Future Shock
In his bestselling book, Timeline, Michael Crichton says, "If you were to say to a physicist in 1899 that in 1999, a hundred years later, moving images would be transmitted into homes all over the world from satellites in the sky; that bombs of unimaginable power would threaten the species; that antibiotics would abolish infectious disease but that disease would fight back; that women would have the vote, and pills to control reproduction; that millions of people would take to the air every hour in aircraft capable of taking off and landing without human touch; that you could cross the Atlantic at two thousand miles an hour; that humankind would travel to the moon, and then lose interest; that microscopes would be able to see individual atoms; that people carry telephones weighing a few ounces, and speak anywhere in the world without wires; or that most of these miracles depended on devices the size of a postage stamp, which utilized a new theory called quantum mechanics—if you said all this, the physicist would almost certainly pronounce you mad."
The 20th century can be summarized in two words—quantum change! The qualitative and quantitative changes during the last century are unparalleled in the history of humankind. The fundamental changes in the social, spiritual, and scientific arenas have changed the rules of the game!
My generation (Gen-X) can hardly imagine what life was for our grandparents, and we can hardly imagine what it’ll be like for our children.
In 1969, the year I was born, Alvin and Heidi Toffler coined the phrase “future shock.” It eventually became the title of their best-selling book the next year. Future shock is the disorientation one feels when they are subjected to too much change in too short a time.
Change is happening so fast that it seems like we’re overdriving our headlights. Successful businesses can’t rest on their laurels because the rules of the game could change at any moment leaving them on the endangered species list. The same is true of churches.
A new generation appears every three years. In 1900, there were only 8,000 cars in the United States. A hundred years later there are 200 million cars. In 1900, there was no such thing as “rush hour” traffic. A hundred years later, 1,086,180 cars make their way into New York City on a daily basis. In 1900, New York City didn’t have to worry about the environmental impact of car pollution. They did, however, have to remove four million pounds of horse manure on a daily basis. Horses were the primary mode of transportation—the speed of transportation literally depended on “horse power”, not “horsepower.” Even if you did own a car, the speed limit on New York City streets was 8 mph.
In 1900, aeronautics wasn’t a science. It was science fiction. At the dawn of the 21st century, there are 10,000 airplanes crisscrossing the United States at any given time. The Concorde can fly from New York to Paris, gate to gate, in a supersonic three-hours and forty-five minutes!
In 1900, the word “computer” wasn’t even in the dictionary. The first general-purpose computer, ENAIC, was built in 1946 and used 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighed thirty tons. Popular Mechanics boldly predicted that some extraordinary day in the future, a computer with “only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps only weighing one and a half tons” would be constructed. That original thirty-ton computer had less computing power than today’s pocket calculator.
Prior to the 20th century, information traveled at the speed of horses, ships, and trains. Traveling seventy-five miles a day on horseback, it took Pony Express riders ten days to make the 2,000-mile trip from Saint Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California. When George Washington died on December 14th, 1799, it took a week for word to travel from Virginia to New York. International news traveled even slower. Premodern newspapers used to send reporters to the docks to gather news from passengers debarking from ocean liners. News traveled as fast as a ship on the high seas. It’s no wonder that on July 4th, 1776, King George wrote in his diary, “Nothing much happened today.” It took weeks for him to discover that America had declared independence. Sometimes the slowness at which news traveled was tragic. In 1815, two thousand people were killed in the Battle of New Orleans two weeks after the relevant peace treaty had been signed in London. If only they could have faxed the treaty from London to New Orleans!
Then on March 12, 1876, a conversation between Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson changed the course history. It wasn’t the content of the conversation. All Bell said was “Mr. Watson--come here—I want to see you.” It was the fact that Watson was in another room. He had received the first “telephone call” in history.
But even in 1915, the fourth decade of commercial telephone service, the American transcontinental system only had the capacity to handle three simultaneous voice calls.
