Future Shock: The Accelerated Future
How to handle the transience that is coming with new technologies and use and throw products.
Future Shock is a social phenomenon of extreme change in society and environment between the past and the future. It's the idea that a human being can't handle a new environment or a new situation because of a cultural lag. So it's a cultural lag that leave a human feeling out of sync with a new social environment.
In today’s article we will learn more about this accelerated Future and the shock that comes with it and will try to answer some important question like what is Future Shock, Its Effect in our daily life, What’s the some of its major cause, Effects of Covid-19 on this accelerated life, Dark and bright sides of Future Shock and finally an overall conclusion on how you can overcome this Future Shock to find a balance in your life.
Stick till the end to gain a powerful insights on Future Shock. I promise to leave you with a changed attitude towards your life.
Let's begin,
What’s Future Shock
Shock is a sense of feeling which we experience when things get out of control and we are not able to understand what just happened, Future shock is a type of shock which will predominantly exist in future and future generations will be its major victim.
"Future shock is the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future. It may well be the most important disease of tomorrow. Future shock is a time phenomenon, a product of the greatly accelerated rate of change in society. It arises from the superimposition of a new culture on an old one. It is culture shock in one's own society" - Alvin Toffler in his book "Future Shock"
For example:
One thing which is very common about future shock is that it gives rise to use and throw type products and when this temporariness sticks in many aspects of life our brain finds a pattern that everything is temporary and this leads to rapid loss of human connection in our society. In an accelerated world every product becomes temporary within a small time from our gadgets, phones, clothes, career options, courses, skill, friends etc. And we start finding patterns in that world that everything gets old with time and their complete life is up to a few years and months.
Further this shift from ownership model to rent based model of services like home, car, Interview suits, wedding gown etc is here to stay. Renting out things isn’t a new phenomenon but nowadays it’s getting very mainstream. Renting and making a commodity shareable save time, money and increase our effectiveness. But it also signifies the temporary relationship with some of the most important moments of our life like wedding, vacation trips and many more.
Its very likely that when we have lots of options to choose from we are not able to choose any one of them since it takes too much cognitive strain and load to filter out the best available. Our brains fails to prioritize things and we are not able to decide what should come first. This leads to a life full of uncertainty and randomness. More options should bring more freedom and happiness in our life and should tidy up our minds from unnecessary clutter rather its increasing the cognitive strain and further leads to mental anxiety and burnout.
Effects of Future Shock in our day to day life
We are already experiencing the early phases of future shock and it's only going to get more scary with time. Some early signs of that can be seen in the education sector where old curriculum based degree courses are becoming irrelevant with new types of jobs coming up. The rate of old technology getting replaced by a new one is faster than anytime in human history. New technology leads to new types of products in the market, demanding new skills to build that product, creating new jobs and replacing the old one's.
You might be constantly hearing this term "Update yourself" and its variations referring to a common agenda to keep yourself updated with new trends and technologies in your industry to be able to know where its is going. Knowing where things are going helps you get accustomed with new technologies in your industry to not be replaced when the one you know right now becomes old. One life, one job doesn't work anymore.
The real problem of future shock lies in the multitude of options that are made available to us to cut our attention span from 30 seconds to 10 seconds and even lesser. Things are changing so fast that the same meme which made you laugh 1 week ago become old the following week. A hashtag trend for a day and gets lost in the humongous database of twitter for ages, new TikTok and Instagram stars rise and fall every day and are now lost somewhere in the rapidly changing world of social media. Trends shift so rapidly that what you have learnt becomes old the next month and there will be new knowledge to consume and learn. Local building and landmarks are becoming ever more transient with rapid urbanization, every small cue which was there to guide us through our daily life is lost.
What’s causing the Future Shock ?
Now that you have a fair idea about what’s Future Shock let’s find out what’s causing this rapid change. Though it's a complex mix of many singular forces joining hands to become a giant force to accelerate the future. Let's analyse the two major one's which have been playing a pivotal role to accelerate future.
