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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 2: name is Robert.

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Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 2: So the world is of course always changing. We know

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Speaker 2: this to be true, and yet I don't know about

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Speaker 2: the rest of you, and this is going to probably

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Speaker 2: vary greatly. I was actually talking about my wife with

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Speaker 2: this right before I came in. She was like, what

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Speaker 2: are you recording about today? And I was like, well,

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Speaker 2: we're going to be talking about this concept future shock.

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Speaker 2: And she's like, oh, yeah, you've explained it to me before.

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Speaker 2: Can you explain it again? And I did and she said, oh,

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Speaker 2: that's not real. I never feel that way. So I

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Speaker 2: do want to acknowledge straight up that not everyone is

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Speaker 2: necessarily going to feel this way. It is, I guess subjective,

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Speaker 2: but I don't know. For me, I feel like there

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Speaker 2: are times when it feels like change is accelerated, or

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Speaker 2: that the changes that are occurring in the world social

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Speaker 2: to our technology, technological or scientific or what have you, geopolitical,

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Speaker 2: et cetera, are are kind of like the topiary animals

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Speaker 2: in Stephen King's novel The Shining in the book as

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Speaker 2: opposed to the Stanley Kubrick movie. It's it's not a

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Speaker 2: hedge maze, it's hedge animals. And you look away, and

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Speaker 2: then you look back and they've moved in closer. So

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Speaker 2: it's sometimes it feels like that to me, with with

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Speaker 2: advancements and technological advancements and so forth, that they've been

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Speaker 2: steadily advancing on is while our backs are turned, and

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Speaker 2: it's and we only begin to notice, perhaps seemingly too late,

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Speaker 2: that oh, these these things are basically here.

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Speaker 3: Okay, So you're saying in this episode or this series,

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Speaker 3: you wanted to talk about the idea of future shock,

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Speaker 3: and this is brought on by some recent feelings about technology,

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Speaker 3: primarily AI.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think AI is is one of

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Speaker 2: the main metrics of change that a lot of people

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Speaker 2: are talking about right now. AI has come up on

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Speaker 2: the show quite a bit over the years, and including

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Speaker 2: the idea of AIS and creativity as recently as just

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Speaker 2: a couple of years ago. Me personally, I found that

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Speaker 2: these concepts felt exciting, maybe a little bit threatening, but

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Speaker 2: not in an immediate sense. At the same time, there

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Speaker 2: was also a lot of optimistic ideas concerning what the

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Speaker 2: future might look like with generative AI and so called

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Speaker 2: creative AI systems in place, that AI would essentially be

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Speaker 2: our partner in change. It would be a collaboration. I

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Speaker 2: remember seeing you know, talks about this and examples of

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Speaker 2: how this would play out. You'd adapt to using these

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Speaker 2: new tools as part of your creative process, while in

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Speaker 2: other fields individuals would reskill to adapt to the change.

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Speaker 2: You know, it seemed like there was kind of a

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Speaker 2: you know, a roadmap in place, and you know it

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Speaker 2: eased any rising future shock you might have.

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Speaker 3: Okay, so you used to feel more or like whatever

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Speaker 3: changes are going to be brought on by AI, we're

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Speaker 3: sort of we're taking the proper steps to like cushion

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Speaker 3: those blows.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, or at least, I mean not to say that

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Speaker 2: I wasn't exposed to other ideas and more negative views

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Speaker 2: of what could occur, but it seemed like there was

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Speaker 2: enough positivity out there that I was able to sort

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Speaker 2: of buy into it. And then I remember, before the pandemic,

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Speaker 2: at some point of Frequage year, this was I tended

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Speaker 2: to talk at the World Science Festival in which physicist

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Speaker 2: Max Tegmark reference to this idea, this kind of topography

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Speaker 2: of human abilities and jobs, with the idea being that

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Speaker 2: the higher elevations of this topography, like the mountain peaks,

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Speaker 2: we're going to be the most protected from the rising

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Speaker 2: sea levels of artificial intelligence. You can find this illustration online,

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Speaker 2: but it's like down there in the water, that's where jeopardy, chess, arithmetic,

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Speaker 2: and rote memorization are like, those are already underwater of AI.

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Speaker 2: But then as you move up through the topography, eventually

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Speaker 2: you're going to reach the heights of art, book, writing,

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Speaker 2: and science.

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Speaker 3: So his idea was things like art, I'm looking, you've

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Speaker 3: got the image here for me to look at two

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Speaker 3: things like maybe art, cinematography, writing, science theorem proving these

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Speaker 3: are all like the peaks that are going to be

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Speaker 3: the last things that AI can reach and replicate.

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Speaker 2: Right right, And there would be other things in the

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Speaker 2: low lens that would be kind of like next to go,

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Speaker 2: like vision and speech recognition, driving, for example. And not

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Speaker 2: to say that this is now inaccurate or anything, but

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Speaker 2: at the time when I first saw this image, you know,

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Speaker 2: it was interesting, maybe somewhat concerning, but it still didn't

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Speaker 2: feel immediate. But then in the summer of twenty twenty two,

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Speaker 2: I chatted with Mike Sharples, the author of Story Machines,

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Speaker 2: how computers have become creative writers. And I know we

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Speaker 2: had a lot of fun on some subsequent listener mails

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Speaker 2: using some of these technologies to generate tech But I

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Speaker 2: asked Sharples about this image, this idea from Max tech Mark,

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Speaker 2: and I, you know, ask him what he thought about

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Speaker 2: this projection, you know, the idea that human book writing,

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Speaker 2: for example, was in the highlands, and he said that

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Speaker 2: he thought the waters were already considerably high.

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Speaker 3: I guess one problem maybe affecting a picture like this

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Speaker 3: or a topography like this, is that it considers book

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Speaker 3: writing as one thing. And whereas it might be quite

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Speaker 3: difficult for AI to write a certain kind of book

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Speaker 3: aimed for a certain kind of audience, it might be

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Speaker 3: quite easy for AI to write a different kind of

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Speaker 3: book with a different purpose in mind.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean to sort of throw in a

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Speaker 2: sci fi example, like if you were to find out, oh,

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Speaker 2: the aliens are among us now and they are disguising

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Speaker 2: themselves as people. The disguises are horrible, but the mere

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Speaker 2: fact that they are now doing it is enough for alarm,

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Speaker 2: you know. I guess it's that sort of thing. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: because right now, you know, can AI write like, quote

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Speaker 2: unquote the Great American novel now? But can it do

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Speaker 2: other things that can be passed off at least in

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Speaker 2: you know, sort of like self publishing marketplace and that

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Speaker 2: sort of thing. You know, has it reached the point

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Speaker 2: where it is of concern in education, in publishing in general?

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Speaker 3: Yes, I think I was just reading an article about

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Speaker 3: people relying on AI generated travel guides just supposed to

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Speaker 3: be you know, this is this is the kind of

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Speaker 3: thing that you might imagine AI could do well, because

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Speaker 3: it's just sourcing publicly available information from the Internet and

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Speaker 3: then compiling that into a book. And it's like, oh, okay,

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Speaker 3: so you can know here the restaurants you can go

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Speaker 3: to in this city or something like that. But I

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Speaker 3: think I recall in the article of his reading that

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Speaker 3: people had been sent wildly astray about these things. But

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Speaker 3: that's still stuff that seems like mere I don't know,

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Speaker 3: compilation of publicly existing factual information should be more easily

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Speaker 3: achievable by AI than say, writing a really beautiful, expressive

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Speaker 3: literary novel that you know is meaningful to people.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I actually have a friend who experimented

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Speaker 2: with vacation planning via AI, and he thought it was amazing,

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Speaker 2: you know, what you could do. But then of course

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Speaker 2: the realization then you've got to do the legwork of

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Speaker 2: fact checking everything and making sure that it all lines up,

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Speaker 2: because you don't want to just you know, go off

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Speaker 2: with this being your main you know, bit of planning.

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Speaker 2: So yeah, I don't know. Recently, it seems like there

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Speaker 2: have been varying waves of you know, excitement, enthusiasm, concern, malaise,

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Speaker 2: all of this concerning generative AI. You see this wave

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Speaker 2: sort of catching people at different points. Like I remember

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Speaker 2: when I first saw what some of these visual generative

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Speaker 2: AI programs could do, I was like, wow, that's amazing.