At the dawn of the 21st century, we don’t hear about news days or weeks after-the-fact. Whether it’s a scud missile attack or police cruisers chasing a white Ford Bronco, we can watch history unfold before our eyes via live “look-ins.” News travels as fast as the turn of a dial, touch of a button or click of the mouse. Hundreds of television stations, thousands of radio stations, and million of web sites network the world in real-time.
Everything has changed.
Think about the words added to the dictionary in the last century—hyperlink, quantum, bandwidth, real-time, online, microwave, airplane, email, television, dot.com, fax.
The advent of the Internet makes Johann Gutenberg’s printing press seem like a minor historical footnote by comparison. The rules of the game have changed. Online banking, online shopping, and online education are just the beginning. Businesses that don’t have a dot.com are either extinct or on the endangered species list. And email n of the printing seem insignificant by comparison. Email may prove to be the “death of distance.”
At the start of the 21st century, information doubles every eighteen months. The world future society predicts that by the year 2020, human knowledge will double every seventy-three days!
In 1900, the average life expectancy was 47.3. In 1999, that is mid-life. Children born in the 21st century have a good shot at seeing the 22nd century. In 1900, there was only a 7% chance that a 60-year-old would have a living parent according to Peter Uhlenberg of the University of North Carolina. In 2000, there is a 44% chance. On December 31, 1900, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the day at 70.71. On January 1, 2000, the Dow Jones Industrial Average opened at 11,497.12.
If you multiply the quantity of change during the last century by the current rate of change, who knows what life will be like at the end of this next century. Prognosticators can only guesstimate based on current scientific and technological knowledge.
It is very possible that sometime in the next century, real-time language translation will obliterate language barriers. Fire-fighting robots will replace human counterparts. We will have digital mirrors. Electronic wallpaper will automatically adjust to your mood or help change your mood with a change of scenery. Virtual windows will revolutionize staring out the window. People living in rural areas will be able to look out their virtual window and see a cityscape with towering skyscrapers. People living in the urban ghetto will look out their virtual window and see a landscape with sprawling hills and valleys. Noise neutralizers will even cancel out honking horns or chirping grasshoppers. Microchip technology already exists that can compute the pattern of offending sound waves, and duplicate the exact opposite pattern, thus canceling out 50 to 95 percent of the irritating noise. Automated cars will navigate smart highways—Look, Mom, no hands! Smart houses will redefine convenience. Nanodevices will roam blood vessels monitoring health.
“In five hundred years we’ve moved from a world where everything was certain and nothing changed,” says Michael Gelb, “to a world where nothing seems certain and everything changes.”
The 20th century can be summarized in two words—quantum change! The qualitative and quantitative changes during the last century are unparalleled in the history of humankind. The fundamental changes in the social, spiritual, and scientific arenas have changed the rules of the game!
My generation (Gen-X) can hardly imagine what life was for our grandparents, and we can hardly imagine what it’ll be like for our children.
In 1969, the year I was born, Alvin and Heidi Toffler coined the phrase “future shock.” It eventually became the title of their best-selling book the next year. Future shock is the disorientation one feels when they are subjected to too much change in too short a time.
Change is happening so fast that it seems like we’re overdriving our headlights. Successful businesses can’t rest on their laurels because the rules of the game could change at any moment leaving them on the endangered species list. The same is true of churches.
A new generation appears every three years. In 1900, there were only 8,000 cars in the United States. A hundred years later there are 200 million cars. In 1900, there was no such thing as “rush hour” traffic. A hundred years later, 1,086,180 cars make their way into New York City on a daily basis. In 1900, New York City didn’t have to worry about the environmental impact of car pollution. They did, however, have to remove four million pounds of horse manure on a daily basis. Horses were the primary mode of transportation—the speed of transportation literally depended on “horse power”, not “horsepower.” Even if you did own a car, the speed limit on New York City streets was 8 mph.
In 1900, aeronautics wasn’t a science. It was science fiction. At the dawn of the 21st century, there are 10,000 airplanes crisscrossing the United States at any given time. The Concorde can fly from New York to Paris, gate to gate, in a supersonic three-hours and forty-five minutes!
