Future Shock

While these forces batter at our doors, however, most technocratic pla

For example, all modern nations maintain elaborate machinery for measuring economic performance. We know virtually day by day the directions of change with respect to productivity, prices, investment, and similar factors. Through a set of "economic indicators" we gauge the overall health of the economy, the speed at which it is changing, and the overall directions of change. Without these measures, our control of the economy would be far less effective.

By contrast, we have no such measures, no set of comparable "social indicators" to tell us whether the society, as distinct from the economy, is also healthy. We have no measures of the "quality of life." We have no systematic indices to tell us whether men are more or less alienated from one another; whether education is more effective; whether art, music and literature are flourishing; whether civility, generosity or kindness are increasing. "Gross National Product is our Holy Grail," writes Stewart Udall, former United States Secretary of the Interior, "... but we have no environmental index, no census statistics to measure whether the country is more livable from year to year."

On the surface, this would seem a purely technical matter – something for statisticians to debate. Yet it has the most serious political significance, for lacking such measures it becomes difficult to co

Little known to the public, a polite, but increasingly bitter battle over this issue has begun in Washington. Technocratic pla

This revolt has attracted vigorous support from a small group of politicians and government officials who recognize our desperate need for a post-technocratic social intelligence system. These include Daniel P. Moynihan, a key White House adviser; Senators Walter Mondale of Mi

The danger of future shock, itself, however, points to the need for new social measures not yet even mentioned in the fast-burgeoning literature on social indicators. We urgently need, for example, techniques for measuring the level of transience in different communities, different population groups, and in individual experience. It is possible, in principle, to design a "transience index" that could disclose the rate at which we are making and breaking relationships with the things, places, people, organizations and informational structures that comprise our environment.

Such an index would reveal, among other things, the fantastic differences in the experiences of different groups in the society – the static and tedious quality of life for very large numbers of people, the frenetic turnover in the lives of others. Government policies that attempt to deal with both kinds of people in the same way are doomed to meet angry resistance from one or the other – or both.

Similarly, we need indices of novelty in the environment. How often do communities, organizations or individuals have to cope with first-time situations? How many of the articles in the home of the average working-class family are actually "new" in function or appearance; how many are traditional? What level of novelty – in terms of things, people or any other significant dimension – is required for stimulation without over-stimulation? How much more novelty can children absorb than their parents – if it is true that they can absorb more? In what way is aging related to lower novelty tolerances, and how do such differences correlate with the political and intergenerational conflict now tearing the techno-societies apart? By studying and measuring the invasion of newness, we can begin, perhaps, to control the influx of change into our social structures and personal lives.

And what about choice and overchoice? Can we construct measures of the degree of significant choice in human lives? Can any government that pretends to be democratic not concern itself with such an issue? For all the rhetoric about freedom of choice, no government agency in the world can claim to have made any attempt to measure it. The assumption simply is that more income or affluence means more choice and that more choice, in turn, means freedom. Is it not time to examine these basic assumptions of our political systems? Post-technocratic pla

A sensitive system of indicators geared to measuring the achievement of social and cultural goals, and integrated with economic indicators, is part of the technical equipment that any society needs before it can successfully reach the next stage of eco-technological development. It is an absolute precondition for post-technocratic pla

This humanization of pla

The establishment of such councils, not merely at the federal level but at state and municipal levels as well, would not solve all our problems; it would not eliminate conflict; it would not guarantee that social indicators are exploited properly. In brief, it would not eliminate politics from political life. But it would lend recognition – and political force – to the idea that the aims of progress reach beyond economics. The designation of agencies to watch over the indicators of change in the quality of life would carry us a long way toward that humanization of the pla