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Speaker 2: Look at this, this is this is this is kind

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Speaker 2: of great. It can make a dream like reality and

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Speaker 2: you can sort of create images that no one is

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Speaker 2: going to create for commercial reasons or even you know,

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Speaker 2: for personal artistic reasons, and you can make them sort

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Speaker 2: of real. And then I, for me personally, I don't

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Speaker 2: know that enthusiasm waned a lot when I just sort

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Speaker 2: of begin to see sort of like the soullessness of it,

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Speaker 2: at least from my perspective, it certainly waned when I

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Speaker 2: when I saw you know, visual artists that I know

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Speaker 2: or at the very least follow online, and you know,

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Speaker 2: saw them registering their concern over how these systems worked,

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Speaker 2: how they were sourcing information. And you continue to see

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Speaker 2: people at different points. You know, some people out there

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Speaker 2: just discovering some of this technology, and they're at the

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Speaker 2: high point, and maybe they're going to stay up there

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Speaker 2: for a little while. So I don't know. I find

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Speaker 2: I have to sort of voice you some restraint when

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Speaker 2: interacting with people. I don't want to be the person

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Speaker 2: who's immediately trying to squash everyone's excitement for new technology.

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Speaker 3: You know, specifically when it comes to the arts, there

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Speaker 3: has long been a kind of implicit model at work

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Speaker 3: in our culture. I'm sure you'll know what I mean

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Speaker 3: when I described this that says, well, an artist, they

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Speaker 3: will sort of have two simultaneous careers. They'll have the

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Speaker 3: stuff that they care about working on that they don't

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Speaker 3: expect to make money on. It's difficult to make money on,

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Speaker 3: but might actually be quite beautiful and meaningful, and we

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Speaker 3: are glad that we have that stuff in the culture.

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Speaker 3: It is enriching, even if it is not a major

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Speaker 3: source of economic of money moving from place to place.

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Speaker 3: And then on the other hand, they're like, well, they've

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Speaker 3: got to have a day job, so they do you know,

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Speaker 3: illustrations for advertisements or something like that. This kind of

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Speaker 3: like not very inspired and not very fulfilling, but is

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Speaker 3: the way they can use their skills to make some

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Speaker 3: money to pay the bills while they do this other thing.

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Speaker 3: And so if that secondary thing is now it's like, oh, well,

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Speaker 3: we can just get a program to do that for us.

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Speaker 3: I wonder how that affects the other half of the equation,

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Speaker 3: because now you have an artist who can't subsidize the

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Speaker 3: kind of art they want to do by doing this

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Speaker 3: other job.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know exactly what you mean. It's it's

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Speaker 2: like saying, oh, don't worry, we're not going to replace

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Speaker 2: your your art. We just want to replace that that

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Speaker 2: side gig you had where you were doing you know,

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Speaker 2: some mockups of concepts for various projects, and yeah, that

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Speaker 2: that could that may very well be the thing that's

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Speaker 2: sustaining the other efforts.

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Speaker 3: So I think that's one way when people have said like, oh,

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Speaker 3: you know, AI, it's not gonna it's not going to

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Speaker 3: replace great works of art that that might be kind

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Speaker 3: of missing some of the practical realities of what it

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Speaker 3: means to make a living as an artist.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and so yeah, all this was going on, and

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Speaker 2: then it wasn't too long after this that a number

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Speaker 2: of people that that we both know lost their writing

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Speaker 2: and editing jobs to Generative AI, which seemed that was

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Speaker 2: especially a moment for me, which seemed to come just

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Speaker 2: shockingly fast that it just it's like people were saying,

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Speaker 2: this is the sort of thing that could occur, and

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Speaker 2: I still didn't think that it was on the cusp

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Speaker 2: of happening, and then it did.

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Speaker 3: You thought it was farther away.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it just it just seemed like those toperary animals

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Speaker 2: were farther off, but then suddenly they're right here. So yeah,

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Speaker 2: it just suddenly felt like a lot of these advancements. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: we're far closer to me and people around me than

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Speaker 2: they had been previously. It seemed like some of the

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Speaker 2: rosy ideas concerning how it could all play out were

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Speaker 2: maybe not quite as accurate. And I found that it

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Speaker 2: made me, It made me feel a bit anxious, you know.

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Speaker 2: All while everything else in the news cycle was going

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Speaker 2: on from congressional testimony about UFOs, to the sort of

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Speaker 2: general grinding stone of political coverage, to the equally suddenly

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Speaker 2: very real ramifications of climate change, which of course are

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Speaker 2: kind of are basically reflected in that Max tech mark concept,

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Speaker 2: you know, trying to understand the rising threat of AI

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Speaker 2: by comparing it to the rising, literal, rising sea waters

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Speaker 2: due to climate change. And of course it's it's interesting

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Speaker 2: to use one to to understand the other when both

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Speaker 2: suffer at times from this this this lack of feeling

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Speaker 2: like an immediate concern to many people, even when here

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Speaker 2: we are suddenly you know, just watch the news any

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Speaker 2: given day and you can see it playing out in

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Speaker 2: real time. So anyway, I didn't think about it much

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Speaker 2: at the time, but then later I was chatting with

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Speaker 2: some friends and I was reminded once more of Alvin

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Speaker 2: Toffler's nineteen seventy book Future Shock, which i'd read myself

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Speaker 2: for the first time maybe ten years ago, and I thought, well,

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Speaker 2: we should come back and revisit it, like I want to,

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Speaker 2: you know, wanted to revisit it. At this point in

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Speaker 2: my life. I feel like there's more to discuss in

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Speaker 2: terms of like where we are in the world at

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Speaker 2: this point, and it's just it also deals with a

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Speaker 2: number of you know, stuff to blow your mind, you know,

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Speaker 2: classic concepts of futurism and change.

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Speaker 3: I always enjoy reading about the predictions people made about

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Speaker 3: the future from the disc in past. So this book

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Speaker 3: is now fifty three years old, is that right?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's over a half a century old.

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Speaker 2: So it's yeah, it's interesting to look back on because,

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Speaker 2: as you might expect, so many ideas are thrown out

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Speaker 2: in this book that you know, some hauntingly hit the mark,

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Speaker 2: some are way off base, and many of them are

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Speaker 2: just sort of like a snapshot of the time, like imagining. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: that this is this is a book that came together

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Speaker 2: in the late nineteen sixties, you know, at this point

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Speaker 2: of you know, drastic change in America, in the world,

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Speaker 2: and this is what one individual or a pair of

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Speaker 2: individuals put together about all of it.

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Speaker 3: There is a lot about hippies in this book.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of looking to what is

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Speaker 2: the hippie culture subculture doing and how can this be

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Speaker 2: like a magic ball in a sense to understand the future.

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Speaker 2: And some of it does pan out, like some of

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Speaker 2: the future predictions by looking at the hippies works, other

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Speaker 2: things not so much, you know, so we'll definitely get

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Speaker 2: into some of those examples.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. So, as I was saying, I love these things,

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Speaker 3: even when they're ludicrously wrong, you know. I like Criswell

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Speaker 3: predicts and future events such as these will concern us

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Speaker 3: all in the future because that is where we're going

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Speaker 3: to be living the rest of our lives. But I

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Speaker 3: like you so I'd never read this book before. I

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Speaker 3: just finished it for the first time literally hours before

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Speaker 3: we started recording here, and I was struck by Yeah,

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Speaker 3: a very interesting mix of reactions. On one hand, Future

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Speaker 3: Shock is it's exactly the kind of book that I

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Speaker 3: think one needs to be wary of, and I would

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Speaker 3: character I would put it in this category of charismatic

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Speaker 3: big cultural thesis books, books that have a kind of

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Speaker 3: basically easy to understand charismatic idea at the core, that's like,

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Speaker 3: here's the thing that explains what's going on in culture.

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Speaker 3: Books like that can be kind of epistemically dangerous because

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Speaker 3: it's very appealing to have to like land on a

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Speaker 3: theory that finally, you know, culture is so confusing, I

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Speaker 3: don't understand what's happening in the world today, and then oh,

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Speaker 3: here's a thesis that explains what's going on. Now I

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Speaker 3: finally understand it, and you can like put use that

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Speaker 3: as your lens that now the world makes sense. And

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Speaker 3: so it is a book in a way like that,

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Speaker 3: which is especially funny because there is a section in

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Speaker 3: the book warning about books of that sort and theories

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Speaker 3: of that sort that explain everything about culture.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and if memory service, they do kind of acknowledge

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Speaker 2: like this book could could be exactly the sort of

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Speaker 2: thing that could be like a maladaptive reaction to future shock.

