WEBVTT - Future Shock: Part I 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.960 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.960 --> 0:00:13.920 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:17.040 My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm truly declare Julie. 0:00:17.079 --> 0:00:19.239 I was on the way to work this morning, and 0:00:19.280 --> 0:00:23.279 I was waiting on the train at the station. And then, 0:00:23.440 --> 0:00:26.200 as sometimes happens in our modern world on a Wednesday, 0:00:26.880 --> 0:00:30.800 I looked over. I saw a robotic humanoid standing there 0:00:31.840 --> 0:00:34.920 reading a kindle, and uh, you know, I just shut down. 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:37.760 I just I just started screaming. And then it was 0:00:37.880 --> 0:00:40.519 like a silent stream, you know, clutching my face. And 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:43.360 then I'm just just crawl into a into a corner 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:46.040 of the martat station and I just hold myself for 0:00:46.040 --> 0:00:49.120 about fifteen twenty minutes until someone comes. Then came in 0:00:49.159 --> 0:00:51.839 an administered medication to me, to to to wake me 0:00:51.880 --> 0:00:53.519 back up and get me back in my body and 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:58.000 move me again. Yeah. Classic case of RS replicant shock. Yeah, yeah, 0:00:58.240 --> 0:01:02.880 a s upset, a future shock, future shocked. Yeah, it's 0:01:02.880 --> 0:01:06.320 a It's a wonderful concept and at heart it deals 0:01:07.000 --> 0:01:11.959 with change, with the rate of change in our world. Um, 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:14.479 you know, generation after generation, we we of course clan 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:18.560 to illusions of consistency of continuity, as we discussed in 0:01:18.560 --> 0:01:22.679 a recent episode, but we're always in the state of 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:26.199 constant change. Our society is, our bodies are, our science 0:01:26.319 --> 0:01:29.319 or art, our values or technology. Everything is really in 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:32.480 the state of flux. But we end up sort of clinging. 0:01:32.760 --> 0:01:36.039 I think to these these illusions that that there's a 0:01:36.120 --> 0:01:38.840 set way that things should be. You know, well, I 0:01:38.880 --> 0:01:43.240 think because change illustrates to us that time is ephemeral, 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:48.200 it's passing, and change is a real marker, right It's saying, essentially, hey, 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:50.720 guess what You're gonna die one day, and that's a bummer. 0:01:50.800 --> 0:01:53.360 Nobody wants that. And we've talked about this before in 0:01:53.480 --> 0:01:56.280 terms of normalcy bias. You know, even though we know 0:01:56.440 --> 0:01:59.160 it changes on the horizon or there's something that we 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:02.080 need to re act to, a lot of us just 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:04.560 kind of go back to the baseline and like to 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:08.640 assume that everything is going to remain the same, even 0:02:08.639 --> 0:02:11.440 though we have evidence swirling around us all the time 0:02:11.520 --> 0:02:15.040 that changes happening. It's interesting. I think back to when 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:17.040 I was a kid trying to imagine what I would 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:20.640 be like as an adult, and it's this kind of 0:02:20.720 --> 0:02:23.960 weird mix of ideas because obviously there were plenty of 0:02:23.960 --> 0:02:26.400 sci fi ideas around me, and sci fi ideas about 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:30.120 what the future might might consist of, and so to 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:33.440 a certain extent, I might have imagined myself going into 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:36.040 space or that maybe being in the cards, you know. 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:40.680 But still my idea of my immediate future self and 0:02:40.720 --> 0:02:43.160 my immediate surroundings was very much based in my present 0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:45.840 of the time, without you know, without wow giving it 0:02:45.919 --> 0:02:46.960 a lot of thought. But it was kind of like 0:02:46.960 --> 0:02:50.120 the default setting, and we base our assumptions on the 0:02:50.520 --> 0:02:53.520 most readily available model. I think that's because there's so 0:02:53.680 --> 0:02:56.720 much routinization in our lives that it gives us this 0:02:56.800 --> 0:02:59.480 false sense of continuity, and we're doing the same thing 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:02.280 over day in and day out, and so you get 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:05.280 the sense that there maybe maybe there is a stasis. 