Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. This
Speaker 1: is a part two. In our previous episode, we kicked
Speaker 1: off the idea of Future Shock. We talked about this
Speaker 1: groundbreaking um book by Alvin Toughlin and his wife Heidi
Speaker 1: and uh, and we really broke down what the book is,
Speaker 1: what the resulting documentary is, what the the idea of
Speaker 1: Future Shock is all about. We're going to rehatch a
Speaker 1: little bit here, but this is definitely a situation where
Speaker 1: if you didn't listen to part one, you really should
Speaker 1: listen to part one before you jumped in with parts Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we are using Future Shock as as kind of
Speaker 1: time capsule um of the twentieth century fear and anxiety
Speaker 1: about change, the malaise about future, of fretting that has
Speaker 1: now followed us into the twenty one century. So we're
Speaker 1: looking at sort of like this time caps is quaint
Speaker 1: um in this kind of retro futurist way, but it's
Speaker 1: also really humbling because many of the concerns are prescient
Speaker 1: and thoughtful. So let's launch right into him because one
Speaker 1: of the things that the Toddlers talk about, and what
Speaker 1: they got right, I think, in at least in my mind,
Speaker 1: is some of the reproductive technology, or what they call
Speaker 1: birth technology. UM Now Toddler says. Dr E. S. E.
Speaker 1: Half As, an internationally respected biologists at Washington State University,
Speaker 1: has publicly suggested, on the basis of his own establishing
Speaker 1: work on reproduction, that within a mere ten to fifteen years,
Speaker 1: a woman will be able to buy a tiny, frozen embryo,
Speaker 1: take it to her doctor, have it implanted in her uterus,
Speaker 1: carry it for nine months, and then give birth to
Speaker 1: it as though it had been conceived in her own body. Now,
Speaker 1: back in the day, this was what Yeah, what are
Speaker 1: you talking? I remember the time magazine covers were they
Speaker 1: were shocking and start is it really had a lot
Speaker 1: of future shock to them. Yeah. And now he takes
Speaker 1: this idea and he says, okay, so that that's an idea,
Speaker 1: and he basically says, at some point it may be
Speaker 1: possible to do away with the female uterus altogether. Babies
Speaker 1: will be conceived and nurtured and raised maturity outside of
Speaker 1: human body. Now, George Davarsky, writing for Ionine in an
Speaker 1: article titled how to Build an Artificial roomb um. This
Speaker 1: was published in He says it were still a couple
Speaker 1: of decades away from this, but um there has been
Speaker 1: the development of an artificial endometrium and that's been created
Speaker 1: from real tissue. And he says that depending on the
Speaker 1: technology is available, of placenta could either develop naturally on
Speaker 1: that endometrial wall, or it could take the form of
Speaker 1: an external device that performs some of the same functions.
Speaker 1: For instance, a dialysis machine could actually help with waste disposal.
Speaker 1: And then he says, you add a little bit of
Speaker 1: synthetic ambiotic fluid, you regulate the temperature, you create some
Speaker 1: sororeal stimulation for the baby, and add a few microbes
Speaker 1: and boom, we'll be there. Well, even that as complex
Speaker 1: of that sound also it's kind of an oversimplification, I think.
Speaker 1: I I I researched the the artificial womb notion a
Speaker 1: little while ago, and I remember being struck by just
Speaker 1: how it's It's a far more complex event that's happening here.
Speaker 1: It's not as simple as just squired the right fluids
Speaker 1: into the baby vote and uh, and the right kind
Speaker 1: of creature will emerged later he didn't like my car
Speaker 1: wash analogy, just kind of spirt some stuff. They emerge
Speaker 1: on the other side. Uh, no, you're right. The environment
Speaker 1: of the womb is completely specialized, right. Um, So of
Speaker 1: course it would take a lot of work to even
Speaker 1: get to that point where you could do it. But hey,
Speaker 1: I would say that steps are being made in that direction. Um.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that that Toffler or the
Speaker 1: Topplers really picked up here is that this would change families.
Speaker 1: This would change the face of families. This would change
Speaker 1: the way that people decided to have children or become parents.