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Speaker 2: I just go all in on it exactly.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, So they have that consciousness, and so I think

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Speaker 3: that's fair and that's a good kind of self consciousness

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Speaker 3: for the author or authors. Maybe we can talk about

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Speaker 3: whether we should be talking about the author as Alvin

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Speaker 3: Toffler or Alvin and Heidi Toffler the book I read

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Speaker 3: the author name on it was Alvin Toffler, but from

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Speaker 3: what I understand there now sort of understood to be

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Speaker 3: co authors, though she was sort of an anonymous co author.

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Speaker 3: Is that right, Yeah, Yeah, that's my understanding as well.

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Speaker 3: He was a writer, a journalist and a futurist. She

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Speaker 3: was a researcher and an editor. According to her oh

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Speaker 3: bit in The New York Times, she quote served an essential,

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Speaker 3: though anonymous, collaborative role alongside her celebrated husband, and she

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Speaker 3: is later in later works she is credited as co author.

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Speaker 3: So I think we'll probably be interchangeables.

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Speaker 2: Like sometimes we may say he when we could easily

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Speaker 2: say they, we may say Toffler, and other times we

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Speaker 2: may say the Tofflers. But I think it's widely recognized

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Speaker 2: that they work together on these.

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Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, so for now I'll say the Tofflers. I

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Speaker 3: think the Tofflers do show that self consciousness and acknowledge

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Speaker 3: that which is useful. But like I said, it's always

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Speaker 3: good to approach books like this cautiously because there are

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Speaker 3: good books like this that can offer some good insights,

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Speaker 3: but rarely are they correct in everything they claim. And

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Speaker 3: also you just have to be conscious that I think

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Speaker 3: books like this can be more appealing than they deserve,

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Speaker 3: like that, you know, be like, oh, the explanatory power

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Speaker 3: they seem to offer can prove too alluring and can

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Speaker 3: kind of easily hop over our defenses to arguments that

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Speaker 3: we would notice our week in another context. Like I

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Speaker 3: remember at one point when it was making a point

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Speaker 3: about the diversity of options available in the world today

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Speaker 3: on things which you can you know, give your interest

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Speaker 3: to or spend your time on. It said quote book

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Speaker 3: clubs are finding it increasingly more difficult to choose monthly

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Speaker 3: selections that appeal to large numbers of divergent readers. And

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Speaker 3: I you know, at first you can just kind of

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Speaker 3: like read that sentence and be like yeah, yeah, And

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Speaker 3: then I stopped and I was like, wait a minute,

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Speaker 3: how would one know this? Like, no evidence of that

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Speaker 3: claim is given. It's just sort of it's something that

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Speaker 3: sounds plausible. That's probably, but I have no idea if

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Speaker 3: that statement is true. So, and there's just like a

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Speaker 3: lot of stuff like that in this book and books

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Speaker 3: like it, statements that kind of like they they're part

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Speaker 3: of this march of evidence toward the thesis about what's

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Speaker 3: going on in culture, and they sound plausibly enough true.

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Speaker 3: They kind of fit into the rhythm of the argument

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Speaker 3: being developed, and they just wash over you and you think, yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 3: but it's so anyway, I guess my point is when

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Speaker 3: you realize that's happening to you in a book, you

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Speaker 3: should stop and think, Okay, wait a minute, maybe I

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Speaker 3: should be a little cautious here.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean we've covered books of this nature before.

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Speaker 2: I mean the bicameral mind. You know, I've talked about,

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Speaker 2: you know, the works of Terrence McKenna on the show before,

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Speaker 2: and you know, these are I think these are you know,

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Speaker 2: books by individuals who had some amazing ideas, some amazing viewpoints,

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Speaker 2: some things to say that were at times important, at

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Speaker 2: times entertaining, and you know also sometimes perhaps you know, incorrect.

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Speaker 2: But yeah, it's like, do you go all in on it?

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Speaker 2: Do you do you go all in on the Stone

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Speaker 2: Dape hypothesis or do you just you know, you read it,

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Speaker 2: you hear it, but you also, you know, keep a

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Speaker 2: foot in in other realities as well. So yeah, I

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Speaker 2: think it is it is important to maybe not go

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Speaker 2: all in on an idea like this, but I still

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Speaker 2: think that, yeah, there is a lot to learn from

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Speaker 2: it and to draw out of it.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think the healthy attitude is when

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Speaker 3: you're reading something like this, don't get sucked in and say, oh,

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Speaker 3: here's the person who's explaining it.

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Speaker 2: All.

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Speaker 3: This is now the teacher and I am the student. Instead,

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Speaker 3: you regard this as this is a person who's making

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Speaker 3: a series of claims, and like remember to evaluate those claims. Uh,

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Speaker 3: And I, like I said, I think some of the

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Speaker 3: claims made here are pretty good and are pretty insightful,

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Speaker 3: and I'll identify those as we go on.

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Speaker 2: Now. It also helps that Future Shock just has a

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Speaker 2: great title, the title book and also the title of

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Speaker 2: the central thesis, the idea that we as individuals and

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Speaker 2: we as a society are suffering from future shock. So

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Speaker 2: it's no surprise that even even you know so certainly,

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00:20:13,320 --> 00:20:14,880
Speaker 2: this book was a huge success when it came out,

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Speaker 2: and a lot of people read it was translated into

379
00:20:16,760 --> 00:20:18,959
Speaker 2: so many different languages. It's my understanding it's never been

380
00:20:19,000 --> 00:20:22,560
Speaker 2: out of print. People continue to read it and other

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00:20:22,560 --> 00:20:24,919
Speaker 2: works by the Toddlers to this day. So a lot

382
00:20:24,920 --> 00:20:28,000
Speaker 2: of people were exposed to the ideas in this book.

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Speaker 2: But also just the title itself inspired various things. So

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Speaker 2: in the British two thousand and a d comic book

385
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Speaker 2: series there is a regularly occurring a section called Thrag's

386
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Speaker 2: Future Shocks. I don't think it has anything really to

387
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Speaker 2: do with the central premise here, other than it sounds cool.

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Speaker 2: It's a thrag or oh, it's Thark. I'm sorry, Yes,

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00:20:49,200 --> 00:20:51,959
Speaker 2: Tharg's Future Shocks. I don't know that I've ever actually

390
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Speaker 2: read Tharg's Future Shocks. I've read a lot of Judge

391
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Speaker 2: dread over the years, but in a few things outside

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Speaker 2: of that in two thousand and a d But yeah,

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Speaker 2: I don't think of read Thark per.

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Speaker 3: Se, who is the Ark?

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Speaker 2: He's just this. He's kind of like, you know, a cripkeeper.

396
00:21:07,280 --> 00:21:11,480
Speaker 2: I think you know, Oh, okay, nice futuristic monster cripkeeper

397
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Speaker 2: of two thousand and eighty.

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Speaker 3: I see.

399
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Speaker 2: There was also, and I've never seen this, but from

400
00:21:17,200 --> 00:21:20,800
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy six through nineteen seventy nine, James Brown hosted

401
00:21:21,080 --> 00:21:25,520
Speaker 2: a variety show and it was called Future Shock, which,

402
00:21:25,560 --> 00:21:29,760
Speaker 2: again I don't know how the musical content here was

403
00:21:29,800 --> 00:21:33,760
Speaker 2: supposed to actually be instilling us with future shock. I

404
00:21:33,760 --> 00:21:37,800
Speaker 2: think it just sounded cool. There's also a nineteen ninety

405
00:21:37,800 --> 00:21:41,600
Speaker 2: four Vivian Shilling b movie called Future Shock, has Bill

406
00:21:41,640 --> 00:21:44,360
Speaker 2: Paxton in it. I haven't seen it, but I get

407
00:21:44,400 --> 00:21:47,240
Speaker 2: the impression that it is only like surface level getting

408
00:21:47,280 --> 00:21:48,879
Speaker 2: into the idea of future shock.

409
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Speaker 3: I think I watched it maybe freshman year of college.

410
00:21:54,080 --> 00:21:57,080
Speaker 3: I do not remember anything about it at all except

411
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Speaker 3: that it wasn't good.

412
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Speaker 2: It's not what the tour de four that Soultaker was right,

413
00:22:03,240 --> 00:22:05,680
Speaker 2: wasn't she also in Soultakers I don't remember a celt

414
00:22:05,680 --> 00:22:08,920
Speaker 2: Taker movie. Okay, oh, but we're bearing the lead here

415
00:22:08,960 --> 00:22:14,920
Speaker 2: because there was also a wonderful nineteen seventy two documentary

416
00:22:15,359 --> 00:22:18,439
Speaker 2: based on the book Future Shock, covering some of the

417
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Speaker 2: you know, the key ideas involved here, hosted by Orson Wells.

