Often, change and social transformation are imagined as if they were something unique to our time – phenomena that never occured in previous ages. This leads to some techno-pundits and educational technologists claiming that the current generation is facing a future which will not resemble that of the past. But when did it ever? As I watched the Apollo moon landing with my father in 1969 I’m sure that he would never have thought that my future would resemble his. And nor would his father. ‘We live in times of unprecedented change’ is a piece of rhetoric, rarely a claim based on a full exploration and careful examination of the ways in which societies of the past have experienced change.

Here’s an example of that kind of rhetoric from the 1970s. It’s from a documentary based on a book called Future Shock. That book, written by sociologist and futurist Alvin Toffler, introduced the notion of ‘information overload’ and suggested that the rapid change being experienced in his time was causing an unprecendented sense of anxiety and unease. The documentary, narrated by Orson Well, with characteristic gravity, begins:

In the course of my work that takes me to just about every corner of the globe I see many aspects of a phenomena that I’m just beginning to understand. Our modern technologies have achieved a degree of sophistication beyond our wildest dreams. But this technology has exacted a pretty heavy price. We live in an age of anxiety, a time of stress, and with all our sophistication we are in fact victims of our own technological strength. We are the victims of shock: of … future … shock.

Future shock is a sickness that comes from too much change in too short a time. It’s the feeling that nothing is permanent anymore. It’s the reaction to changes that happen so fast that we can’t absorb them. It’s the premature arrival of the future. For those who are unprepared, its affects can be pretty devastating.

The documentary reminds us that societies have always feared technology and change yet have always adapted – themselves and their technologies. This puts our modern fears in perspective and grounds our present techno-paranoia in its proper historical context.