In 1900, the word “computer” wasn’t even in the dictionary. The first general-purpose computer, ENAIC, was built in 1946 and used 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighed thirty tons. Popular Mechanics boldly predicted that some extraordinary day in the future, a computer with “only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps only weighing one and a half tons” would be constructed. That original thirty-ton computer had less computing power than today’s pocket calculator.
Prior to the 20th century, information traveled at the speed of horses, ships, and trains. Traveling seventy-five miles a day on horseback, it took Pony Express riders ten days to make the 2,000-mile trip from Saint Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California. When George Washington died on December 14th, 1799, it took a week for word to travel from Virginia to New York. International news traveled even slower. Premodern newspapers used to send reporters to the docks to gather news from passengers debarking from ocean liners. News traveled as fast as a ship on the high seas. It’s no wonder that on July 4th, 1776, King George wrote in his diary, “Nothing much happened today.” It took weeks for him to discover that America had declared independence. Sometimes the slowness at which news traveled was tragic. In 1815, two thousand people were killed in the Battle of New Orleans two weeks after the relevant peace treaty had been signed in London. If only they could have faxed the treaty from London to New Orleans!
Then on March 12, 1876, a conversation between Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson changed the course history. It wasn’t the content of the conversation. All Bell said was “Mr. Watson--come here—I want to see you.” It was the fact that Watson was in another room. He had received the first “telephone call” in history.
But even in 1915, the fourth decade of commercial telephone service, the American transcontinental system only had the capacity to handle three simultaneous voice calls.
At the dawn of the 21st century, we don’t hear about news days or weeks after-the-fact. Whether it’s a scud missile attack or police cruisers chasing a white Ford Bronco, we can watch history unfold before our eyes via live “look-ins.” News travels as fast as the turn of a dial, touch of a button or click of the mouse. Hundreds of television stations, thousands of radio stations, and million of web sites network the world in real-time.
Everything has changed.
Think about the words added to the dictionary in the last century—hyperlink, quantum, bandwidth, real-time, online, microwave, airplane, email, television, dot.com, fax.
The advent of the Internet makes Johann Gutenberg’s printing press seem like a minor historical footnote by comparison. The rules of the game have changed. Online banking, online shopping, and online education are just the beginning. Businesses that don’t have a dot.com are either extinct or on the endangered species list. And email n of the printing seem insignificant by comparison. Email may prove to be the “death of distance.”
At the start of the 21st century, information doubles every eighteen months. The world future society predicts that by the year 2020, human knowledge will double every seventy-three days!
In 1900, the average life expectancy was 47.3. In 1999, that is mid-life. Children born in the 21st century have a good shot at seeing the 22nd century. In 1900, there was only a 7% chance that a 60-year-old would have a living parent according to Peter Uhlenberg of the University of North Carolina. In 2000, there is a 44% chance. On December 31, 1900, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the day at 70.71. On January 1, 2000, the Dow Jones Industrial Average opened at 11,497.12.
If you multiply the quantity of change during the last century by the current rate of change, who knows what life will be like at the end of this next century. Prognosticators can only guesstimate based on current scientific and technological knowledge.
It is very possible that sometime in the next century, real-time language translation will obliterate language barriers. Fire-fighting robots will replace human counterparts. We will have digital mirrors. Electronic wallpaper will automatically adjust to your mood or help change your mood with a change of scenery. Virtual windows will revolutionize staring out the window. People living in rural areas will be able to look out their virtual window and see a cityscape with towering skyscrapers. People living in the urban ghetto will look out their virtual window and see a landscape with sprawling hills and valleys. Noise neutralizers will even cancel out honking horns or chirping grasshoppers. Microchip technology already exists that can compute the pattern of offending sound waves, and duplicate the exact opposite pattern, thus canceling out 50 to 95 percent of the irritating noise. Automated cars will navigate smart highways—Look, Mom, no hands! Smart houses will redefine convenience. Nanodevices will roam blood vessels monitoring health.
“In five hundred years we’ve moved from a world where everything was certain and nothing changed,” says Michael Gelb, “to a world where nothing seems certain and everything changes.”
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