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Speaker 3: Ah the French.

419
00:22:26,240 --> 00:22:29,840
Speaker 2: Oh boy, this is this. This you can definitely find

420
00:22:29,920 --> 00:22:32,840
Speaker 2: on streaming services, not in great quality, but in you know,

421
00:22:33,119 --> 00:22:38,000
Speaker 2: semi watchable quality. It's it's somewhat cheesy, still a lot

422
00:22:38,040 --> 00:22:41,600
Speaker 2: of fun. Certainly leads into the more theatrical aspects of

423
00:22:42,280 --> 00:22:45,800
Speaker 2: the whole premise and and where Orson Wells hams it

424
00:22:45,880 --> 00:22:48,959
Speaker 2: up a lot. But it does have some effective moments

425
00:22:48,960 --> 00:22:52,440
Speaker 2: of weirdness. There's there's one part very early on that

426
00:22:52,960 --> 00:22:54,720
Speaker 2: they really resonated with me when I first saw it.

427
00:22:54,880 --> 00:22:57,840
Speaker 2: It continues to sort of resonate with me. So early

428
00:22:57,880 --> 00:23:00,639
Speaker 2: in the documentary we see Worson Wells. This is like

429
00:23:00,760 --> 00:23:04,480
Speaker 2: late career Orson Welles. We see him at an airport

430
00:23:04,600 --> 00:23:08,040
Speaker 2: having apparently just landed on an airplane. He's smoking a

431
00:23:08,080 --> 00:23:12,600
Speaker 2: pipe or a cigar or something and telling us about basically,

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Speaker 2: the way he's talking, it sounds like, you know, he

433
00:23:14,200 --> 00:23:18,040
Speaker 2: came up with future shock, he says, in the course

434
00:23:18,080 --> 00:23:20,240
Speaker 2: of my work, which takes me to just about every

435
00:23:20,280 --> 00:23:22,600
Speaker 2: corner of the globe, I see many aspects of a

436
00:23:22,640 --> 00:23:27,240
Speaker 2: phenomenon which I'm just beginning to understand. Our modern technologies

437
00:23:27,240 --> 00:23:30,640
Speaker 2: have achieved a degree of sophistication beyond our wildest dreams.

438
00:23:30,920 --> 00:23:35,040
Speaker 2: But this technology has exacted a pretty heavy price. We

439
00:23:35,119 --> 00:23:38,440
Speaker 2: live in an age of anxiety, a time of stress,

440
00:23:38,760 --> 00:23:41,920
Speaker 2: and with all our sophistication, we all are in fact

441
00:23:42,119 --> 00:23:46,480
Speaker 2: the victims of our own technological strength. We are victims

442
00:23:46,480 --> 00:23:51,840
Speaker 2: of shock, of future shock. And I'm not accurately presenting

443
00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:55,160
Speaker 2: it here, but the way he delivers that last line

444
00:23:55,200 --> 00:23:57,360
Speaker 2: always like kind of stuck a chord with me, because

445
00:23:57,560 --> 00:24:00,800
Speaker 2: you know, Orson Welles, even a late career still as showman.

446
00:24:01,200 --> 00:24:03,639
Speaker 2: He you know, he's hamming it up a lot in

447
00:24:03,680 --> 00:24:06,240
Speaker 2: this particular documentary, but in that one line, I feel

448
00:24:06,280 --> 00:24:08,239
Speaker 2: like he pours a great deal of compassion into it.

449
00:24:08,600 --> 00:24:11,800
Speaker 2: You know, he's telling you, look, everything that you've been feeling,

450
00:24:11,920 --> 00:24:14,600
Speaker 2: perhaps without being able to identify all the causes or

451
00:24:14,640 --> 00:24:16,919
Speaker 2: even put a name to it. There's a reason you

452
00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:19,680
Speaker 2: feel like this, and we can put a name to it.

453
00:24:19,680 --> 00:24:22,440
Speaker 2: It's not your fault and you are not alone.

454
00:24:23,119 --> 00:24:26,159
Speaker 3: I mean, Orson Wells is a great, great host to

455
00:24:26,200 --> 00:24:29,080
Speaker 3: sell any concept. He can really infuse it with feeling.

456
00:24:29,160 --> 00:24:32,000
Speaker 3: He's if you never listened to the outtakes of Orson

457
00:24:32,040 --> 00:24:36,440
Speaker 3: Wells recording commercials about frozen peas and getting really mad

458
00:24:36,480 --> 00:24:39,199
Speaker 3: at how the copy is bad. I recommend looking that

459
00:24:39,359 --> 00:24:42,720
Speaker 3: up every year. Peace grow there.

460
00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:48,840
Speaker 2: I don't think I've seen that it's really good, but

461
00:24:49,520 --> 00:24:51,480
Speaker 2: you know, I feel like, you know, this is something

462
00:24:51,560 --> 00:24:54,280
Speaker 2: that perhaps some people needed to hear in nineteen seventy

463
00:24:54,280 --> 00:24:57,600
Speaker 2: and maybe some people need to hear today, you know, so,

464
00:24:57,800 --> 00:25:00,960
Speaker 2: I yeah, I thought it would be the rewarding to

465
00:25:01,000 --> 00:25:04,080
Speaker 2: revisit some aspects of the Toffler's future Shock concept here,

466
00:25:04,760 --> 00:25:06,879
Speaker 2: talk about how it stacks up or doesn't stack up

467
00:25:06,880 --> 00:25:10,000
Speaker 2: to today's world. And you know what we might learn

468
00:25:10,040 --> 00:25:11,560
Speaker 2: from revisiting the concept.

469
00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:24,280
Speaker 3: Okay, so, like fifty three years on now, we're doing

470
00:25:24,320 --> 00:25:28,960
Speaker 3: a retrospective on future Shock. Well, it is the future, Joe,

471
00:25:29,119 --> 00:25:30,680
Speaker 3: it is where we're going to be living the rest

472
00:25:30,680 --> 00:25:35,399
Speaker 3: of our lives. Yes, so just a little bit more detail,

473
00:25:35,640 --> 00:25:37,920
Speaker 3: just to get some dates. Alvin Toffler lived nineteen twenty

474
00:25:37,960 --> 00:25:39,040
Speaker 3: eight through twenty sixteen.

475
00:25:39,240 --> 00:25:41,640
Speaker 2: Hei do You Live? Nineteen twenty nine through twenty nineteen.

476
00:25:43,440 --> 00:25:46,880
Speaker 2: Alvin Toffler is credited with coining the term future shock

477
00:25:46,920 --> 00:25:50,640
Speaker 2: in a nineteen sixty five article for Horizon magazine. And

478
00:25:50,680 --> 00:25:55,439
Speaker 2: then they spent the next five years researching, interviewing, editing,

479
00:25:55,520 --> 00:25:59,199
Speaker 2: and writing putting together this book. Book first published in

480
00:25:59,240 --> 00:26:03,800
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy, and in short, it attempted to capture the

481
00:26:03,840 --> 00:26:07,760
Speaker 2: sort of bleeding edge of a rapidly advancing world of science, technology,

482
00:26:07,880 --> 00:26:12,000
Speaker 2: mass communications, and economics. And on these counts alone, you

483
00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:15,359
Speaker 2: know it's offensided as having predicted things like personal computers,

484
00:26:15,400 --> 00:26:18,520
Speaker 2: the Internet, cable television, and of course, the current arch

485
00:26:18,600 --> 00:26:21,200
Speaker 2: enemy of many companies, telecommuting.

486
00:26:23,520 --> 00:26:26,280
Speaker 3: Now, one trick you can always pull as a future

487
00:26:26,320 --> 00:26:30,000
Speaker 3: ologist is to make lots of predictions. And if you,

488
00:26:30,119 --> 00:26:33,960
Speaker 3: as you know, anybody who knows anything about gambling odds knows,

489
00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:36,600
Speaker 3: if you make lots of predictions, you're just upping the

490
00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:38,840
Speaker 3: chances that some of them will hit, even if a

491
00:26:38,880 --> 00:26:40,840
Speaker 3: lot of a miss and then people remember the hits

492
00:26:40,840 --> 00:26:43,480
Speaker 3: but not the misses. However, I would say, in the

493
00:26:43,520 --> 00:26:46,919
Speaker 3: Toffler's defense, some of the things they get right, I

494
00:26:46,960 --> 00:26:49,840
Speaker 3: think they do get right in a pretty thoughtful way.