Speaker 1: And he said that he thought he expected a lot
Speaker 1: of people in future to remain childless or make that decision,
Speaker 1: and that would allow them to both have robust careers
Speaker 1: and to sort of navigate life in an easier way
Speaker 1: as opposed to people who were saddled with a lot
Speaker 1: of children. Because again, but at the same time, here
Speaker 1: we're seeing birth control in place, and this is giving
Speaker 1: women a lot more power and options in terms of
Speaker 1: regulating their own careers and making decisions. And so he
Speaker 1: does say, hey, there could be a compromise here, There
Speaker 1: could be the postponement of children and He says that
Speaker 1: instead of just being childless, people could decide that they
Speaker 1: could freeze those embryos and then later on she's to
Speaker 1: become parents. Now, he's correct in this sense that a
Speaker 1: lot of people have delayed parenthood. If you look at
Speaker 1: this historically, people are choosing to have children in their
Speaker 1: thirties in their early forties as opposed to what we
Speaker 1: would think of as the childbearing years in the twenties.
Speaker 1: And of course there have been implications in this, but
Speaker 1: he takes us a step further and says, hey, why
Speaker 1: even worry about doing this while you're having your career.
Speaker 1: Why not become parents when you retire. Well, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's an idea too. We have. I don't know that
Speaker 1: we've seen that that vision exactly pan out, but we
Speaker 1: do see later in later stages of of of parenthood. Sure. Sure,
Speaker 1: But what I'm thinking about is at this point, the
Speaker 1: Tolfers don't even know about bio gerontology or Aubrey de Gray,
Speaker 1: who is saying, hey, guys, we got it. We've got
Speaker 1: we have got the mechanics to begin to preserve the
Speaker 1: human body. I can't say it in a different way,
Speaker 1: or maintain the human body in a way that will
Speaker 1: extend our lives. And so if if the two could meet,
Speaker 1: perhaps you know, in the near future, you would see
Speaker 1: that people are beginning to have children in their sixties
Speaker 1: or the seventies. Yeah, but that also kind of sounds
Speaker 1: like you're you end up pushing the deadline out, and
Speaker 1: then people still wait until right up to the deadline
Speaker 1: to do things. So would you say, oh, now I
Speaker 1: have more time to to enter the family stage of
Speaker 1: my life, we would say, would you say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this is great for my career, and I'll just push
Speaker 1: off the child thing just a little longer. It's possible.
Speaker 1: But I just I really think that this analysis is
Speaker 1: very interesting. Um and the Toddlers also talk about childless marriage,
Speaker 1: professional parenthood, which was sort of like seeding your parenthood
Speaker 1: responsibility to someone else post retirement, child rearing, corporate families, communes,
Speaker 1: geriatric group marriages. Okay, And then he said they talked
Speaker 1: about homosexual family units, polygamy. Than they say, these then
Speaker 1: are a few of the family forms and practices with
Speaker 1: which innovative minorities will experiment in the decades ahead. Well,
Speaker 1: you definitely see a lot of that. I do feel
Speaker 1: like the definition of family has has changed a lot
Speaker 1: over the past few decades, and even even the definition
Speaker 1: of a child and parenting, you know, I mean, because
Speaker 1: you have so many different models there. Now you have
Speaker 1: again to their point that you have the test two babies,
Speaker 1: you have the virtual fertilization, you have surrogate months, you
Speaker 1: have adopted parenting, and I mean even something as simple
Speaker 1: as adoptive parenting has really come a long way as
Speaker 1: as this because back back in the year the seventies
Speaker 1: and before, there was still that idea that you would
Speaker 1: adopt a child and then maybe never tell them that
Speaker 1: they were adopted. And we have a we have a
Speaker 1: far more advanced and uh and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: more truthful and healthy um idea of what adoptive parenting
Speaker 1: is now and how that fits into this into our
Speaker 1: new and evolving idea of what a family is. You know.