Rise in use and throw products
You might be familiar with these 3 Rupee ‘use and throw’ pen. This is an example of products with “use and throw” tagline. There is nothing bad with use and throw except the thing that once we become accustomed of using more than 5-7 such products in our daily life our mind starts perceiving things differently. We no longer invests our time and attention in our products, and start adopting a “no strings attached” attitude to navigate easily through the rapidly changing items of our life. But once it become a pattern in our mind it starts affecting our relationship in every other part of life including our relationship with a good old friend, our home, old clothes and so on.
When we are not investing our time and effort in a product or service, we no longer values it and all of its value comes down to its single usage and then it become equivalent to any other item in the dustbin. It's just human nature, we navigate our life by forming mental clues by recognizing patterns in everyday things, when temporary items becomes the new permanent we will start looking at everything from the same mindset.
With use and throw products like coca cola, tents, removable wall paint, one time use toothbrush, paper dress etc. gaining so much popularity with its low price and great appearances “use and throw” products are gaining more traction in our life. Though they used to have a small life span but meets all the immediate requirements. Chinese businesses have mastered this transient feature in their products to a much greater extent, a rough estimate of their products life span range around 1 months to a year. their business strategy was very successful because they lured customers with shiny items.
Use and throw products reduces the cognitive load to maintain or carry a product for lifetime but it has its own downside because ultimately its popularizing temporary things in our life. The more we get accustomed of temporary items the more randomness will creep its way in our life, leading to huge mental imbalance, the rapid mental disorders joining the queue of next mental epidemic is a signal that this imbalance is costing us more than our money.
Technology has rapidly accelerated our life because it's easy to create, recreate and destroy things in the virtual world, be it relationships built on social media, virtual weapons, avatars in games, virtual scores, fake lifestyle on Instagram etc. Everything is easy to make, remake and destroy in virtual world.
2. Advancement in technologies
Technology has reduced the cost of providing additional options to customers. What used to take up a lot of physical space in a physical shop, now just needs one more row in the database of its website. Technology has increased our efficiency and productivity in less resources. It had multiplied the number of choices made available to a customer dramatically from 6 songs in a DVD to 1000's of songs in a small portable iPod. It’s constantly changing the way we live with every new app and service. From a limited number of friends in a local region to 1000's of global friends through social media, from that heavy typewriter to a powerful device with added feature of typing its constantly changing the way we work. It has improved the number of options made available to a customer in a cost effective manner.
Pandemic has just accelerated the online adoption of all kinds of business from education, job market, online stores, payment, healthcare etc.
Covid and the accelerated future
It's hard to separate virtual and real experiences and after Covid-19 the gap between real and virtual and has reduced even further. Covid has accelerated the future 10 years ahead by bringing every type of offline work online. Our reality is constantly swinging between virtual and real world. the zoom classes and meeting are now a part of our day to day life. Every mental model, connection and observation built in this virtual world will eventually find its way into real world. If this happens the consequences will be scary and much of its scars will be internal, you won’t be able to understand why you are no longer finding the same kick you used to find while playing your favorite game, watching your favorite video and eventually everything will lead to burn outs, which is already happening to a large percentage of employees working remotely for over a year.
We no longer associate our job with a cubicle or office space, it's just a single app icon in our devices which symbolizes office/work, all the physical connections of a college campus have been reduced to Zoom and Microsoft teams virtual classroom interface and physical restaurants have been reduced to Swiggy and Zomato. All the offline business have shifted to online mode and many others are still trying to shift towards an online one. This shift is here to stay, you no longer can expect these things to come to previous normal. In short every product and service has become a hybrid of physical product combined with an online presence.
Dark sides of Future Shock
The online adoption of every physical store has shrink the whole world in a small device, giving our mind a signal that offline workspace, products, classrooms, items, and many other products which used to make a physical connection with our eyes, ears, hands, feet and overall consciousness has now came down to just a single screen, an app logo and some notifications.
