Do you feel a sense of future shock? If so, what is causing it?

Question

With the Nintendo Wii, youtube, post 9/11 mentality and much more, I just have this sense that the future has crept up on me, and I am not ready for it. Do you ever feel this way? What specifically gives you this feeling, and why?

Answer 1

Do you realize that 90% of all the scientists and engineers that ever lived are alive now ... this means that every year that goes by we have more and more knowlege and technology and more to know and be responsible for?

Think of what has happened in just the last 50 years. Look at old movies and the movies of today, life is totally different, and it will keep getting more different faster because there is more to know and apply to more and newer stuff.

This makes people lose their bearings. Like kids think that they are so good with computers today, but when they get older they will have problems with whatever new stuff comes along. Then there is the effect is has on people.

I like to be positive and hope that eventually we humans which
were built to live in a completely natural simple environment might get it and stop causing all this stress on ourselves and learn how to be happy instead of just running around and trying new but maybe not better stuff all the time.

Answer 2

If you were to look at the history of most cultures for a few thousand years, you would find that they were evolving at a snails pace. Humans were comfortable knowing that the worst damage that would come to them was probably a plague.
Today, in the last hundred years alone, most of great discoveries like the atom bomb,the hydrogen bomb, the plutonium bomb could wipe humanity out of the planet. We have learned the precarious state of our Earth toward asteroids, viruses, volcanic activity, Ice ages, and self destruction.
I think those who do not feel culture shock are the most uninformed people in the age of information. If someone today does not feel culture shock, panic, or at least terror, he/sh is in total denial. Of course, there still are a few people who live isolated from civilization, in deserts, in jungles, in caves and under some rocks, those we can excuse their ignorance, they just have not been told.

Answer 3

This is known in modern times as 'Technophobia' -- the fear of or revulsion to modern technology and is the opposite of technophilia. Sometimes the term is used in the sense of an irrational fear while others defend that the fears are justified.

This may actually be more common among the Gen X's and or older generations who have passed beyond their prime when interests and learning capacity was at its peak - a requirement in this highly sophisticated and ever changing technologies.

Answer 4

No, I dont feel a sense of future shock. I dont think technology is moving fast enough to find the answers it needs to solve the environmental and ecological problems it is causing.

Answer 5

I get future shock not so much from the technology as from the times when I realise how old I'm getting.
People who were born after I graduated from high school can legally drink!! - That's the one that usually gets me.


When we reach the future someone say "now".

Answer 6

I remember when the new millenium was approaching I thought everything would be super futuristic afterwards (granted I was in my early teens and pre-teens). I was pretty disappointed that it wasn't like in the movies, but when I stop to think about the way things are now... genetics, technology, communication... I am in awe really. It didn't all go in the direction we thought it would but things have really changed. I think it is exciting and in some areas (like space travel) I wish it would change even more.

Answer 7

Wow. So this pal makes one fortunate bet situated on an excessively indistinct remark and you make a decision this suggests a few type of 6th feel? I endorse you deliver your entire cash to a depended on pal, due to the fact what you're so inclined to consider is strictly the form of factor that frauds and con artists do to lure the gullible, Once your thriller pal comes up with specified, truly predictions, believe loose to name me a cynic, however correct now, you're believing what you WANT to consider, no longer something detailed or special.

Answer 8

Toeffler in his book of the same title proposed that Future shock is experience when the rate of change in the environment of a person is too high i.e. higher than the rate of change for which he/she is trained or is accustomed. He further proposed that as rate of change in the environment is getting faster, new generation is simultaneously getting more accustomed to further rapid change and future shock affects less the younger than the older generation.
However, it seems to me that even for the too young today the rate of change around them has become too fast.
It is also possible that nothing much changed during past few decades and the very young generation today has become accustomed to steady conditions around them. And now their stable world is being very suddenly and drastically changed giving them the 'Future shock'. This seems particulary true for the young generation of U.S.A.
Anyway, there are personal differences to the ability to cope up. I prefer to cope with such condition with slightly detaching myself from the unnecessary around me and having more faith in my abilities to cope up with anything that future has in store for me.

Answer 9

The media makes me feel under constant pressure to buy the latest technological advance but my heart tells me I am killing my planet by supporting all this stupid plastic consumer bullsh*t!

Answer 10

Doesn't everyone feel a little "out of it"? It's a nutty world, so I just let it go by, and find what I can do to make my little space better for me and mine.