Speaker 1: Some of that I think plays into this idea of
Speaker 1: how we regard um one another at different stages in
Speaker 1: our lives, because and in the book they were talking
Speaker 1: about how before the seventies, it was either that you
Speaker 1: were a child or you were an adult. There was
Speaker 1: no teenager, there was no becoming an adult or acknowledging
Speaker 1: that there are different stages, so I think they're to
Speaker 1: that point. There's a lot more insitivity to how children
Speaker 1: are developing, and as a result, people are thinking more about,
Speaker 1: you know, how to form their minds as opposed to
Speaker 1: like you're you, you're termed eighteen, your your men now right,
Speaker 1: go out? And oh yeah, I mean so Like even
Speaker 1: time I watch an episode of mad Men, I often
Speaker 1: reflect on men in in my life, my you know,
Speaker 1: my dad and my grandfather, you know, various uncles and
Speaker 1: as well as Don Draper's example, and think about like
Speaker 1: those past ideas of you know, you're no longer a
Speaker 1: child and now you're a man, and how how that
Speaker 1: that model doesn't really apply so much anymore, Like there's
Speaker 1: no against so many of us figure out a way
Speaker 1: way to uh sustain our childhood indefinitely and to put
Speaker 1: off some imagined transformation into a man and definitely. And
Speaker 1: also that model of what a man was culturally and
Speaker 1: say the nineteen sixties us is, I feel, rather than
Speaker 1: what a lot of us would want to be. That's
Speaker 1: sort of you know, don't don't look your family members
Speaker 1: in the eye kind of a thing like work all day,
Speaker 1: support the family and not be there like so many
Speaker 1: of those models you see in in like old films.
Speaker 1: They just like nobody even wants that anymore. It's so stifling. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what they say in here, And
Speaker 1: they say that that one of the things about having
Speaker 1: more fractured society is that you have more freedoms. Is
Speaker 1: that people begin to really embrace individuality in a way
Speaker 1: that allows them to express themselves in a way that
Speaker 1: they hadn't been able to before. Just to bring the
Speaker 1: discussion back around to reproductive technology and future shock, I
Speaker 1: ran across this wonderful quote from Ray Kurtz Flow in
Speaker 1: a two thousand twelve Wired interview. He said, people actually
Speaker 1: adjust to the reality of their technology amazingly quickly. Is
Speaker 1: descriptions of technologies just around the corner that they find daunting.
Speaker 1: But when there's a new treatment for a disease that
Speaker 1: works better, people can wax philosophically. Oh, I don't know
Speaker 1: if we really to extend longevity. But when it actually
Speaker 1: comes to curing curing a disease or treating it better,
Speaker 1: it's adopted without hesitation. The only question is does it
Speaker 1: really work. The same thing with social networks or wikis
Speaker 1: or Wikipedia, all these things, we eagerly adopt them. The
Speaker 1: only question is that do they really help us. When
Speaker 1: it becomes clear that they do, we adopt them very readily.
Speaker 1: They quickly become a part of our everyday world so
Speaker 1: that we can't do without them. That's true. I've read
Speaker 1: um study. I believe that is the sixty plus group
Speaker 1: that are really sort of the biggest users of their
Speaker 1: smartphones because they're beginning to see that there is a
Speaker 1: huge UM. I mean, this isn't a lifesaving thing, but
Speaker 1: this is something that can really simplify their lives in
Speaker 1: some ways. And so then you begin to get this
Speaker 1: idea of well maybe it's you know, necessity is the
Speaker 1: mother of adoption, um, rather than invention. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: see in some cases that kind of skipping of a technology,
Speaker 1: you know, like uh, you see like a various older
Speaker 1: people in our lives that may have never figured out
Speaker 1: exactly how to program a VCR back when that was
Speaker 1: a thing, but now they're just complete masters of their
Speaker 1: smartphone because the technologies farm are relevant to their existence. Well,
Speaker 1: so much easier to yeah, yes, true with Surrey in
Speaker 1: your life right now, Another topic that Toffler touches on
Speaker 1: is the idea of a disposable society. He says, quote,
Speaker 1: we develop a throwaway mentality to match our throwaway products.
Speaker 1: This mentality produces, among other things, instead of radically altered
Speaker 1: values with respect to property. But the spread of disposability
Speaker 1: through society also implies decreased durations in man thing relationships.
Speaker 1: And that's man thing, not man thing the comic book character.
Speaker 1: If you're wondering, instead of being linked with a single
Speaker 1: object over a relatively long span of time, we were
Speaker 1: linked for brief periods with the succession of objects that supplanted. Um.
Speaker 1: This is this is one of those those ideas that
Speaker 1: he brings out that at once rings true. Like there's
Speaker 1: a lot of this that totally rings true. There are
Speaker 1: some of the finer details of it that don't necessarily
Speaker 1: hold up all the way. But but I feel like
Speaker 1: for the most part he got this one right. Um.