495
00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:53,160
Speaker 3: Like it seems actually like they're working out the steps

496
00:26:53,280 --> 00:26:57,920
Speaker 3: and predicting a in a fairly deterministic fashion, how their

497
00:26:58,040 --> 00:27:00,399
Speaker 3: world at the time would lead to this thing that

498
00:27:00,480 --> 00:27:03,320
Speaker 3: did fundamentally actually happen, though maybe not all the details

499
00:27:03,359 --> 00:27:05,720
Speaker 3: always happen the way they think. Like at one point

500
00:27:05,760 --> 00:27:09,879
Speaker 3: they do talk about a future of having personally curated,

501
00:27:10,440 --> 00:27:14,359
Speaker 3: personalized news feeds, but they're talking about these as print

502
00:27:14,400 --> 00:27:15,840
Speaker 3: on demand newspapers.

503
00:27:16,920 --> 00:27:19,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the spirit of the thing is it certainly

504
00:27:19,560 --> 00:27:21,639
Speaker 2: holds up. I mean, that's how so many people get

505
00:27:21,680 --> 00:27:24,679
Speaker 2: their news now, you know, social media feed, but it's

506
00:27:24,760 --> 00:27:26,160
Speaker 2: not a printed newspaper.

507
00:27:26,640 --> 00:27:29,240
Speaker 3: Also, they kind of present this as if it's like

508
00:27:30,200 --> 00:27:35,199
Speaker 3: pretty much a great thing, and I think, yeah, but

509
00:27:35,320 --> 00:27:37,840
Speaker 3: you can't expect people to, you know, always work out

510
00:27:37,880 --> 00:27:40,120
Speaker 3: the implications of everything. So it's still I think that's

511
00:27:40,320 --> 00:27:41,240
Speaker 3: fairly insightful.

512
00:27:41,760 --> 00:27:44,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, so just from the like the futureology angle, Yeah,

513
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:46,119
Speaker 2: I think, you know, this is the kind of thing

514
00:27:46,160 --> 00:27:49,000
Speaker 2: you see in other works, either like nonfiction futureology, but

515
00:27:49,080 --> 00:27:53,000
Speaker 2: also science fiction. You know, Neuromancer by William Gibson has

516
00:27:53,040 --> 00:27:57,920
Speaker 2: some great ideas about like a virtual, you know, cyber future,

517
00:27:58,160 --> 00:28:00,000
Speaker 2: but at the same time, like they're still using facts,

518
00:28:00,119 --> 00:28:03,560
Speaker 2: machine stuff like that. I mean, so sci fi is

519
00:28:03,600 --> 00:28:06,360
Speaker 2: full of that. But I think one of the things,

520
00:28:06,359 --> 00:28:08,640
Speaker 2: of course, that really separates Future Shock from so many

521
00:28:08,640 --> 00:28:12,040
Speaker 2: of these other nonfiction works is that, I mean, this

522
00:28:12,080 --> 00:28:13,919
Speaker 2: is where the title comes in, right, It's not just

523
00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:18,640
Speaker 2: about what the future will consist of, but how are

524
00:28:18,760 --> 00:28:22,280
Speaker 2: human beings going to cope with these changes and the

525
00:28:22,320 --> 00:28:26,400
Speaker 2: pace of these changes. So the Topplers were apparently amazed

526
00:28:26,480 --> 00:28:28,760
Speaker 2: at how little at the time there seemed to be

527
00:28:28,840 --> 00:28:34,439
Speaker 2: on the topic of adaptivity, especially considering you know that

528
00:28:34,520 --> 00:28:36,800
Speaker 2: you had people talking about, you know, these are the

529
00:28:37,280 --> 00:28:39,160
Speaker 2: advancements that are going to occur, this is where our

530
00:28:39,160 --> 00:28:42,000
Speaker 2: technology is taking us, and you know, we're going to

531
00:28:42,120 --> 00:28:45,200
Speaker 2: adapt to these changes. He writes, quote, in the most

532
00:28:45,280 --> 00:28:48,480
Speaker 2: rapidly changing environment to which man has ever been exposed,

533
00:28:48,760 --> 00:28:52,280
Speaker 2: we remain pitifully ignorant of how the human animal copes.

534
00:28:52,880 --> 00:28:55,920
Speaker 2: And you know, it's interesting how a lot of what

535
00:28:56,000 --> 00:28:58,080
Speaker 2: he's observing it there in nineteen seventy is still the

536
00:28:58,120 --> 00:29:02,120
Speaker 2: case now, Like how many different you know, technology companies

537
00:29:02,280 --> 00:29:05,239
Speaker 2: or are pushing some sort of new thing that's going to,

538
00:29:05,560 --> 00:29:07,440
Speaker 2: you know, break the old pattern of how we live

539
00:29:07,480 --> 00:29:10,160
Speaker 2: our lives, but they haven't really worked out all the

540
00:29:10,440 --> 00:29:13,880
Speaker 2: potential problems, Like this is just you know, part of it,

541
00:29:13,920 --> 00:29:16,640
Speaker 2: Like here's here's how we're going to communicate now, No,

542
00:29:16,800 --> 00:29:19,760
Speaker 2: we didn't think about how this might lead to radicalization

543
00:29:19,880 --> 00:29:20,480
Speaker 2: and so forth.

544
00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:23,479
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, so if the if the spirit of

545
00:29:23,680 --> 00:29:27,440
Speaker 3: the technological industries can be summed up as move fast

546
00:29:27,480 --> 00:29:31,040
Speaker 3: and break things they're trying to look at. Okay, if

547
00:29:31,440 --> 00:29:33,960
Speaker 3: humans are the things that are getting broken, how does

548
00:29:34,040 --> 00:29:36,760
Speaker 3: that happen? What happens when the humans break as a

549
00:29:36,800 --> 00:29:40,320
Speaker 3: result of these changes in technology and their downstream effects

550
00:29:40,400 --> 00:29:41,040
Speaker 3: on society?

551
00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:43,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so really like what happens when humans break

552
00:29:44,040 --> 00:29:47,320
Speaker 2: due to rapid advancements and technology. That's essentially future shock

553
00:29:47,400 --> 00:29:48,520
Speaker 2: according to the Toddlers.

554
00:29:49,080 --> 00:29:52,200
Speaker 3: Now, one thing I think again about these like big

555
00:29:52,240 --> 00:29:54,600
Speaker 3: cultural thesis books you always have to be careful of,

556
00:29:54,720 --> 00:29:59,600
Speaker 3: is it's very appealing anytime somebody says, here's how now

557
00:29:59,720 --> 00:30:03,520
Speaker 3: is totally different than anything that ever happened before and

558
00:30:03,800 --> 00:30:06,800
Speaker 3: you know, that's always it's always like appealing to think

559
00:30:06,840 --> 00:30:08,960
Speaker 3: that you live in a unique time in history in

560
00:30:09,000 --> 00:30:12,600
Speaker 3: a way. But I think the specific argument they're making

561
00:30:12,720 --> 00:30:16,200
Speaker 3: is pretty well grounded. In fact, I think you can

562
00:30:16,240 --> 00:30:18,920
Speaker 3: pretty well show that, like and the core of their

563
00:30:19,920 --> 00:30:22,680
Speaker 3: the factual basis of the idea of future Shock is

564
00:30:22,720 --> 00:30:28,479
Speaker 3: that technology is changing faster and changing our lives faster

565
00:30:29,240 --> 00:30:32,360
Speaker 3: than any other time in human history. And I think

566
00:30:32,440 --> 00:30:34,880
Speaker 3: they're correct about that. That's pretty much inarguable.

567
00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:38,600
Speaker 2: I would say, Yeah, there are times though, where it's like,

568
00:30:38,800 --> 00:30:42,040
Speaker 2: let's just follow these various extrapolations of like the worst

569
00:30:42,040 --> 00:30:46,160
Speaker 2: possible you know, ramifications of a given trend. And this

570
00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:50,360
Speaker 2: is especially true in the TV special, the documentary, there's

571
00:30:50,440 --> 00:30:53,640
Speaker 2: like a part where they're talking about an artificial elbow,

572
00:30:54,120 --> 00:30:57,560
Speaker 2: one more step towards an artificial man, where it's like,

573
00:30:57,920 --> 00:31:01,680
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess maybe so, but really I don't know.

