this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2025
622 points (97.4% liked)
science
20477 readers
782 users here now
A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
rule #1: be kind
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
There is a book that gave a scientific explanation and it was written fifty years ago.
"Future Shock" by Alvin Toffler. Toffler was a sociologist. He studied what happened in the past when there were radical changes in society. The first great wave was the switch from hunter/gatherer tribes to farming towns. 5,000 years later there was a leap from farming to industry. Both times there were people who couldn't or wouldn't adapt themselves to the new order.
'Future shock' was his name for the madness of people who would do anything to hold on to a past that was already dead.
Interesting article on the subject: https://mgorbis.medium.com/the-future-as-a-way-of-life-4bc314ec97de
You want a major mind fuck?
"Stand On Zanzibar" by John Brunner. Brunner's novel won the 1969 Hugo for Best Science Fiction Novel. It is set in the early 21st Century. The author based his predictions on Toffler's work. He imagined things like Detroit being a ghost town; legalized pot; the internet; AI ; well paid adults needing roommates and a lot of other things. He got enough right to be very scary indeed.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/stand-on-zanzibar-john-brunner/7252770?ean=9781250781222&next=t