Speaker 1: Because one idea that instantly comes to mind here is furniture. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know you mentioned Ikia in the last episode. Like not,
Speaker 1: not only is Ikia a model of build it yourself furniture,
Speaker 1: but it isn't a model of furniture that no one's
Speaker 1: buying expecting it to be passed on to their grandchildren.
Speaker 1: The previous model was, you know, you spent, you put
Speaker 1: a lot of money into a well crafted piece of
Speaker 1: furniture and that is part of your heritage. And now
Speaker 1: we we really don't expect most of our furniture in
Speaker 1: the last you know, in the next week. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: is definitely a huge aspect of our society that is disposable.
Speaker 1: But I'm also thinking about, um, the fact that we
Speaker 1: tend to just kind of hoard a little bit, and
Speaker 1: you know, there's that part of materialism which allows us
Speaker 1: to do that, to just keep a mass more and
Speaker 1: more things. Oh yeah, for instance, self storage units. I
Speaker 1: believe we've touched on this before, but um, the latest
Speaker 1: stats from the Self Self Storage Association, they say that
Speaker 1: they are now over forty eight thousand, five hundred primary
Speaker 1: self storage facilities in the United States as of the
Speaker 1: year in two thousand thirteen, and then there are another
Speaker 1: four thousand secondary facilities. Primary facilities are ones who are
Speaker 1: basically all they do are the main thing they do.
Speaker 1: In storage facilities, secondary there's some other primary business at hand.
Speaker 1: But the self storage rentable space in the US alone
Speaker 1: is now two point three billion square feet. That's approximately
Speaker 1: two hundred and ten million square meters uh. And they
Speaker 1: say that that figure represents more than seventy eight square
Speaker 1: miles of rentable self storage space under one roof, an
Speaker 1: area more than three times the size of Manhattan Island.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of crazy. And I think that that's
Speaker 1: part and personal of a disposable society, or creating goods
Speaker 1: that are so cheaply made or so easy to buy
Speaker 1: or so uh cost effective that you can either dispose
Speaker 1: of them where you just can buying more and more
Speaker 1: of the junk. You know, It's true, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like both both sides of it. Yes, we're it's a
Speaker 1: disposable culture, but we're not quite so disposable that we're
Speaker 1: going to throw all of that old disposable stuff away.
Speaker 1: We need to put that somewhere because we might need
Speaker 1: it again. Like we're still clinging to some of those
Speaker 1: sort of post depression ideas and and and the old
Speaker 1: fashioned ideas that we need to hold onto the things
Speaker 1: we own. We need to hold onto well crafted materials
Speaker 1: because they are their usefulness will continue in the decades ahead.
Speaker 1: We're still holding onto some of those ideas, but we're
Speaker 1: holding onto it with disposable materials, and so we're kind
Speaker 1: of getting the worst of both worlds. And then you
Speaker 1: have some people in extreme cases who are have huge
Speaker 1: amounts of anxiety connected to those things because their their
Speaker 1: own sorts of uh psychological states are playing out in
Speaker 1: terms of objects. And of course I'm saying hoarding here,
Speaker 1: which is closely related to obsessive compulsive disorder. But this
Speaker 1: was also making me think about um our relationships be
Speaker 1: has the top us also point out that in the
Speaker 1: future UM people will be so mobile and spread out
Speaker 1: so much um that we will begin to have very
Speaker 1: surface relationships, disposable relationships, will have what they call the
Speaker 1: nine to five or the workday relationships, where you know
Speaker 1: you're having these relationships through coworkers, but it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: going deeper than that. And that we've begun to move
Speaker 1: away from family in terms of social bonds and more
Speaker 1: toward one another in in these very superficial ways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I feel like you do see a lot of
Speaker 1: that in life. Yeah, although if you want to play
Speaker 1: Devil's after get here, you could say that people maybe
Speaker 1: are a little bit more isolated because Uh. Technology has
Speaker 1: put us in that position. And you know, a Facebook
Speaker 1: front is different than a face to face friend. But
Speaker 1: they would say that communities have sprung up uh in
Speaker 1: the void, right, and that there is a connection that
Speaker 1: people feel, even if it is as abstract as an
Speaker 1: avatar that you create to communicate with another person. There's
Speaker 1: a wonderful moment in the documentary version of Future Shock
Speaker 1: where a little girl has has taken her doll back
Speaker 1: to the shop UH and exchanges it for a new,
Speaker 1: shinier doll, and then the store owner throws the old
Speaker 1: doll and the garbage and the music is very ominous
Speaker 1: and then UH. And then Orson Welles tells us even
Speaker 1: friends don't last in this future UM, which which was
Speaker 1: you know, again very much overstating the case there. But
Speaker 1: again you do see shades of that in our modern society.
