Future Shock- Review by Rohit Baliyan (191165)
Future Shock is a book written by the sociologist and futurologist Alvin Toffler in 1970. It is written from the third person point of view. The views are those of the author, Alvin Toffler, who does a very good job supporting his points of view. His views are supported by a great deal of research.
In Future Shock, Toffler argues that, since the eighteenth century, technological developments have advanced so rapidly that most people experience disorientation in trying to adjust to these changes. Toffler cites as evidence of massive “future shock” such phenomena as rising divorce rates, increased drug use, and rising crime rates. Typically, in his works, Toffler offers suggestions for how current society can facilitate the transition to the future. He stresses the importance of incorporating futurism into educational curricula and recommends that children be encouraged to read science fiction.
He also gives startling insights into the working of organizations in the future. The author foresees that, the two strengths of an organization, permanence and hierarchy (which the author calls, bureaucracy) will be doomed and will be replaced by "Adhocracy". The author foresees the following scenarios in the future (i.e. 90's and the early 21st century): -
There would be a fair amount of mergers and acquisitions taking place, which would continuously overhaul an organization, which the author terms as the "organizational upheaval". These phenomena would threaten its permanence. The work will mostly be done by project teams, which would be promptly discarded after the job is completed. This would make the organization highly unstable. With the exponential increase in production, the production time will be reduced; this would make the downtime very costly and will require faster flow of information for faster execution decisions. The solutions to these problems, the author opines is, "Adhocracy". He says, like...