The worst is when infinite options gets combined with a use and throw mindset. This hooks us up for an instant gratification where our brain knows that if this video didn’t give me a kick I can switch to another one similarly if this relationship didn't work out I can switch to another one and will still be okay. Instant gratification has addicted our brain to dopamine, we are losing our patience and ability to comprehend complex situations. All we need is just another dose of dopamine to get lost in some virtual world. The ability to sit bored and have a silly conversation with a friend has almost been reduced to zero taking level of deep conversations to almost zero. TikTok has made our generation believe that we can find excitement and get rid of boredom in less than 30 seconds and the loop goes on and on.
The mental model built with TikTok and Instagram is still with us running our life in other areas. We are now accustomed to using and throwing products. The effects of this mindset can be seen in modern relationships and increased divorce rates of America, the country which is said to be 20 years ahead of its time.
We are using our eyes more than any other senses in the virtual world. For sure remote work and education have made us more efficient and intelligent but it has its own drawbacks. We are no longer physically connected with people therefore less use of all other senses like smell, hands, feet, and touch that help us navigate through a physical setting. This is giving rise to many health issues.
This rapid pace of change in the world around us is also disturbing our inner equilibrium, altering the very way in which we experience life. Acceleration outside eventually translates into acceleration within.
You shouldn't be surprised if the next startup boom comes in mental health industry after current Ed-tech boom. Burnouts, anxiety, and overwhelmed individuals are becoming a common sight in our day to day life. This rapid shift leads to various mental health issues coming up every now and then.
Bright side of future Shock
There is no doubt that technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Internet of things, nanotechnology, robotics and many more are here to increase our efficiency and ease of our life.
The Internet has been pivotal in making all the knowledge of the world accessible to every individual, social media has connected people across the world, TikTok has made entertainment freely available to the mainstream and made content creation far more easier and accessible. YouTube has made all types of knowledge accesible in the most simplest form of digital content. All the technologies are doing a social work by making us more efficient and productive. If we count technologies which have improved our life the list will be nearly infinite. The same smartphone which is making us addicted to Instagram likes is also connecting us with a global audience to create our content and distribution channel.
The number of options made available for a car ride, restaurant food, hotel booking, potential matches on tinder have all been made possible with Technology and they are all serving some types of human needs. But since no technology can be perfect because humans are imperfect, we need to find the fine line where technology can serve us in the best possible way.
Conclusion : How to navigate the waves of Future Shock
Human brain is only capable of handling a limited number of things at a time. After a certain number of options, more options starts becoming a burden. Today more choices means more freedom but once it crosses the limits of our brain's capacity of handling new things and changes these enormous options will cause various complications in our life. It's highly recommended that we understand this phenomenon before it hits the walls of our skull.
In our society at present, the 'natural course of events' is precisely that the rate of change should continue to accelerate up to the as-yet-unreached limits of human and institutional adaptability.- Erik Erikson psychoanalysts
To survive this accelerated future we must become infinitely more adaptable and capable than ever before. And look for new ways to anchor yourself, transient relationships, temporary homes, transient jobs and ever changing education is here to overwhelm your life with infinite randomness if left on its own.
To cure this future disease of transience and future shock we need to look for alternate ways to anchor ourselves in life. Some old anchors like—religion, nation, community, family, or profession— are now shaking under the hurricane impact of this accelerative thrust. We need to look for good alternate ways to anchor ourselves maybe in the form of new rituals and customs closely knitted within a shared community or in some other form.
On an individual level you should understand the effects of this accelerated pace of life entering into your personal life, thoughts and choices. The era of transience shouldn't alter your behavior and quality of existence.
That’s it for this week.
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Do leave a comment on how transience has slid its way in your life and what do you think of future shock.
Until then
Stay hungry, stay curious
Sneha Prajapati