Speaker 1: You do do. And they also talked about simulated environments,
Speaker 1: this idea that we would begin to create these um
Speaker 1: environments that we would move through in a more abstract way. UM.
Speaker 1: But we haven't seen that completely yet. We we know
Speaker 1: that the Internet of everything is on the horizon. We
Speaker 1: know that nearly every surface can become interactive, but We're
Speaker 1: not quite there yet. But on the other hand, simulated
Speaker 1: environments in the form of video games still remain a
Speaker 1: very big business. People are putting themselves in these environments.
Speaker 1: Not quite in the virtual reality UH idea that became
Speaker 1: prevalent in the in the nineteen eighties and and and
Speaker 1: part of the nineties. But still they are immersing themselves
Speaker 1: in a virtual world uh an unreal world and spending
Speaker 1: a lot of time and energy there. But I am
Speaker 1: still waiting for that travel lodge of Remember that report
Speaker 1: we saw from futurists Ian Pearson who said, like, one
Speaker 1: day you can go that travel lodge and you can
Speaker 1: call up any sort of background environment that you want.
Speaker 1: You could have your sheets outfitted with sensors that might
Speaker 1: interact with someone else. You could have contacts active contact
Speaker 1: lenses that would put retinal images on your eyes and
Speaker 1: into your brain, so that you could be staring at someone,
Speaker 1: but they could be completely different than than than who
Speaker 1: you are actually staring at and transforming your reality into
Speaker 1: this artificial reality. Yeah, and that was definitely a study
Speaker 1: that gave me a little future shock, Like maybe not
Speaker 1: like the crippling level of future shock, but very much
Speaker 1: that that in all level of future shock where you
Speaker 1: really have to think, wow, things could in the future
Speaker 1: significantly change in a way that it shakes culture itself. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you think about that model too, that changes
Speaker 1: the economic model too, because everything in that that that
Speaker 1: space is for sale too. I mean, if you like
Speaker 1: the dresser, you can just go tap on it or
Speaker 1: scan it and that could be delivered to you in
Speaker 1: one hour via a drone. Yeah, thank you Amazon. On
Speaker 1: the subject of a disposable culture, something we're talking about
Speaker 1: recently in our very own break room here, how stuff
Speaker 1: works cups because we have one of those k cup machines,
Speaker 1: they're Curi Curig. We put a little the little plastic
Speaker 1: cup in and then you pop it and it shoots
Speaker 1: hot water through there and makes you a cup of coffee.
Speaker 1: And then what do you do with the little plastic
Speaker 1: cup You throw it away? Right. Well, it's become quite popular.
Speaker 1: Just in our office. According to a survey by the
Speaker 1: National Coffee Association, nearly one in five adults drink single
Speaker 1: cup brewed coffee yesterday, so it makes it the second
Speaker 1: most popular way to brew coffee, right after your normal
Speaker 1: hum Mr coffee type coffee machine. Sadly, my method to
Speaker 1: eropress hasn't quite made his way to the top yet.
Speaker 1: But but here's where he gets the Erroopress is a
Speaker 1: wonderful device, even though it is sometimes mistaken for either
Speaker 1: a drug paraphernalia or some sort of a sexual device.
Speaker 1: But still it's a wonderful way to make coffee. According
Speaker 1: to Seattle Times, uh U S consumers bought one thirty
Speaker 1: two million dollars worth of coffee pods in two thousand
Speaker 1: eight four October, three point one billion for them last year,
Speaker 1: and that was compared to six billion uh for roasted
Speaker 1: coffee and two point five billion in instant coffee. This
Speaker 1: is all from two thousand fourteen Mother Jones article Your
Speaker 1: coffee POD's dirty secret and where it gets really dirty
Speaker 1: is we can consider this. In two thousand thirteen, Green
Speaker 1: Mountain produced eight point three billion cake cups, enough to
Speaker 1: wrap around the equator of the planet ten point five times,
Speaker 1: do we, liamb You will not quit telling me that's
Speaker 1: that until I quite using the cake cups, will you.