0:03:05.280 --> 0:03:09.440 But also some of it is just rooted and past thinking, 0:03:09.600 --> 0:03:14.200 past structures and audiologies, um. And I was thinking about 0:03:14.240 --> 0:03:17.480 this the other day. We are at a point in 0:03:17.639 --> 0:03:21.880 history technologically at least, where we can actually look back 0:03:21.919 --> 0:03:25.519 in the universe past and understand that the universe has 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:30.079 always been changing and there's a constant rate of change, 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:33.359 uh in effect, and we look at this just in 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:36.800 terms of something like the cosmic background radiation that we 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:39.160 can measure and we can say, oh, you know, after 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:41.520 the Big Bang, it wasn't just you know, you know, 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:44.880 this void. There was always something that was going on, 0:03:44.960 --> 0:03:47.120 and there were a great many changes that were only 0:03:47.200 --> 0:03:52.920 now beginning to completely um understand in this coherent way 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:57.400 that the physical world is about entropy. Yeah. I mean, 0:03:57.680 --> 0:04:01.120 you look back at older our k given primitive views 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:03.480 of the universe, and not all of them, but a 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:09.000 lot of them were exceedingly human centric. They time began 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:11.640 with humans, and if it ended, it ends with humans. 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:15.200 And our modern understanding is, of course that we're just 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:18.839 this blip on the on the cosmic timeline, and there 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:21.560 are things that have existed before, things that will exist afterwards. 0:04:21.600 --> 0:04:27.279 Like we're essentially we're like beta max in the technological timeline, 0:04:27.320 --> 0:04:29.600 you know. And at the time, it seems like we're 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:32.039 the most important. It seems like we're we're the thing. 0:04:32.560 --> 0:04:35.839 But VHS is just around the corner, uh, compact us 0:04:35.920 --> 0:04:38.039 just around the corner, the Blu ray digital, all of 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:39.960 it's coming well. And it's interesting that you say that 0:04:40.000 --> 0:04:42.559 you you point to technology as a way to begin 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:45.400 to mark the passing of time. And if you look 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:49.680 at Moore's law, um, this is something that is the 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:52.480 idea that computing power doubles every two years, which brings 0:04:52.520 --> 0:04:56.200 more and more features and greater rates of change in 0:04:56.320 --> 0:04:59.920 terms of our technology. But Moore's law isn't just a law, 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:04.760 it's it's a it's ah, this very real idea that 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:08.560 is playing out that the juggernaut of technology is real, 0:05:08.680 --> 0:05:12.240 if not in our minds. And so we begin to 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:15.440 see More's law at play in all sectors of our lives, 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:19.159 things seeming to speed up. Yeah, innovation feeds back on 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:22.800 the innovation of computing. Processes just become more and more 0:05:22.839 --> 0:05:27.599 complicated and more and more powerful, and eventually, hypothetically we 0:05:27.720 --> 0:05:32.039 reach that point where computer aies reach and surpass human 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:36.640 cognitive power. Uh, the technological singularity. That's right, when when 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:38.839 computers just kick us to the curb because they're like, wow, 0:05:38.920 --> 0:05:42.320 really that's all you guys got. But in the meantime, 0:05:42.720 --> 0:05:46.719 computers have also created just an intense amount of data, 0:05:46.800 --> 0:05:49.760 and some would say that data would then give us 0:05:50.160 --> 0:05:52.560 so much information to make choices about that we would 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:55.800 be in a state of over choice or information overload. 