Throwback Thursday | Future Shock

We're starting up a new weekly feature here at Future-ish, Throwback Thursday. Yeah, we're a little behind the times but we had to figure out our particular spin on Throwback Thursdays. Our plan, revisit predictions of the future from years past. We've seen this done a several times out there, hopefully our 'retro foresight' version will keep our readers as entertained as we are researching the stories.

First up...how can we not start with Alvin Toffler's Future Shock. Future-ish founder, Sean Schmidt, first blogged on the book back in October 2010 with, The Invisible Force of Future Shock. If you haven't read the book, you should. As with any effort to predict the future, some things were spot on, some things were way off.

Here's a quote from a 2010 NPR interview with the Tofflers in which Alvin Toffler responds to the NPR's Martin Kaste's question, "Why be a futurist?"

"Because it makes you think, it opens up the questions of what's possible. Not necessarily what will be, but what's possible."

Cheers to more wondering about what's possible!

SeanChron - "Future Shock" video with dramatic Orson Welles and 70s disco soundtrack

I seem to be crushing on Future Shock these days so I was psyched to run across part 1 of this fabulous 1972 documentary of Future Shock (via Greg Linday's fastcompany.com article). Orson Wells does a fantastic job of delivering a theatrical narrative and the future-ambient soundtrack is over the top. But...once again, the content and message were completely avant-garde at the time and remain so today. You can find parts 2-5 of the full documentary on YouTube.

SeanChron - The Invisible Force of Future Shock

I finished reading Alvin Toffler's 1970 book "Future Shock" on Wednesday, October 13th, 2010. I penciled in a last note to myself on the last page, pondered the profundity of it all, and then had a good nights sleep. Later the next day, while catching up on all my favorite blogs and such I ran across this...Greg Lindsay's article on fastcompany.com, "Future Shock at 40: The Tofflers Stir Up "Cyberdust" With New Scenarios". Timely, no? Needless to say, the book, the recent article, and all the references to the Alvin and Heidi Toffler's visionary ideas are endlessly fascinating to me and their influence on how we perceive, predict, and plan for the future can be seen everywhere from the slow food movement to social networking. The Toffler's consulting firm, Toffler Associates may come across as a little stuffy/corporate, but its good to know that world leaders, IBM, and global nonprofits are are taking advice from experts who have chronicled the many ways the future may be coming at us a little too quickly.