Speaker 1: I know they're fast, I know they're a little faster
Speaker 1: than the other machine, but but yeah, ten point five
Speaker 1: times around the uh The the equator of the point.
Speaker 1: Now we should mention that that Kurig just released a
Speaker 1: sustainability report announcing that the company plans to make all
Speaker 1: their coffee pods recyclable by So there's a silver lining
Speaker 1: the right. So if you can see the lining beyond
Speaker 1: the belt of k cups that are now orbiting the plant,
Speaker 1: So in six years I can feel good about having
Speaker 1: a cup. Yeah, there you go, all right, or just
Speaker 1: get the little my mom has one and she uses
Speaker 1: a little uh disposable or not disposable, but the little
Speaker 1: reusable thing you get like a little cake cup. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just fill it with you just put coffee grounds
Speaker 1: in there and kind of treat it like a you know,
Speaker 1: a grown ups coffee maker. All right, Yeah, it can
Speaker 1: be done. You don't have to you don't have to
Speaker 1: abandon your device. You just a little convenient it is.
Speaker 1: It is, alright, So again something that the Dolfers could
Speaker 1: not have anticipated. We're gonna take a quick break and
Speaker 1: when we get back, we're going to talk about what
Speaker 1: else they didn't anticipate. All right, we're back. Before we
Speaker 1: get it into the next section, I do want to
Speaker 1: mention real quick that another area that I feel like
Speaker 1: they maybe not got right, but are getting right, Like
Speaker 1: they're they've successfully forecast some of what's happening in the world.
Speaker 1: As they mentioned possible technological backlash h quote protests against
Speaker 1: the ravages of irresponsibility used technology, and they said that
Speaker 1: they could crystallize in a pathological form a future phobic
Speaker 1: fascism with scientists quote substituting for Jews and concentration camps.
Speaker 1: That's an extreme vision of what the future could hold.
Speaker 1: But I instantly thought of, for instance, the the German
Speaker 1: backlash against nuclear power, current backlash against in as a
Speaker 1: spine of all the anxiety surrounding heart bleed. I feel
Speaker 1: like we we are seeing seeds of maybe not the
Speaker 1: extreme vision of where this could had, but we see
Speaker 1: some of the some of those currents already in our
Speaker 1: culture well. And again I think that speaks to the
Speaker 1: topplers pointing out that we don't have the structure in place,
Speaker 1: and that they're saying this in the seventies. Is two
Speaker 1: thousand and fourteen, and we still have not caught up
Speaker 1: with the technology in terms of how to manage it.
Speaker 1: Um from from different sectors, whether or not it is
Speaker 1: from the government or from private corporations. Um. But let's
Speaker 1: let's talk about some things that they didn't anticipate. Um.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I'm thinking about is the
Speaker 1: way our memory systems would change. Indeed, the way that
Speaker 1: we think has been completely changed by our technology. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: another thing that didn't come up much is this idea
Speaker 1: that we're pretty adaptable, and with a aptibility comes creativity.
Speaker 1: There's an article from I O nine and it's by
Speaker 1: Charlie Jane Anders, and she writes it in terms of
Speaker 1: culture shock, not necessarily future shock, that researchers William Maddox
Speaker 1: and Adam Dlinsky have done a lot of work showing
Speaker 1: that people who had a multi cultural experience, like living
Speaker 1: in a foreign country for several months, they score higher
Speaker 1: on various tests of creativity. And she said that you
Speaker 1: could assume that people who have overcome future shock would
Speaker 1: similarly score higher on those tests, because what is future
Speaker 1: shock but uncertainty about what's going on in anxiety. As
Speaker 1: a result, if you are dumped into a place that
Speaker 1: you are not familiar with, where the language is completely
Speaker 1: foreign to you, and the systems are different systems where
Speaker 1: you operate just day to day, then it's sort of
Speaker 1: the same thing. Yeah, I mean, it's very much a
Speaker 1: situation of worldview, you know, this which which you often
Speaker 1: encounter when you're discussing religion. In the way that we
Speaker 1: we view ourselves within a cosmology, you know, we have
Speaker 1: this bubble around us, and in that bubble, within that
Speaker 1: bubble or ideas about who we are, how we fit
Speaker 1: in with the universe, what makes sense, what the rules are,
Speaker 1: who who is the us in the sentence, and who
Speaker 1: are the others? Certainly religion can be a part of that,
Speaker 1: but technology as well. I mean, technology is part of
Speaker 1: your worldview, and if you are ever forced to step
Speaker 1: outside of it like that, I feel like stepping outside
Speaker 1: of your worldview is is a vital, uh means of
Speaker 1: gaining a larger understanding about what it is to be
Speaker 1: human and what it what it is to exist on
Speaker 1: this planet. Yeah, I mean that's stepping out of your
Speaker 1: normal cy bias. Yeah, stepping out of what you take
Speaker 1: for granted as the normal world and realizing, hey, there
Speaker 1: are other equally valid ways of looking at the universe.
