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Future Shock
by Alvin Toffler
Book #1: June 2002
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| Future Shock, by Alvin Toffler, was BookTalk's very first book selection. We read and discussed this non-fiction book in June of 2002. As a brand new online reading group, and with only a small handful of members, this book discussion was hardly more than a few stray comments. Visit our BOOKS page to see a listing of our other much larger and more active book discussions. |
Book Discussion Excerpt
by NaddiaAoC
"Overall I think this book is a total waste of time. It was probably a great read and really enlightening back in 1970. The problem is not that the book is old, but that it’s completely outdated. There’s little to be learned because the information isn’t current. It’s mostly dates and statistics from the 1950’s –1960’s.
I found a couple things amusing. Apparently a fad was raging at the time the book was written where people were wearing paper clothes. They would buy an outfit, wear it once, and then throw it in the trash. I wasn’t born until 1974 so I have no recollection of this, but the author seemed to think that this would become the norm. Soon nobody would be wearing fabric clothes and everyone would be wearing paper clothes. This being the result of our “throw away society.”
The author also talks in one section about how popular Barbie is and that now Mattel is promising us a new Barbie that twists at the waist. LOL. You mean Barbie hasn’t always twisted at the waist? OMG.
Anyway, I’m totally bored with this book. I wish I could say that I was in chapter 5 because I’m really enjoying it. The truth is I’m just trying to get through it as quickly as possible so that I can start something else. I find my mind wandering often as I’m reading, but I’m not about to go back and reread the information.
I’m sorry to sound so negative about the book. I went into it optimistically. It’s just not interesting to me. If the figures and dates were current it would be much more educational. So I’ve decided to suspend reading for now. If some of you start reading it and want to discuss it I’ll continue reading it. But I think I’ll channel my time into something else until then."
Book Synopsis
Examines the effects of rapid industrial and technological changes upon the individual, the family, and society.
Book Review
Book Review by Shubhashish Beura on CoolAvenues.com
The book written in 1970, gives startling insights into the working of organizations in the future (which is today). The book is widely regarded as a masterpiece on futurology.
The author foresees that, the two strengths of an organization, permanence and hierarchy (which the author calls, bureaucracy) will be doomed and will be replaced by "Adhocracy".
The author foresees the following scenarios in the future (i.e. 90's and the early 21st century):
• There would be a fair amount of mergers and acquisitions taking place, which would continuously overhaul an organization, which the author terms as the "organizational upheaval". These phenomena would threaten its permanence.
• The work will mostly be done by project teams, which would be promptly discarded after the job is completed. This would make the organization highly unstable.
• With the exponential increase in production, the production time will be reduced; this would make the downtime very costly and will require faster flow of information for faster execution decisions. This would result in the bypassing of the hierarchy, the " hands" will take the decisions and not the managers.
The solutions to these problems, the author opines is, "Adhocracy". He says, like modularism in architecture, we have to strengthen the structure by using disposable components. We've to use highly adaptive work systems. The prediction made in the book has been more or less true and organizations that have survived have made certain changes, as foreseen by the book e.g., flat structures, faster information flows and development of task-team, etc.
The important lessons about strategic management learnt from this book are that though the components of an organization may change frequently, the structure remains the same (or relatively so). This forms the basis of future decisions. The structure should be such that, the changes (which are inevitable) should affect the components and not the structure. This gives an organization a better chance to survive in an environment which changes continuously and where permanence is non-existent.
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