All Things Considered

Futurist 40 Years Later: Possibilities, Not Predictions

Martin Kaste
July 26, 2010 3:01 PM

Forty years ago, America was gripped by Future Shock. It was a book, published in July of 1970 -- but it was also an idea.

It was the notion that life was changing faster and faster -- in everything from technology to family structure to politics. People were moving more, throwing away their belongings sooner and having to adapt more often to new kinds of work.

Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock, sits outside a restaurant on Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles on July 14.(Martin Kaste)

The result was a kind of culture shock of the future -- future shock.

The book was, in the publishing industry phrase of the time, a "runaway best-seller." It sold more than 5 million copies in the U.S., and untold more millions overseas, especially in Asia. The author, Alvin Toffler, was a reporter-turned-futurist from New York. He says the scale of his book's success came as a shock to him and his wife and collaborator, Heidi Toffler.

Author Alvin Toffler, right, with his wife, Heidi, in their home in Los Angeles, Calif.(Martin Kaste)

"We didn't grow up assuming that we would live well, necessarily," says Toffler. "We came from a working class family, and here we are, sitting in the sunshine, enjoy a not-cheap meal."

The success of Future Shock and their subsequent books, such as the The Third Wave, allowed the Tofflers to buy a house in a swanky neighborhood in Los Angeles, where they live to this day.

The house is mid-century modern: lots of floor-to-ceiling windows and white, wall-to-wall carpeting. The Tofflers built a boxy, light-filled addition containing a two-story library and matching, his-and-hers offices. It's all very up-to-date, although the brand-new iPads that they received as a 60th wedding anniversary gift remain in their boxes. Heidi Toffler is reluctant to embrace the new device.

The Tofflers have led extraordinary lives, since the publication of Future Shock. They've been invited to lecture around the world -- they're treated like "rock stars" in South Korea, says Alvin Toffler. They recall a drop-in visit from Steve Jobs in the early days of Apple, and a private conference with Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s.

But what about their book's main prediction -- the idea that change is speeding up, and that it threatens to overwhelm us? Alvin Toffler says he sees it happening, and that others do now, too.

"In the past, you made a decision and that was it. Now, you make a decision and you say, 'What happens next?' There's always a next," he says.

Still, the accelerating change doesn't seem to be driving people crazy, as was predicted by Future Shock. Alvin Toffler says it may be that younger generations have simply become more adapted to change, that it is their culture.

Academic futurist Stuart Candy says the Tofflers were wrong to predict widespread "future shock," as a form of societal illness or breakdown. Candy, who has a Ph.D in the field of "futures studies," and who bought his first copy of Future Shock at a yard sale when he was 15, says the book did make an important contribution.

"What Future Shock got right was that it made a compelling argument for taking the acceleration of change seriously," Candy says. And he says the value of the book was to teach people that the best defense against the future is to think about it, to imagine different scenarios, and try to avoid being taken by surprise.

That's what the Tofflers are still doing, even into their 80s.

"I'm curious! I want to know what's going to be out there -- just for the heck of it," Alvin Toffler says.

Heidi Toffler says a career in futurism has taught them that no one can predict the future.

"Anybody that tells you they know what's going to happen, don't believe a word they say!" she says.

So why be a futurist?

"Because it makes you think," says Alvin Toffler. "It opens up the questions of what's possible. Not necessarily what will be, but what's possible." Copyright 2010 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

View Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

Forty years ago, America was gripped by "Future Shock." The book by Alvin Toffler became a bestseller. It also became an idea embraced by many.

Here's how Orson Welles described it in a long-forgotten movie adaptation of the book.

(Soundbite of movie "Future Shock")

Mr. ORSON WELLES (Actor/Director): Future Shock is a sickness which comes from too much change in too short a time. It's the feeling that nothing is permanent anymore. It's the premature arrival of the future.

SIEGEL: In the 1970s and '80s, Alvin Toffler was America's preeminent authority on things to come. These days, fewer people recognize the name. Toffler is now 81 and NPR's Martin Kaste looked him up to find out how he's been handling the future.

(Soundbite of music)

MARTIN KASTE: In that movie version of "Future Shock," the future looks pretty creepy. It opens with a young couple walking through a park, an idyllic scene but it's intercut with glimpses with dystopia: urban riots, weird technology and then...

(Soundbite of movie "Future Shock")

(Soundbite of gun fire and screaming)

KASTE: We see the young couple are actually wearing metal masks, or maybe they're robots or something. Regardless, it's a pretty horrible vision.

(Soundbite of conversations)

KASTE: But here in 2010, things don't seem that bad, at least not at this cafe on Sunset Boulevard, a favorite hangout of futurist Alvin Toffler.

Mr. ALVIN TOFFLER (Author, "Future Shock"): I'll have the Cobb salad.

KASTE: We meet Toffler here to talk about the 40th anniversary of his big bestseller. And when you're having lunch with an elderly futurist, you just have to ask: What surprises him most about how things have turned out?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. TOFFLER: Us.