Speaker 1: They're equally valid ways of dealing with day to day
Speaker 1: life and they and they may involve drastically different technology.
Speaker 1: They may involve significantly less technology. Another thing that they
Speaker 1: didn't anticipate is that there would emerge out of this
Speaker 1: kind of future shock, or are all these different different
Speaker 1: systems that were coming online a kind of retail homogeny
Speaker 1: um and researcher Shigahiro Oyshi with the University of Virginia
Speaker 1: writes about the idea that greater mobility is partly responsible
Speaker 1: for the rise in the number of chain stores. So
Speaker 1: no matter where you go, you see the same handful
Speaker 1: of shops and restaurants, and this is reassuring in an
Speaker 1: age where people are moving around a lot. And actually,
Speaker 1: if you want more on this, you can see the
Speaker 1: article why Americans love chain stores in Atlantic cities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you do fall into that situation where there's going to
Speaker 1: be a part of any certainly American city that looks
Speaker 1: just like it's uh, the same colony of commercialism in
Speaker 1: another city. No matter what the actual environment is, no
Speaker 1: matter what the actual cortial cultural demographics are, you're gonna
Speaker 1: find that same strip mall land spreading out around the
Speaker 1: earthen center like some sort of a mold. So ultimately,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, what can we still
Speaker 1: learn from future shock, Why is this, Why is this
Speaker 1: still relevant? You've got to use technology to build a decent,
Speaker 1: democratic and humane society, right, Yeah, certainly. I mean most
Speaker 1: of our really scary ideas of technology affecting the future,
Speaker 1: uh tend to involve a loss of rights, the loss
Speaker 1: of humanity, and some sort of totalitarian flavoring to the
Speaker 1: ice cream. But we we've also seen plenty of examples
Speaker 1: of say social media being used in the last few years,
Speaker 1: where the technology is at least being used with the
Speaker 1: intention of pushing um freedom. Yeah, and you do see
Speaker 1: also in developing countries where this becomes really important. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, Twitter is used there in a way that
Speaker 1: it's not used you know, say and and Sudan. It's
Speaker 1: being used there in the way that's not being used
Speaker 1: in the United States, and is able to report things
Speaker 1: in a way that people did not know what was
Speaker 1: going on. So it's really important that way. But I
Speaker 1: was just thinking that in terms of struct sure that
Speaker 1: something like the city of Portland, Oregon or Portlandia is
Speaker 1: a great example. It's a microcosm and it doesn't barely
Speaker 1: cover the issues that we're talking about today. But here's
Speaker 1: the city that in the nineteen seventies, was like, man,
Speaker 1: what do we want to look like in twenty years?
Speaker 1: And they actually invested a ton of money in their
Speaker 1: transit system and in other ways that they thought would help, uh,
Speaker 1: the economy and the people grow there and then well
Speaker 1: and behold it becomes this grand city to to live
Speaker 1: in and everybody flocks to it. And in the same way,
Speaker 1: you know, you feel like you you hear this all
Speaker 1: the time, like you're we're going to invest in the future,
Speaker 1: and it's just lip service because a lot of it
Speaker 1: is just maintaining, um this this sort of same structures
Speaker 1: and power structures that have been in play. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a again in Future Shock, there's the overall theme of
Speaker 1: the future is coming? Are you ready for it? And
Speaker 1: one of the sort of a physical example of that
Speaker 1: that I that I encountered my previous job where I
Speaker 1: worked at a newspaper out in Covington, Georgia, which is uh,
Speaker 1: significantly outside the perimeter. But Atlanta is a big urban sprawl,
Speaker 1: so communities to sprawl outward like the like a blob,
Speaker 1: like a big urban amiba. And there's a city between
Speaker 1: Covington and Atlanta called Conyers, and Conyers was always sort
Speaker 1: of this example of this is what happens when you
Speaker 1: were not ready for the future to expand into your area,
Speaker 1: because it's kind of an area where this urban expansion,
Speaker 1: this urban sprawl has just completely uh overflown everything, and
Speaker 1: it covers both the infrastructure, I mean the streets, and
Speaker 1: then just also a personal identity of the town. So
Speaker 1: I remember there being a lot of talk like how
Speaker 1: are we gonna how is this town going to meet
Speaker 1: the future? We're gonna be washed over as well. Well.
