I’m 62 going into 63 next December. During these past six decades, I’ve seen an acceleration of change extremely difficult to cope with. I think it was Alvin Toffler who brought this subject up in one of his classical books. He called it “future shock.” Toffler’s shortest definition of future shock is a personal perception of “too much change in too short a period of time“.
Together with is wife Heidi—who is also a writer and a futurist—Toffler has discussed in length, the digital revolution, the communication revolution, the corporate revolution and technological singularity.
In his book “The Third Wave”, Toffler describes three types of societies, based on the concept of “waves”—each wave pushes the older societies and cultures aside.
- The First Wave is the society after agrarian revolution which replaced the first hunter-collector cultures.
- The Second Wave is the society during the Industrial Revolution ( late 1600s through the mid-1900s). The main components of the Second Wave society are nuclear family, factory-type education system and the corporation.
- The Third Wave is the post-industrial society. Toffler and his wife coined several words to describe this wave such as: Super-industrial Age, Information Age, Space Age, Electronic Era, Global Village, Technetronic Age, and the Scientific-Technological Revolution. He anticipated that this last wave will bring demassification, diversity, knowledge-based production, and the acceleration of change (one of Toffler’s key maxims is “change is non-linear and can go backwards, forwards and sideways”).
Toffler argues that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a “super-industrial society”. This change will overwhelm people, the accelerated rate of technological and social change leaving them disconnected and suffering from “shattering stress and disorientation”—future shocked. Toffler stated that the majority of social problems were symptoms of the future shock. In his discussion of the components of such shock, he also coined the term information overload.
I have experienced this acceleration of change in my lifetime. Let’s take a brief look: Vinyl records were replaced by the CD, the CD was replaced by the DVD, and the DVD is being replaced, even as we speak, by Sony’s Blue Ray technology. Do you remember the ferocious fight between Sony’s Betamax and JVC’s VHS format? Now both technologies are non-existent. Technological obsolescence blew them out of the water.
The latest change is about the struggling industry of broadcast television. Eight decades after pioneering the concept of broadcasting, NBC is on the verge of a startling move that illustrates broadcast television’s decline.
Cable TV operator Comcast Corp. is expected to buy a controlling stake in NBC Universal, perhaps as early as this week, bringing the network of Johnny Carson, Jerry Seinfeld, Bob Hope, Milton Berle and Tom Brokaw under the corporate control of a TV cable company.
Starting last Sunday, Vivendi SA had an option to sell its 20 percent stake in NBC Universal. Majority owner General Electric Co. is expected to buy it and then sell a 51 percent stake of the entire NBC Universal unit to Comcast, which serves about a quarter of the nation’s subscription TV households.
By owning more content, Comcast further hedges its bets as mainly a distributor of shows in case viewers ditch their cable TV subscriptions and migrate to the Internet, mobile devices or a platform that has yet to emerge. The company could charge for the shows or sell ads wherever the viewers are.
As the calendar pages turn, I wouldn’t be surprised if Cable TV is replaced by Internet TV, which has a long tradition of being free. Google could be the pusher of this technological change and Chrome OS–paired up with Android OS—could be the vehicles to do it. Not to far away, I foresee millions of people of my generation, viewing “I Love Lucy” with their 5G iPhone. The globe is spinning so fast, I have a hard time breathing. Good Day.
Source: Broadcast pioneer NBC prepares for cable takeover – Yahoo! Tech
I’m with you, Omar, 60 going on 61 in February. I have spent half of my working life in teaching, fixing, programming, or testing computers and the rate of change still amazes me.
I deal with all the change by only using that part of the new technologies which satisfy a need for what I’m doing. For example, I don’t have an iPhone because I don’t have a NEED to be that connected 24/7. For those that do need it, iPhones and Blackberrys are a great device but for me they would just be another thing pulling for my attention.
Since retiring I have reconnected with reading books but I don’t have a use for Kindle or the like. I do surf my local library online to select books but I still go there and check out what I’m going to read. Nothing is so satisfying as sitting on the porch in the sunshine, lost in reading a book. I don’t think technology will ever change that.
Besides, without technology I would not get to see those wonderful photos that you and Don Ray upload!! THAT is a great use of progress!
jim and nena
fort worth, tx
Hi Jim & Nena:
Computer people are used to change. That is a cut-throat industry that transforms itself every two to three years. I remember when I bought my first computer–it was a humble Apple II-e. Look where we’re now with Netbooks and Notebooks and what have you. Soon we will have computers with no hard disks, permanently hooked up to the ubiquitous Internet.
Newspapers are disappearing at blazing speed and physical books soon will be an extinct species at many school libraries. The Nooks and Kindles of this world will take over.
I’m afraid the rate of change is overwhelming. But I’m with you, I try to cling to things of the past as much as I can, but it’s easy to be mesmerized by the song of the technological mermaids.
I couldn’t live without the Internet, a computer and e-mails. That means the computer snake has bitten me.
Thanks for keeping in touch through your welcome comments.
Bye,
Omar.-
I think all of us of a “certain age” (I’m 67) can conjure up a long list of changes we’ve seen in our lives. I’ve told the following quite often over the years because it boggles my mind.
When my paternal grandmother was born there was no such thing as the electric light bulb. She remembered when the great Apache Indian Chief Geronimo surrendered to Army troops in 1886. She grew up in a time when ox carts hauled produce from the farms of Woburn, Massachusetts, into the Faneuil Hall (where the likes of Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, John Hancock and the Sons of Liberty met to foment the American Revolution) Market. She saw the United States go to war with Spain in 1898 and lived through two World Wars in addition to Korea and Viet Nam.
Grandma Philbrick saw the ox cart replaced by the truck. She saw planes lift mankind into the clouds in airplanes and she marveled at men CIRCLING THE MOON in space ships.
On the night she died Cape Cod was in the midst of one of our fabled “Nor’easter” storms and electrical power from the mainland was severed. Her physician and children were at her bedside lit by kerosene lanterns. I think she would have enjoyed the irony that, despite all the technological advances my grandmother witnessed in her lifetime, on the day she was born and the day she died there were no electric lights.
Hi Richard:
This is an interesting case where technology failed. It’s true, we’re so dependent on technology, that when it fails, we don’t know what to do.
The world is spinning too fast for me. I have problems catching up. Many times, I don’t understand what kids say, they have their own sub-language or whatever it’s called.
Nice to read your comments Richard. How’s the sale of the boat?
Regards,
Omar.-