0:05:56.120 --> 0:05:58.159 And we owe this term as well as a number 0:05:58.200 --> 0:05:59.719 of terms we're gonna talk about here in the podcast, 0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:02.680 and the overall theme of Future Shock to Alvin and 0:06:02.760 --> 0:06:07.920 Heidi Toffler, authors of the Future Shock. Yes, Howdie Toddler 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:11.000 is an unacknowledged co author, but of course later on 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:14.320 after publication she became known as the person who also 0:06:14.360 --> 0:06:17.640 influenced this book quite a deal. But in Future Shock, 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:21.560 they write, if over stimulation at the sensory level increases 0:06:21.600 --> 0:06:26.960 the distortion with which we perceive reality, cognitive over stimulation 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:30.280 interferes with our ability to think. This was the first 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:33.640 time people had said, hey, look, let's take a big 0:06:34.120 --> 0:06:36.880 view of what's going on, what's happened in the past, 0:06:36.960 --> 0:06:39.239 what's happening in the present, in the future, and see 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:43.120 this rate of change and how it's affecting us. What 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:45.760 I love about Future Shock is that it is prophetic 0:06:45.800 --> 0:06:49.120 in places, its hyperbolic in places. Uh, there's stuff that 0:06:49.160 --> 0:06:50.920 holds up, there's stuff that doesn't hold up. We're gonna 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:53.599 talk about all of that in this podcast. But in 0:06:53.680 --> 0:06:55.359 it's in what it gets right and in what it 0:06:55.360 --> 0:06:59.320 gets wrong. It's it stands as this, uh, this this 0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:02.839 potent exat ample of of how we've come to view 0:07:02.839 --> 0:07:05.680 the future and and also you know, our fear of 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:08.120 the future, our fear of change and uh. And I 0:07:08.120 --> 0:07:11.960 feel like anytime we're we're contemplating our fears, including the 0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:13.440 fear of the future, the fear of change, the fear 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:16.480 of impermanence, you have to have a certain about amount 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:19.280 of overreaction built into the model. You know. It's kind 0:07:19.280 --> 0:07:23.640 of like, uh, the idea of of monsters as symbols, 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:26.360 and they symbolize things about ourselves in our lives, and 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:29.640 they often have to be outrageous examples to drive home 0:07:29.720 --> 0:07:34.160 something that is less frightening at times. Well, I think 0:07:34.160 --> 0:07:36.400 it's not so much frightening to us anymore because a 0:07:36.440 --> 0:07:38.360 lot of the concepts that are covered in this nineteen 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:41.000 one book are kind of old hat for us now. 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:44.120 But at the time it must have been just terrifying 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:46.560 to people. And I think that that is borne out 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:49.000 in the numbers, because if you look at this book 0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:53.720 of something like six million copies worldwide, in the first year, 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:57.480 there were fifteen printings of this book and it's shot 0:07:57.560 --> 0:08:00.400 up on the best seller lists. So people had very 0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:03.200 real reaction to this idea. Because I think this is 0:08:03.240 --> 0:08:05.920 probably the first time that that people had really stepped 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:09.360 back in this way and presented all of the information 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:12.040 