Speaker 1: Now think about something like a city like Beijing, how
Speaker 1: is that city going to meet the future? Because that city,
Speaker 1: in many ways is a snapshot of what many large
Speaker 1: cities in the world will look like in twenty thirty years.
Speaker 1: Because we know that we're migrating more and more and
Speaker 1: more to cities, so we've got larger populations, and so
Speaker 1: then it really becomes very important as to how you're
Speaker 1: going to manage that and use technology in a way
Speaker 1: that helps support everybody as opposed to creating a greater
Speaker 1: divide in wealth. Yeah. Yeah, Well, indeed, some of the
Speaker 1: larger Chinese cities are a great example of like what
Speaker 1: what can we learn from these cities? What have they
Speaker 1: done right? What are they doing wrong? How are their
Speaker 1: steps to correct matters? Now? What should we learn from
Speaker 1: all these examples? And finally another issue that the top
Speaker 1: wars of course at the point out and I mentioned
Speaker 1: that this briefly talking about protests against technology revolting against technology.
Speaker 1: Part of that is the fact that we need to
Speaker 1: realize when technologies are too dangerous, When or when is
Speaker 1: our approach to it or handling of it, uh just
Speaker 1: too much? When should we back off? Because certainly we
Speaker 1: shouldn't be afraid of technology, we shouldn't be afraid of
Speaker 1: the future, we shouldn't bar any doors. But arguably we
Speaker 1: need to have an understanding of what the risk are
Speaker 1: as well. Well. I think some of it too is
Speaker 1: like why would technology be dangerous? Well, it would be
Speaker 1: dangerous because it would infringe, some people would say, on
Speaker 1: your rights as a person. It would be dangerous because
Speaker 1: it would be used in nefarious ways. And we see
Speaker 1: that again with the n essay and accumulation of data
Speaker 1: to try to get a foothold in the world scene
Speaker 1: in terms of staving off any sort of threats that
Speaker 1: the United States might think it has against it. Now,
Speaker 1: Toffler has a book called War and Anti War, and
Speaker 1: he says that in terms of war and these power
Speaker 1: structures and danger, he says that the thesis is very
Speaker 1: simple of his book, the way you make war is
Speaker 1: the way you make wealth. If you change the way
Speaker 1: you make wealth, you inevitably change the way you make war.
Speaker 1: And if you change the way you make war, you
Speaker 1: ought to be thinking about changing the way you make peace.
Speaker 1: So I thought this is very interesting to to put
Speaker 1: it that way, because a lot of the strife that
Speaker 1: we feel is because there's a bunch of people douking
Speaker 1: it out power wise and trying to either accumulate wealth
Speaker 1: or stature, or arms or all the above. Indeed, all right,
Speaker 1: so there you have it, future shock, what they got right,
Speaker 1: what they got wrong, some of the various bits in between,
Speaker 1: And certainly there's a lot of room for discussion here
Speaker 1: regarding those those bits and pieces that haven't been accounted
Speaker 1: for yet, some of these predictions that haven't come true,
Speaker 1: but they haven't come true yet. Some of these problems
Speaker 1: that with technology that we're not really having to grapple
Speaker 1: with now, but perhaps we're gonna have to grapple with them,
Speaker 1: uh in the next ten years. In the next twenty years,
Speaker 1: And wouldn't would be great to see a suite of
Speaker 1: studies about future shock in places like Japan or other
Speaker 1: places in Asia where you have a more robust AI presence,
Speaker 1: and you know, to really try to put actual figures
Speaker 1: to this idea of anxiety. Yeah, you know, it would
Speaker 1: be interesting. Indeed, I mean they really should be just
Speaker 1: straight up future shock studies. I like it all right,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna close this one out. As usual, We'll
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