Future Shock

The maps of the world drawn by the medieval cartographers were so hopelessly inaccurate, so filled with factual error, that they elicit condescending smiles today when almost the entire surface of the earth has been charted. Yet the great explorers could never have discovered the New World without them. Nor could the better, more accurate maps of t

If acceleration is a new social force, transience is its psychological counterpart,

In our lifetime the boundaries have burst Today the network of social ties is so tightly woven that the consequences of contemporary events radiate instantaneously around the world.

Change is avalanching upon our heads and most people are grotesquely unprepared to cope with it.

The inhabitants of the earth are divided not only by race, nation, religion or ideology, but also, in a sense, by their position in time.

it is more important to be imaginative and insightful than to be one hundred percent “right.”

Similarly, two hours in the life of a four-year-old may be the felt equivalent of twelve hours in the life of her twenty-four-year-old mother. Asking the child to wait two hours for a piece of candy may be the equivalent of asking the mother to wait fourteen hours for a cup of coffee.

children who at twelve are no longer childlike; adults who at fifty are children of twelve.

To survive, to avert what we have termed future shock, the individual must become infinitely more adaptable and capable than ever before. He must search out totally new ways to anchor himself, for all the old roots—religion, nation, community, family, or profession—are now shaking under the hurricane impact of the accelerative thrust. Before he can