and all the change that was on the horizon based 0:08:12.080 --> 0:08:15.120 on the evidence at that time. And UM, now if 0:08:15.160 --> 0:08:18.440 you look at this era of the nineteen seventies, this 0:08:18.680 --> 0:08:23.480 is an important era because there's so much stuff going 0:08:23.520 --> 0:08:26.480 on here. I mean, you have the whole peace and 0:08:26.560 --> 0:08:30.720 love thing which is disintegrating. Um, You're seeing a lot 0:08:30.800 --> 0:08:36.440 more strife, economic imbalance, violence. Um. The culture of the 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:41.600 seventies is it's just itself very interesting. Yeah, I mean, 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:43.840 just think about some of the things we have going 0:08:43.880 --> 0:08:47.240 on during this era. We have all the psychedelic drugs, 0:08:47.520 --> 0:08:51.320 we have Vietnam, we have rock and Roll still going strong, 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:54.960 we have oh yeah between two man was visiting the 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:58.760 moon and uh, and it seemed like we would continue 0:08:58.800 --> 0:09:02.560 to maybe do that the in the following decades. You 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:07.600 have the birth of modern computing, the world's first general microprocessor, 0:09:07.679 --> 0:09:10.040 the Intel four thousand and four, which came out the 0:09:10.160 --> 0:09:13.640 in seventy one. You have fiber optics, you have microwave ovens, 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:16.600 so you have a lot of big changes that are occurring. 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:19.800 You have birth control, birth control, a lot of this 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:22.520 is huge. And then the sort of base stock of 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:24.400 all of this. I think of it this way, is 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:28.960 that science fiction has been in full bloom since the fifties. Right. Um, 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:34.320 you have Philip K. Dicks do Androids, dream of Electric Sheep, Right, 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:38.400 so you have all these ideas swirling around on how 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:42.120 humanity is changing and how it could potentially change in 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:44.640 the future. Yeah, and I think you know, in the 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:47.320 in the previous decades, you saw plenty of these like 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:50.800 short films like The Kitchen of Tomorrow, you know, and 0:09:50.920 --> 0:09:53.839 these ideas of how technology was gonna affect the way 0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:56.800 we live, but they seemed a little a little further 0:09:56.840 --> 0:10:00.000 off in the future. But by the seventies were really 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:03.080 really seeing things begin to integrate around us. And it's 0:10:03.120 --> 0:10:05.800 sort of like that that day when you realize that 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:10.679 some life event or some work uh deadline that had 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:13.920 been approaching is now here and you realize, Wow, the 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:17.080 future is here, in a in a in a way, 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:20.240 in a shape that I'm not quite ready for. Yeah. 0:10:20.360 --> 0:10:22.880 And um, you know, before, like you said, in the nineties, 0:10:22.920 --> 0:10:25.920 it was all kind of shiny and new and you know, futurist. 0:10:26.040 --> 0:10:28.200 And look, this product is going to make your life 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:29.920 so much easier and then you fast forward to the 0:10:29.920 --> 0:10:33.040 seventies and there's a lot of different fracturing going on 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:38.360 in society. And so Alvin Toffler, who at times has 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:42.160 been a student, radical, a welder, a newspaper reporter, and 0:10:42.200 --> 0:10:46.600 Fortune editor um, he and his wife Heidi decided to 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:51.319 try to describe the psychological state for individuals and societies 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:54.040 who hold this perception that there's too much change into 0:10:54.120 --> 0:10:57.880 short of a time period, and that