574
00:31:02,240 --> 00:31:05,080
Speaker 3: Well, And also, like you could accurately point out at

575
00:31:05,080 --> 00:31:09,680
Speaker 3: the time, the density of new medical breakthroughs at you know,

576
00:31:09,920 --> 00:31:12,560
Speaker 3: in the late at the in the late sixties as

577
00:31:12,560 --> 00:31:16,000
Speaker 3: they were writing this book was just huge, Like there's

578
00:31:16,080 --> 00:31:19,440
Speaker 3: so many medical break breakthroughs recently compared to what happened

579
00:31:19,440 --> 00:31:21,520
Speaker 3: to a similar you know, ten year chunk of time

580
00:31:21,960 --> 00:31:25,080
Speaker 3: the century before or before that. So like, yes, things

581
00:31:25,160 --> 00:31:28,800
Speaker 3: are definitely changing faster, but that leads to parts where

582
00:31:28,800 --> 00:31:30,800
Speaker 3: they I think there's one part where they're like, you know,

583
00:31:30,840 --> 00:31:34,560
Speaker 3: with the new heart transplants and other organ transplants, will

584
00:31:34,600 --> 00:31:37,640
Speaker 3: this lead to roving gangs of murderers who kill people

585
00:31:37,640 --> 00:31:39,880
Speaker 3: to harvest their organs for transplants.

586
00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:44,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that that seems like, wow, we're really just

587
00:31:44,080 --> 00:31:47,280
Speaker 2: following all the worst case possibilities here to this post

588
00:31:47,280 --> 00:31:50,240
Speaker 2: apocalyptic vision of liver thieves.

589
00:31:50,600 --> 00:31:54,000
Speaker 3: Fortunately, in the future, you can also implant tracking devices

590
00:31:54,000 --> 00:31:55,640
Speaker 3: in your liver so that you can know where they

591
00:31:55,640 --> 00:31:57,240
Speaker 3: took it and who's got your liver now.

592
00:31:58,000 --> 00:31:59,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, but then what do you do when you and

593
00:32:00,040 --> 00:32:04,080
Speaker 2: counter a man made entirely from stolen livers and now

594
00:32:04,120 --> 00:32:07,000
Speaker 2: he's a separate They don't explore that idea, but yeah,

595
00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:09,360
Speaker 2: there's that. They did hold back on a few things,

596
00:32:09,400 --> 00:32:09,800
Speaker 2: I guess.

597
00:32:10,680 --> 00:32:13,000
Speaker 3: But actually, when you come back to the so it's

598
00:32:13,040 --> 00:32:15,440
Speaker 3: kind of funny the artificial elbow one step closer to

599
00:32:15,480 --> 00:32:19,480
Speaker 3: an artificial man, Like that's funny, but also it does

600
00:32:19,600 --> 00:32:21,960
Speaker 3: get it. Something they do in the book that I

601
00:32:21,960 --> 00:32:24,680
Speaker 3: think kind of makes sense, which is they're saying, when

602
00:32:24,760 --> 00:32:29,960
Speaker 3: we have these, say like biomedical technological biomedical breakthroughs that

603
00:32:30,080 --> 00:32:33,160
Speaker 3: can change out human body parts and maybe even can

604
00:32:33,200 --> 00:32:37,479
Speaker 3: affect human brains and things like that, it may well

605
00:32:37,560 --> 00:32:41,880
Speaker 3: affect It may well force us to reckon with medical

606
00:32:41,920 --> 00:32:44,520
Speaker 3: ethics problems that we've never had to consider before. And

607
00:32:44,560 --> 00:32:48,440
Speaker 3: what happens when we're facing brand new medical ethics situations

608
00:32:48,480 --> 00:32:51,160
Speaker 3: that have never existed before, and we're facing tons of

609
00:32:51,200 --> 00:32:54,080
Speaker 3: them and they're coming on rapidly, that is a real

610
00:32:54,080 --> 00:32:57,640
Speaker 3: thing to be concerned about, Like how fast new medical

611
00:32:57,680 --> 00:33:01,280
Speaker 3: technologies are coming online will present scenarios of things that

612
00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:04,520
Speaker 3: can be done to and with human brains and human

613
00:33:04,560 --> 00:33:07,840
Speaker 3: bodies and human embryos and things that we've never had

614
00:33:07,880 --> 00:33:10,040
Speaker 3: to work out this problem before of what's the right

615
00:33:10,120 --> 00:33:12,080
Speaker 3: thing to do here, And it puts you in a

616
00:33:12,120 --> 00:33:13,840
Speaker 3: tough situation of decision making.

617
00:33:14,280 --> 00:33:17,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And that's where the future shock again

618
00:33:17,360 --> 00:33:21,440
Speaker 2: kicks in. Yeah, the idea you think, well, an artificial

619
00:33:21,440 --> 00:33:23,560
Speaker 2: man will never make that, and then suddenly there's an

620
00:33:23,600 --> 00:33:26,280
Speaker 2: artificial man and then you're like, well, now I'm confounded.

621
00:33:26,400 --> 00:33:30,800
Speaker 2: Now I have the future shock now in discussing the

622
00:33:30,800 --> 00:33:33,840
Speaker 2: shape of future societies. In the book, it's also worth

623
00:33:33,840 --> 00:33:36,080
Speaker 2: noting the language is not always as sensitive as it

624
00:33:36,120 --> 00:33:39,680
Speaker 2: would be today, even as it gets some things very

625
00:33:39,720 --> 00:33:42,480
Speaker 2: wrong and some things right about the future shape of,

626
00:33:42,520 --> 00:33:47,560
Speaker 2: say the family. Specifically, in discussing the possibility of a

627
00:33:47,600 --> 00:33:51,360
Speaker 2: future in which homosexual marriage is common and in which

628
00:33:51,400 --> 00:33:55,760
Speaker 2: same sex couples use adoption to grow their families. Everything

629
00:33:55,800 --> 00:33:59,280
Speaker 2: is basically presented by the Tofflers, matter of fact, but

630
00:33:59,360 --> 00:34:03,080
Speaker 2: the words marriage and parents are placed in quotations, which

631
00:34:03,280 --> 00:34:05,440
Speaker 2: certainly feels offensive reading it today.

632
00:34:05,840 --> 00:34:07,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, with these kind of things again, it's I feel

633
00:34:07,840 --> 00:34:11,080
Speaker 3: like there's a mix of things going on. At some

634
00:34:11,239 --> 00:34:16,600
Speaker 3: points it feels kind of open minded and progressive and

635
00:34:17,040 --> 00:34:20,799
Speaker 3: accepting about different ways of thinking about family arrangements and

636
00:34:20,800 --> 00:34:23,439
Speaker 3: stuff like that. But then also there are parts where

637
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:27,160
Speaker 3: it takes it takes like moments to emphasize how weird

638
00:34:27,239 --> 00:34:30,680
Speaker 3: everything will feel. Uh, And I think maybe it's part

639
00:34:30,800 --> 00:34:33,520
Speaker 3: of the thesis that that would be true, that like,

640
00:34:34,200 --> 00:34:38,040
Speaker 3: there will be new social arrangements that not everyone will

641
00:34:38,560 --> 00:34:41,960
Speaker 3: will immediately accept or will know what to, you know,

642
00:34:42,200 --> 00:34:45,040
Speaker 3: how to incorporate into their view of the world, which

643
00:34:45,080 --> 00:34:48,400
Speaker 3: is just true. But sometimes it can feel like, you know,

644
00:34:48,440 --> 00:34:51,239
Speaker 3: they're suggesting like, wow, look at these weird people, which

645
00:34:51,280 --> 00:34:52,360
Speaker 3: is not very nice.

646
00:34:52,960 --> 00:34:55,520
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, like there's a there's certain tone deafness in

647
00:34:55,640 --> 00:34:59,000
Speaker 2: labeling a section homosexual daddies. This is a part about

648
00:34:59,000 --> 00:35:03,600
Speaker 2: parenting the concept we're just altogether futuristic and that history

649
00:35:03,640 --> 00:35:06,719
Speaker 2: and contemporary nineteen seventy did not contain plenty of gay

650
00:35:06,719 --> 00:35:09,719
Speaker 2: men who were also fathers. Yeah, so I mean that

651
00:35:10,280 --> 00:35:12,759
Speaker 2: again just that doesn't hold up. So but at the

652
00:35:12,800 --> 00:35:16,719
Speaker 2: same time, they're essentially correct on the future of same

653
00:35:16,760 --> 00:35:20,600
Speaker 2: sex couples and their families, while also being somewhat off

654
00:35:20,600 --> 00:35:22,920
Speaker 2: the mark when it comes to say, the possible future

655
00:35:23,000 --> 00:35:27,120
Speaker 2: of the relaxing of polygamy laws, because again coming back

656
00:35:27,160 --> 00:35:29,799
Speaker 2: to the hippies, they were like, well, hippies are living

657
00:35:29,880 --> 00:35:33,680
Speaker 2: in communes, hippies are taking it having you know, multiple spouses.

