Future Shock - Too Much Change in a Too Short Period of Time

Times are changing, they always are. The particularity nowadays, is that things are changing faster than ever almost everywhere.

Alvin Toffler coined the term "Future Shock". He referred to it as a "personal perception of too much change in a too short period of time".

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We are experiencing an immediacy of the future. The future is no longer in the future, or at least not as distant as it used to be. One other issue is that with the state of things, we are already witnessing or seeing the future before it happens (which also makes it feel closer). No, I haven't built a time machine... yet. Think about this. Every time a new product goes out to the market we already know with quite some time in advance how that product is going to be, what's it going to do, how it's going to look like. And this happens because since the start of the R&D process, developers and manufacturers are already advertising or giving updates on that product.

Think about product life cycles. For how long did you keep the TV that you bought in the 80s? Remember your first walkman? Mine lasted for almost 8 years. Since 2001 when the 1st iPod came out I have already owned 4 of them, and I'm thinking of replacing mine with an iPhone soon.

Technological advances have made the process that goes from the R&D of a product, to production and finally to sales stores shorter. It used to take a couple of years, now it's reduced to months.

Think about the news, communications and mass media. Since the internet became mainstream the way information is shared has changed radically. News one day old is already OLD. News is being produced in real time; worldwide communications are in real time too. Even more, there is more news everywhere. And it's not that some years ago nothing happened. It's that it's become easier to broadcast them, allowing us to dramatically increase the information that can be distributed to the world.

Globalization has been a facilitator to all this. A couple of years ago, did you know what was happening "right now" on the other side of the world? Today, it's one click away.

The world has become a much smaller place.

Subjectively, we feel this acceleration of time, we grew up in a slower paced world and it was easier for us to adapt to change. Today we are bombarded with information, products, events and it's sometimes hard to keep up. It may be easier for some, harder for others. If we think of Generation X, they grew up in that world, in the days where computers only fitted in big rooms, where internet wasn't even a word, and where color TV was a novelty. Are they equipped to cope with this reality?

The younger generations have a less daunting task, mainly because they were raised in this wired/online world. They are accustomed to it.

Unluckily, the options go down to "get on the train or miss it". If you miss it, it's going to be harder to catch up later (and everyday the train goes faster). And if you are still in the productive cycle, missing it is something you can not afford.

But what can be done if our brains are just not "wired" that way? I'd love to hear some thoughts.

Future Shock - Too Much Change in a Too Short Period of Time

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