there's no acknowledgement 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:02.120 that there's this enormous structure all change going on, and 0:11:02.120 --> 0:11:06.160 that we're transitioning. This is really important from an industrial 0:11:06.320 --> 0:11:10.120 society to what they call a super industrial society. Now, 0:11:10.160 --> 0:11:14.040 the one criterion for for for UM trying to figure 0:11:14.040 --> 0:11:17.000 out what is super industrial side as opposed to industrial 0:11:17.040 --> 0:11:21.920 society is that there's more laborers and post industrial businesses 0:11:21.920 --> 0:11:24.920 than in agriculture based businesses. And of course we do 0:11:25.000 --> 0:11:26.839 see this, we see this flip a lot of people 0:11:26.840 --> 0:11:31.240 going to post industrial um types of companies during this time, right, 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:33.840 So that example I gave at the beginning of the 0:11:33.840 --> 0:11:37.920 episode about just sort of shutting down psychologically mar On Marta, 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:40.439 when you see an android or something that is in 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:43.160 a kind of handy way. The essence of future shock 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:48.000 the future doesn't always all the interpretations don't necessarily involve 0:11:48.480 --> 0:11:52.319 like complete physical shutting down or madness. It's not future 0:11:52.360 --> 0:11:56.720 madness per se. But we're talking about the perceived premature 0:11:56.800 --> 0:11:58.800 arrival of the future. We're talking about the shock of 0:11:58.880 --> 0:12:01.400 rapid change. We're talking about too much change in too 0:12:01.400 --> 0:12:04.640 short of time. And it's important to note that all 0:12:04.679 --> 0:12:08.760 of these things, it's going to depend on who's viewing 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:12.160 the present and who and what their idea of the 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:14.400 future is. It's gonna vary from case to case, right, 0:12:14.440 --> 0:12:17.920 what's your perception of change in the world. For instance, 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:20.679 in a Wired article by Jason Kingdom, he referred to 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:24.439 quote Van Winkle syndrome, which is sort of a take 0:12:24.960 --> 0:12:27.560 on future shock. And this is the idea that you 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:31.440 feel amazed and bamboozled on stumbling over an innovation that 0:12:31.520 --> 0:12:34.520 you've failed to notice before. So you know, it's easy 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:37.280 you can have something like future shock based on something 0:12:37.280 --> 0:12:39.679 that is actually not new at all. You just you 0:12:39.720 --> 0:12:42.040 did weren't aware of. And if you have a hyper 0:12:42.080 --> 0:12:45.080 awareness of what is going on in the tech, the 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:48.600 tech industries and and in in culture, then you're maybe 0:12:48.640 --> 0:12:51.120 not gonna be shocked by by the next h you know, 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:54.480 bit on the local news about what the youth are doing. Now. 0:12:54.520 --> 0:12:56.439 One of the reasons why we really wanted to cover 0:12:56.559 --> 0:13:00.200 this topic in this book is because, um, and some 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:02.719 ways we feel this way today, right, we feel like 0:13:02.800 --> 0:13:06.480 we are completely inundated with data. We are um you 0:13:06.520 --> 0:13:10.880 know sometimes uh met with a lot of anxiety and 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:14.600 paralysis about all the choices before us. So the reason 0:13:14.640 --> 0:13:17.280 that Future Shock is so interesting the book is because 0:13:17.840 --> 0:13:21.320 it is a very thoughtful treatment of this topic. And 0:13:21.400 --> 0:13:23.440 some of the stuff is still relevant today and some 0:13:23.520 --> 0:13:26.320 of it, um, you know, the Toppler's got wrong, and 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:28.319 we'll discuss what they got right and what they got wrong. 