Future Shock

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.

Future shock is a time phenomenon, a product of the greatly accelerated rate of change in society. It arises from the superimposition of a new culture on an old one. It is culture shock in one’s own society.

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.

I hope, that, unless man quickly learns to control the rate of change in his personal affairs as well as in society at large, we are doomed to a massive adaptational breakdown.

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.

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

Man’s perception of time is closely linked with his internal rhythms. But his responses to time are culturally conditioned.

Without time, change has no meaning. And without change, time would stop.

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

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