658
00:35:33,960 --> 00:35:38,320
Speaker 2: Therefore this will be part of the future as well.

659
00:35:39,280 --> 00:35:41,919
Speaker 2: It hasn't really worked out that way.

660
00:35:42,200 --> 00:35:45,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, they predict like that there will be a rise

661
00:35:45,200 --> 00:35:47,880
Speaker 3: in like five parent families where each of the parents

662
00:35:47,920 --> 00:35:51,239
Speaker 3: can specialize in different things and all that, because it

663
00:35:51,280 --> 00:35:54,200
Speaker 3: will be necessary because of the technology and the economies

664
00:35:54,200 --> 00:35:54,800
Speaker 3: of the future.

665
00:35:55,160 --> 00:35:56,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you see similar things in some of the

666
00:35:57,120 --> 00:36:01,440
Speaker 2: sci fi of the time period as well. Joe Haldeman's

667
00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:04,799
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four book The Forever War. I believe we've

668
00:36:04,800 --> 00:36:08,920
Speaker 2: talked about this one on Weird House Cinema because he

669
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:12,480
Speaker 2: was involved in the writing of Oh Goodness, Robot Jocks.

670
00:36:13,719 --> 00:36:16,400
Speaker 2: But The Forever War is a great book about interstellar

671
00:36:16,440 --> 00:36:19,840
Speaker 2: war fought across time and with time dilation playing an

672
00:36:20,000 --> 00:36:23,359
Speaker 2: enormous factor in the lives of the soldiers in this war,

673
00:36:24,280 --> 00:36:27,440
Speaker 2: and it it kind of progressively depicts the like the

674
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:31,200
Speaker 2: sexual politics of an imagined future as the character central

675
00:36:31,280 --> 00:36:34,600
Speaker 2: character keeps dipping into societies and technologies that have advanced

676
00:36:34,640 --> 00:36:37,760
Speaker 2: significantly since he last like jumped across time in space.

677
00:36:39,239 --> 00:36:41,880
Speaker 2: And for the most part it feels, you know, pretty

678
00:36:42,000 --> 00:36:46,440
Speaker 2: like liberal in it's an open minded in its consideration

679
00:36:46,600 --> 00:36:52,279
Speaker 2: of future societies and future sexuality. But it also like

680
00:36:52,600 --> 00:36:53,840
Speaker 2: ends up, you know, you come up with sort of

681
00:36:53,840 --> 00:36:56,160
Speaker 2: futuristic lingo for describing all of this. So there are

682
00:36:56,160 --> 00:36:59,840
Speaker 2: a lot of discussions of quote unquote homo sex, which

683
00:37:00,280 --> 00:37:04,960
Speaker 2: which feel a bit weird reading the book today, even

684
00:37:05,040 --> 00:37:07,960
Speaker 2: if it is discussed as like a logical social progression

685
00:37:08,239 --> 00:37:09,320
Speaker 2: in the novel itself.

686
00:37:10,040 --> 00:37:13,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have not read that book, but that makes sense.

687
00:37:13,520 --> 00:37:16,399
Speaker 3: And so there are plenty of things I think in

688
00:37:16,680 --> 00:37:19,080
Speaker 3: this book from fifty three years ago that did not

689
00:37:19,320 --> 00:37:23,440
Speaker 3: age wonderfully. So some of it would be like ways

690
00:37:23,480 --> 00:37:27,560
Speaker 3: of talking about things, even if I think the idea

691
00:37:27,600 --> 00:37:30,359
Speaker 3: of the authors is to portray them somewhat sympathetically, Yeah,

692
00:37:30,640 --> 00:37:34,200
Speaker 3: just the language used feels not as sympathetic as the

693
00:37:34,239 --> 00:37:36,560
Speaker 3: authors would probably want if they were writing it today.

694
00:37:37,239 --> 00:37:50,759
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, to come back to the central thesis here,

695
00:37:51,719 --> 00:37:55,200
Speaker 2: future shock itself. They do write of it as a disease,

696
00:37:55,760 --> 00:38:00,840
Speaker 2: as a quote unquote social illness. They write, future shock

697
00:38:01,000 --> 00:38:05,719
Speaker 2: is the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival

698
00:38:05,800 --> 00:38:08,560
Speaker 2: of the future. It may well be the most important

699
00:38:08,600 --> 00:38:13,760
Speaker 2: disease of tomorrow. I do like that the premature arrival

700
00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:16,879
Speaker 2: of the future, which of course makes sense and doesn't

701
00:38:16,920 --> 00:38:19,319
Speaker 2: make sense at the same time, but does kind of

702
00:38:19,360 --> 00:38:22,200
Speaker 2: adequately sum up this feeling where it's like whoa WHOA

703
00:38:22,400 --> 00:38:25,399
Speaker 2: hold on? Are we already at this point in our

704
00:38:25,440 --> 00:38:27,160
Speaker 2: technological advancement?

705
00:38:27,520 --> 00:38:29,040
Speaker 3: Well, I feel like we should get more into the

706
00:38:29,080 --> 00:38:31,640
Speaker 3: specifics of what they mean when they say future shock.

707
00:38:31,719 --> 00:38:36,440
Speaker 3: What exactly is this condition or disease or state of

708
00:38:36,440 --> 00:38:38,120
Speaker 3: being there describing.

709
00:38:38,360 --> 00:38:40,480
Speaker 2: Well, they do point out that it does have some

710
00:38:40,560 --> 00:38:43,239
Speaker 2: things in common with the concept of culture shock, which

711
00:38:43,320 --> 00:38:46,560
Speaker 2: was already a buzzword at this time point, especially for

712
00:38:46,640 --> 00:38:49,920
Speaker 2: Americans traveling to other cultures and feeling overwhelmed by it,

713
00:38:50,360 --> 00:38:53,600
Speaker 2: and culture shock alone would probably be a fascinating topic

714
00:38:53,680 --> 00:38:55,960
Speaker 2: for us to talk about. I was reading that there

715
00:38:56,000 --> 00:38:59,440
Speaker 2: is a Canadian anthropologist by the name of kalervo Oberg

716
00:38:59,760 --> 00:39:03,600
Speaker 2: who in nineteen fifty four like basically mapped out this

717
00:39:03,680 --> 00:39:06,680
Speaker 2: kind of adjustment period of culture shock. So there's like

718
00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:10,520
Speaker 2: a honeymoon period and then there's this period called negotiation,

719
00:39:10,840 --> 00:39:14,600
Speaker 2: and this is a high anxiety period followed by adjustment

720
00:39:14,880 --> 00:39:18,319
Speaker 2: and then ultimately adaptation. So you know, already we have

721
00:39:18,320 --> 00:39:20,520
Speaker 2: a pre existing model of like what happens when you're

722
00:39:20,520 --> 00:39:27,279
Speaker 2: thrust into a different social geographic in a world. You know,

723
00:39:27,480 --> 00:39:29,480
Speaker 2: you have like maybe a period of excitement, and then

724
00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:32,120
Speaker 2: you start feeling weird about everything. Then you go through

725
00:39:32,480 --> 00:39:35,200
Speaker 2: some adjustment, and then you eventually reach this point where

726
00:39:35,239 --> 00:39:36,400
Speaker 2: you were adapted to it.

727
00:39:36,680 --> 00:39:40,479
Speaker 3: So their idea is that future shock is like culture shock.

728
00:39:40,560 --> 00:39:42,840
Speaker 3: So culture shock is when you're plunged into a culture

729
00:39:43,000 --> 00:39:46,920
Speaker 3: that you are not adapted to, so you can't predict

730
00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:51,400
Speaker 3: people's reactions appropriately. You don't know what the customs are,

731
00:39:51,800 --> 00:39:55,279
Speaker 3: you don't understand everything that people are saying, you don't

732
00:39:55,280 --> 00:39:58,359
Speaker 3: know exactly how to communicate correctly. There are things all

733
00:39:58,400 --> 00:40:00,719
Speaker 3: around you that you don't know how to use or

734
00:40:00,760 --> 00:40:04,080
Speaker 3: interact with. And over time, you can't adapt to this.