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:30.840 But at the heart of it is this idea of 0:13:30.880 --> 0:13:37.320 trying to um understand how these abstract and concrete systems 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:40.920 are working together on the human being. And this was 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:44.400 something that was that was captured in a documentary in 0:13:44.520 --> 0:13:46.880 nineteen two. It doesn't quite I don't think it quite 0:13:46.880 --> 0:13:48.959 gives justice to the book, because I think it plays 0:13:49.080 --> 0:13:52.719 more on the sort of alarmist, the Cassandra elements of 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:54.400 the book. Because I really actually feel like the book 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:57.200 is presented in a in a kind of calm manner 0:13:57.240 --> 0:13:58.839 and just saying, well, these are the things that are 0:13:58.840 --> 0:14:01.880 going on right now. Um, but it does have this 0:14:01.960 --> 0:14:07.200 sort of reefer madness flavor to it that I really love. Yeah, 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:10.480 the book is is absolutely wonderful and and and it 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:12.280 is still in print. You can still get a copy 0:14:12.320 --> 0:14:15.000 of it. I highly recommend anyone who's interested to pick 0:14:15.040 --> 0:14:16.760 it up. I mean you do have to put yourself 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:18.840 in the mindset a little bit and realize that this 0:14:18.920 --> 0:14:23.000 is a voice of the nineteen seventies speaking to the 0:14:23.000 --> 0:14:26.160 people of the nineteen seventies. For instance, that he uses 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:30.280 the term ropot here a robot here, Yeah, who works 0:14:30.320 --> 0:14:34.000 on artificial intelligence. So there's some very quaint terms in there. Well, 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:37.080 he's also coining a lot of terms too, So um, 0:14:37.200 --> 0:14:39.400 there are there are a lot of words that he's 0:14:39.800 --> 0:14:41.840 rolling out that that I later realized, oh, well he 0:14:41.840 --> 0:14:44.440 invented That's he's the first person who is actually talking 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:48.240 about this particular com Hetty Toddler actually is the person 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:51.160 who um created the aphorism that the only thing that 0:14:51.200 --> 0:14:56.160 says the same as change. Um. Yes, but but if 0:14:56.200 --> 0:14:57.720 you if you can't get ahold of the book, or 0:14:57.800 --> 0:15:00.880 you're not sure you want to do. Check out the documentary. 0:15:00.920 --> 0:15:04.280 It's been in its entirety on YouTube for like almost 0:15:04.280 --> 0:15:07.280 ten years now, so it's I'm pretty sure you'll be 0:15:07.280 --> 0:15:09.680 able to find it. But they made the documentary in 0:15:09.840 --> 0:15:13.800 seventy two. It is narrated by Orson Wells, the great 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:18.040 Orson Wells Um who was also great in Size and 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:20.880 Uh and you think maybe a little bit intoxicated. He 0:15:20.920 --> 0:15:23.880 seems a little intoxicated. And in the clips that I 0:15:23.880 --> 0:15:26.960 saw and he's kind of a turtleneck wearing cigar puffing. 0:15:27.040 --> 0:15:32.160 He It opens with him on a airport moving walkway. 0:15:32.160 --> 0:15:34.560 He's kind of lumbering down that. Oh yeah, And that's 0:15:34.600 --> 0:15:38.840 after our fantastic intro where there's a couple walking towards 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:41.160 the camera in a park setting. We can't quite see 0:15:41.200 --> 0:15:43.800 their face because the gleam of the sun, and then 0:15:43.840 --> 0:15:45.960 when they get closer, the blur moves out, the glare 0:15:46.000 --> 0:15:48.480 goes away, and we see that their robots. And there's 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:52.160 this wonderful music because, as it turns out, um the 0:15:52.240 --> 0:15:56.640 musician gil Melli did the music for the Future Shock 0:15:57.000 --> 0:16:00.400 short film, and this is the same artist responsible for 0:16:00.440 --> 0:16:03.720 the soundtrack for the film The Andromeda Strain as well 0:16:03.760 --> 0:16:07.680 as Night Gallery the classic Rod Serling. So that's why 0:16:07.720 --> 0:16:11.320 it has that refrimendous sense to it, like that wonderful, 0:16:11.440 --> 0:16:14.760 ominous music with a little jazz, but also some some 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:18.200 wonderful synthesizer effects going on. So even if you're just 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:23.040 a fan of crazy cool voiceovers and and weird seventies uh, 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:25.240 you know, the weird seventies look and feel of things, 0:16:25.280 --> 0:16:29.960 than Future Shock, the documentary is definitely worth checking out. Yeah, 0:16:30.000 --> 0:16:32.680 it's great. Orson Well says, in the course