(Soundbite of laughter)

KASTE: By us, Toffler means himself and his wife, Heidi Toffler, and the fact that, well, they ended up rich.

Mr. TOFFLER: We didn't grow up assuming that we're going to live well, necessarily. We came from a working class family, and here we are, sitting in the sunshine and enjoying a not-cheap meal.

KASTE: But what about the big idea in Toffler's book, the notion that change was speeding up - has that come true?

Mr. TOFFLER: Oh, yeah. I think it's taken for granted to a greater extent that you do think about where things are going because things are going. Whereas, in the past, you made a decision and that was it. Now, you make a decision and you say, but what happens next? There's always a next.

KASTE: In the book, Toffler warned that this accelerating change might actually drive us insane. Back in the '70s, this idea apparently struck a nerve - the book sold more than five million copies just in the U.S.

At the Tofflers' house, there's a whole bookcase dedicated to the success of "Future Shock."

Ms. HEIDI TOFFLER (Futurist): We sort of ran out of space, so they're doubled up.

KASTE: Heidi Toffler shows off editions of the book from around the world. She's a chain-smoking New Yorker, who finishes Alvin's sentences for him and sometimes starts them, too. She fondly recalls the days of their media stardom.

Ms. TOFFLER: We were on a lot of talk shows. Who was the interview? Johnny Carson and he read the book.

Mr. TOFFLER: I don't remember.

(Soundbite of laughter)

KASTE: The success of "Future Shock" led to consulting gigs with big corporations and then more bestsellers. Alvin calls Heidi his collaborator. Even though her name isn't on the books, she says she co-wrote them.

By the 1980s, the futurism business had allowed them to buy this house in a swanky neighborhood of Los Angeles. The style is kind of mid-century Jetsons -floor to ceiling windows and wall-to-wall white carpeting.

Ms. TOFFLER: And we put an elevator in. As futurists, we look ahead and we said someday we're not going to be able to climb the stairs.

(Soundbite of machinery)

KASTE: Arriving up in Alvin Toffler's office, things seem up to date. There's a newish laptop, a printer and two brand new iPads - a gift for their 60th wedding anniversary, says Heidi, but they're still in their boxes.

Ms. TOFFLER: I printed out the instruction book from the Internet and it's that thick. I mean it's just, you know...

KASTE: So you're not - you haven't tried it out yet?

Ms. TOFFLER: No, I haven't cracked it. Yeah.

KASTE: Her reluctance to tackle the iPad echoes one of the predictions in the book - the notion of information overload, a concept explained once again in that 1972 movie with Mr. Orson Welles.

(Soundbite of movie "Future Shock")

Mr. WELLES: This machine makes our lives move faster. Computers combine facts to make new knowledge at such high speed that we cannot absorb it...

KASTE: Clattering computers generating too much information for us to absorb. It sounds amusingly retro. But when you think about it, it's also kind of prescient.

Mr. JAMES STURM (Co-Founder, Center for Cartoon Studies): There's just so much coming at you and your system just can't handle it.

KASTE: This is James Sturm, a professional cartoonist who swore off the Internet for four months this year. He wrote about it on Slate. But what's interesting here is the fact that he seems to have diagnosed himself with exactly the kind of information overload that the Tofflers predicted 40 years ago. And Sturm says he's gotten a lot of mail, letters actually, from other people suffering the same ailment.

Mr. STURM: Most of them were several pages long, documenting their struggles with the Internet, trying to kind of create some healthy distance between them and their compulsion to be online.

Mr. STUART CANDY (Futurist): We haven't adapted to rapid change particularly well.

KASTE: Stuart Candy is a latter-day futurist. Actually, he has a Ph.D. in what's called futures studies. He discovered "Future Shock" when he was 15. He bought it used at a yard sale. The book had its flaws, he says, but it also challenged people's understanding of what used to be called progress.

Mr. CANDY: What "Future Shock" got right is that it made a compelling argument for taking the acceleration of change seriously.

KASTE: The value of the book, he says, was to teach people that the best defense against the future is to think about it, to imagine different scenarios and to try to avoid being taken by surprise.

And that's what the Tofflers are still doing, even into their 80s.

Mr. TOFFLER: I'm curious. I want to know what's going to be out there just for the heck of it.

KASTE: These days, Alvin Toffler is thinking about the future of nations.

Mr. TOFFLER: Is it possible that the more advanced we are technologically, the less we need to depend on uniformity and that, in fact, instead of seeing fewer nations, we may see more and more diversity?

KASTE: But what's he most curious about when it comes to the future that's still to come? He says he'd like to find out if medicine will find a way to extend the human lifespan by an extra 50 or 100 years.

Mr. TOFFLER: Because if you have lived a long time in the face of radical changes taking place all around you, you see the world differently.

KASTE: Whether it would be good or bad for a future society to have people that old hanging around is something Toffler says is impossible to predict, but it's certainly something he'd like to find out.

Martin Kaste, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.

Source: NPR

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