735
00:40:04,160 --> 00:40:08,160
Speaker 3: In a country, as you become acclimated to the local culture,

736
00:40:08,239 --> 00:40:10,440
Speaker 3: you learn what everything's for, you learn the language, you

737
00:40:10,520 --> 00:40:12,960
Speaker 3: learn better how to communicate, you learn what the customs are,

738
00:40:13,000 --> 00:40:16,200
Speaker 3: and so forth. But what they're saying is that, imagine

739
00:40:16,280 --> 00:40:19,400
Speaker 3: there's culture shock, but it's for the whole world, and

740
00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:22,120
Speaker 3: it's for your own culture also, because the culture that

741
00:40:22,160 --> 00:40:25,759
Speaker 3: you're being plunged into, the unfamiliar environment is not a

742
00:40:25,800 --> 00:40:29,040
Speaker 3: different place, but it's a different time and it just

743
00:40:29,200 --> 00:40:32,239
Speaker 3: keeps changing. So unlike the culture shock, where you can

744
00:40:32,280 --> 00:40:34,840
Speaker 3: eventually you can look forward to saying, Okay, this is

745
00:40:34,840 --> 00:40:37,239
Speaker 3: a temporary experience, and then I'll go back to my

746
00:40:37,320 --> 00:40:39,920
Speaker 3: own culture where I know how to predict things and

747
00:40:39,960 --> 00:40:42,200
Speaker 3: how to do things and interact with people and communicate.

748
00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:44,960
Speaker 3: In this, you can't go back there's no way to

749
00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:47,279
Speaker 3: go home. There's only the future, and it's just going

750
00:40:47,320 --> 00:40:49,759
Speaker 3: to keep changing, and in fact, it's just going to

751
00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:51,000
Speaker 3: keep changing faster.

752
00:40:52,000 --> 00:40:56,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, which, you know, just that description may may raise

753
00:40:56,200 --> 00:40:59,560
Speaker 2: some folks anxiety. Yeah, this feeling that like you can't

754
00:40:59,560 --> 00:41:03,040
Speaker 2: go back to something that felt comfortable, You're just going

755
00:41:03,080 --> 00:41:08,160
Speaker 2: to be in like technological free fall for the duration

756
00:41:08,280 --> 00:41:11,320
Speaker 2: of your life. They write that future shock quote is

757
00:41:11,360 --> 00:41:15,160
Speaker 2: a time phenomenon, a product of the greatly accelerated rate

758
00:41:15,200 --> 00:41:18,960
Speaker 2: of change in society. It arises from the super imposition

759
00:41:19,320 --> 00:41:22,360
Speaker 2: of a new culture on an old one. It is

760
00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:24,719
Speaker 2: culture shock in one's own society.

761
00:41:25,200 --> 00:41:27,520
Speaker 3: And I think an important thing to understand about their

762
00:41:27,680 --> 00:41:30,440
Speaker 3: vision of culture shock is that it's not just the

763
00:41:30,600 --> 00:41:36,120
Speaker 3: standard conscious resistance to change that you know, people often exhibit,

764
00:41:36,160 --> 00:41:40,000
Speaker 3: and that we in some ways it's associated with kind

765
00:41:40,000 --> 00:41:43,000
Speaker 3: of like cultural conservatism or something that there's like a

766
00:41:43,120 --> 00:41:45,200
Speaker 3: you know, oh, I like things how they used to be.

767
00:41:45,280 --> 00:41:48,640
Speaker 3: I don't want them to change. Instead they're saying that, well,

768
00:41:48,680 --> 00:41:51,080
Speaker 3: of course there is that, But then there's also something

769
00:41:51,120 --> 00:41:53,600
Speaker 3: that just affects people more broadly, which is that the

770
00:41:53,719 --> 00:41:57,879
Speaker 3: technology in our surroundings is changing, and it's changing economics

771
00:41:57,880 --> 00:42:01,800
Speaker 3: and business and culture and everything so fast that even

772
00:42:01,840 --> 00:42:05,080
Speaker 3: for people who are not consciously resistant to change, they're

773
00:42:05,080 --> 00:42:07,680
Speaker 3: in a kind of state of heightened anxiety all the

774
00:42:07,760 --> 00:42:11,160
Speaker 3: time trying to figure out what's going on and adapt

775
00:42:11,200 --> 00:42:11,560
Speaker 3: to it.

776
00:42:12,200 --> 00:42:15,160
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and these adaptions. You know that this is

777
00:42:15,200 --> 00:42:17,680
Speaker 2: something we'll get into in the next episode. I think,

778
00:42:17,719 --> 00:42:20,640
Speaker 2: you know, these various ideas of you know, again, like

779
00:42:21,080 --> 00:42:24,279
Speaker 2: more broadly, like what are the defining characteristics of future shock?

780
00:42:24,320 --> 00:42:27,120
Speaker 2: But also what are some of the maladaptive ways that

781
00:42:27,160 --> 00:42:29,879
Speaker 2: people end up coping with future shock? I find this

782
00:42:30,239 --> 00:42:34,160
Speaker 2: section very interesting. So, yeah, these are going to be

783
00:42:34,160 --> 00:42:36,640
Speaker 2: some of the key areas we dive into. The book

784
00:42:36,760 --> 00:42:38,920
Speaker 2: obviously spends a lot of time approaching the topic from

785
00:42:38,920 --> 00:42:45,240
Speaker 2: different angles social, technological, business, employment, It gets into transience,

786
00:42:45,560 --> 00:42:50,600
Speaker 2: disposable society, population issues again, modular human beings, and cybernetics,

787
00:42:50,760 --> 00:42:52,319
Speaker 2: all sorts of stuff. We're not going to try to

788
00:42:52,360 --> 00:42:54,560
Speaker 2: cover everything, but we're going to at least cover some

789
00:42:54,600 --> 00:42:56,840
Speaker 2: of these key bits and some of the things that

790
00:42:56,880 --> 00:43:00,480
Speaker 2: maybe spoke to us the most revisiting this concept in

791
00:43:00,600 --> 00:43:01,839
Speaker 2: the year twenty twenty three.

792
00:43:02,160 --> 00:43:03,600
Speaker 3: All right, So yeah, I think we're gonna have to

793
00:43:03,640 --> 00:43:06,200
Speaker 3: call this first episode here, but we will be back

794
00:43:06,239 --> 00:43:08,840
Speaker 3: next time to talk about some of these central ideas

795
00:43:08,880 --> 00:43:11,200
Speaker 3: in the book, what we think about them, whether we

796
00:43:11,280 --> 00:43:14,600
Speaker 3: think they were on track or not, and what this

797
00:43:14,640 --> 00:43:17,440
Speaker 3: book like, what a book of futurology looks like fifty

798
00:43:17,480 --> 00:43:18,000
Speaker 3: years later.

799
00:43:18,719 --> 00:43:22,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So we will see you, gentle listeners in

800
00:43:22,440 --> 00:43:27,839
Speaker 2: the future. That'll be on Thursday. A reminder that's Stuff

801
00:43:27,880 --> 00:43:29,879
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind as a science podcast with core

802
00:43:29,920 --> 00:43:33,160
Speaker 2: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener mail on Monday's, a

803
00:43:33,200 --> 00:43:36,720
Speaker 2: short form artifactor Monster Fact on Wednesdays, and on Fridays.

804
00:43:36,719 --> 00:43:38,960
Speaker 2: We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about

805
00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:42,160
Speaker 2: a weird film, and if everything goes according to plan,

806
00:43:42,360 --> 00:43:44,840
Speaker 2: this week's weird film will also be one that is

807
00:43:44,960 --> 00:43:47,240
Speaker 2: concerned to some degree with the future.

808
00:43:47,840 --> 00:43:51,480
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

809
00:43:51,719 --> 00:43:53,520
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

810
00:43:53,520 --> 00:43:56,200
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

811
00:43:56,200 --> 00:43:58,320
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

812
00:43:58,680 --> 00:44:01,160
Speaker 3: you can email us at com intact at Stuff to

813
00:44:01,160 --> 00:44:09,600
Speaker 3: Blow your Mind dot com.

814
00:44:09,640 --> 00:44:12,600
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

815
00:44:12,680 --> 00:44:15,480
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

816
00:44:15,640 --> 00:44:32,600
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