of my work, 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:35.160 which has taken me to just about every corner of 0:16:35.160 --> 0:16:37.880 the globe, I see many aspects of a phenomenon which 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:42.120 I am just beginning to understand. Our modern technologies have 0:16:42.240 --> 0:16:46.440 changed the degree of sophistication beyond our wildest dreams. But 0:16:46.720 --> 0:16:50.440 this technology has exacted a pretty heavy price. We live 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:52.840 in an age of anxiety and time of stress, and 0:16:52.880 --> 0:16:55.560 with all of our sophistication, we are in fact the 0:16:55.680 --> 0:16:59.160 victims of our own technological strength. We are the victims 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:06.480 of shock. Future shocked. Nice, that's not really well, but 0:17:06.640 --> 0:17:09.240 you know, you get yeah, but you definitely get a 0:17:09.280 --> 0:17:11.919 sense of it because there's a there's a gravity to everything. 0:17:11.960 --> 0:17:15.639 He's saying, and there there's a there's a fear that 0:17:15.720 --> 0:17:18.639 the film really does turn the dial up on the 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:22.680 fear factor of future shock and and at times it's 0:17:22.720 --> 0:17:25.320 it's hammy and hilarious and and and I love it, 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:28.080 like when he's talking about an artificial elbow being quote 0:17:28.280 --> 0:17:34.160 one more step towards an artificial man, which yes, technically, 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:35.879 Like there's a whole scene there where they talk about 0:17:36.400 --> 0:17:38.480 about that some of the health topics, and they show 0:17:38.680 --> 0:17:42.600 an individual whose life was saved by I can't remember 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:45.080 his artificial heart, art artificial heart valve or some sort 0:17:45.119 --> 0:17:48.000 of device, but they managed to make it seem a 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:50.800 little scary and you have to step outside of me, like, wait, 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:53.600 this technology saved this guy's life, while are you trying 0:17:53.600 --> 0:17:55.520 to convince me to be afraid of this? And and 0:17:55.560 --> 0:17:59.120 that it's just a slippery slope to androids because it's 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:01.840 Toppler in the brings us up sort of obliquely like 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:03.720 at what point, and we've talked about this before, like 0:18:03.760 --> 0:18:07.840 at what point are you augmenting ourselves and becoming transhuman now? Again, 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:10.960 Toughler just sort of puts that out there in the book. Um, 0:18:11.040 --> 0:18:12.760 and it's not as if he's saying that if you 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:14.960 have a pacemaker, you are all of a sudden not human. 0:18:15.000 --> 0:18:18.280 But he's bringing up the question of what direction are 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:20.200 we moving? Yeah. One of the important things to keep 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:22.320 in mind about Future Shock is that, even though it's 0:18:22.320 --> 0:18:24.720 it's fun to focus on some of these uh sort 0:18:24.760 --> 0:18:26.639 of you know, fear of the youth, fear of the 0:18:26.680 --> 0:18:29.119 technology aspects, so much of it is about, first of all, 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:32.000 how is this technology affecting me in my perception of 0:18:32.000 --> 0:18:33.879 the world, my ability to work with the world, But 0:18:33.920 --> 0:18:36.520 also how our advances in technology, how are changes in 0:18:36.560 --> 0:18:39.600 society and culture, how are they affecting systems that are 0:18:39.640 --> 0:18:43.280 already in place in the world. Um. One one particular 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:45.720 aspect that is not mentioned in the book that instantly 0:18:45.760 --> 0:18:47.760 comes to mind here is, of course, when you see 0:18:47.880 --> 0:18:52.440 uh say uh, the Internet arriving and that being ahead 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:56.800 of various UH industries and systems, such as how a 0:18:56.920 --> 0:19:01.280 napster affected the music industry, where music sharing in our 0:19:01.320 --> 0:19:04.760 ability to digitally use music was way ahead of the 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:08.560 industry's ability to regulate it or or may make money 0:19:08.600 --> 0:19:11.080 