published them at roughly decade intervals: Future Shock (1970), Power Shift, (1984), and Third Wave (1991). There were others (like War & Anti-War and Revolutionary Wealth), but those three laid out what was coming down the pipe and they were largely correct about it because their core premise was so simple:

The rate of change was accelerating. That was it. But it affected everything. The ramifications went beyond cycle theory or long waves because it meant that cycles and long waves would themselves accelerate.

As this acceleration accelerated, it would begin to overwhelm the coping mechanisms of both individuals and institutions alike. Nobody would be exempt, and everybody was facing a kind of technological and cultural shell shock, which they called: Future Shock:

It is impossible to produce future shock in large numbers of individuals without affecting the rationality of the society as a whole. Today, according to Daniel P. Moynihan, the chief White House advisor on urban affairs, the United States “exhibits the qualities of an individual going through a nervous breakdown.” For the cumulative impact of sensory, cognitive or decisional overstimulation, not to mention the physical effects of neural or endocrine overload, creates sickness in our midst.

Of course, the “today” in the above passage was in 1970.