off of it and even understand it, and so a 0:19:11.080 --> 0:19:13.320 certain amount of chaos erupted out of that and we 0:19:13.400 --> 0:19:15.960 still do a certain extent are are are dealing with 0:19:16.000 --> 0:19:18.639 the after effects of that. Yeah, and actually Toddlers, they 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:21.000 would say that right now that there's not the infrastructure 0:19:21.040 --> 0:19:25.000 that's needed still that we intellectually intellectually property rights are 0:19:25.040 --> 0:19:27.840 just one example of how, you know, the law has 0:19:27.880 --> 0:19:30.639 not really kept up with what's going on on a 0:19:30.680 --> 0:19:33.240 technological level. And we'll talk more about that and some 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:37.000 of their ideas about how we are still lagging behind 0:19:37.040 --> 0:19:39.440 in those departments. But let's talk about some of the 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:42.200 themes covered in this book before we talk about what 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:45.800 the Toddlers got wrong. And we are talking about twenty 0:19:46.040 --> 0:19:50.600 chapters with main themes and then about a hundred and 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:54.600 eight sub topics. So really the Toddlers took a massive 0:19:55.119 --> 0:19:57.680 introspective look into what was going on and really tried 0:19:57.720 --> 0:20:00.760 to cover all of the ground that they could. And 0:20:00.800 --> 0:20:03.479 that's why it's such an amazing book. Yeah, it's one 0:20:03.480 --> 0:20:05.840 of those books. You know, sometimes you read really important 0:20:05.880 --> 0:20:08.040 works and you think I could have written that. But 0:20:08.280 --> 0:20:10.040 Future Shock is one of those books that I look 0:20:10.040 --> 0:20:12.600 at and I'm just in awe and how thorough it is. 0:20:12.680 --> 0:20:15.120 Because some of some of the topics that they cover 0:20:15.240 --> 0:20:18.560 here include UM over choice, pressure to keep up with 0:20:18.560 --> 0:20:23.520 the latest technology, rapidly expanding knowledge, information overload, computer field society, 0:20:24.040 --> 0:20:31.560 temporary consumer culture, UM, youth movements, new transient lifestyles, instant intimacy, cyborgs, 0:20:31.600 --> 0:20:38.320 modular bodies, cybernetics, plastic surgery, UM, as well as robotics, 0:20:38.680 --> 0:20:41.880 changing the definition of man, artificial insemination, test two babies, 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:47.639 changing families, group marriages, communes, pornography, UH, general unrest, genetics, 0:20:47.720 --> 0:20:53.680 genetic arm races, genetic engineering, mind and body control, cloning. UM. 0:20:53.720 --> 0:20:56.000 It just see it just it just changes and changes 0:20:56.040 --> 0:20:59.040 and changes at every level of of our existence, every 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:03.080 level of our current nineteen seventies world. Yeah, and it's 0:21:03.119 --> 0:21:05.800 it's really interesting the way that he approaches them because 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:09.720 something like um, the artificial elbow, you know that that 0:21:09.800 --> 0:21:12.840 might lead to the cyborgs among us, which is actually 0:21:12.880 --> 0:21:15.560 a chapter title. UM. He's basing that on what he 0:21:15.680 --> 0:21:19.919 sees as modularism in architecture, because he's seeing this in 0:21:20.000 --> 0:21:23.080 other sectors of industry, like you have this push toward 0:21:23.600 --> 0:21:26.760 trying to make things compact, trying to make things so 0:21:26.800 --> 0:21:30.440 that they can be transported and changed up. And he's 0:21:30.480 --> 0:21:34.160 beginning to see in robotics, the infancy of this where 0:21:34.200 --> 0:21:36.679 the same sort of thing is happening with the human 0:21:36.720 --> 0:21:41.040 body in terms of trying to replace parts or make 0:21:41.119 --> 0:21:45.119 them more adaptable. And that's what's so interesting about it. 0:21:45.200 --> 0:21:47.280 Just the way that he's coming at this, or I 0:21:47.280 --> 0:21:49.800 should say he and his wife, Heidi Toffler coming at this, 0:21:49.920 --> 0:21:52.840 is that they're really basing that on the sort of 0:21:52.880 --> 0:21:55.960 things that they are seeing. And it's not just in robotics, 0:21:56.000 --> 0:21:58.840 but you know, spreading out through society. And I just 0:21:58.880 --> 0:22:01.520 wanted to read this one little bit that Toffler says 0:22:01.520 --> 0:22:03.959 about unrest and young people. And he talks a lot 0:22:03.960 --> 0:22:05.800 about young people. It's really interesting. I mean, we have 0:22:05.920 --> 0:22:09.640