Future Shock

Sharp differences would quickly emerge between the society that presses technological advance selectively, and that which blindly snatches at the first opportunity that comes along. Even sharper differences would develop between the society in which the pace of technological advance is moderated and guided to prevent future shock, and that in which masses of ordinary people are incapacitated for rational decision-making. In one, political democracy and broad-scale participation are feasible; in the other powerful pressures lead toward political rule by a tiny techno-managerial elite. Our choice of technologies, in short, will decisively shape the cultural styles of the future.

This is why technological questions can no longer be answered in technological terms alone. They are political questions. Indeed, they affect us more deeply than most of the superficial political issues that occupy us today. This is why we ca

To capture control of technology, and through it gain some influence over the accelerative thrust in general, we must, therefore, begin to submit new technology to a set of demanding tests before we unleash it in our midst. We must ask a whole series of unaccustomed questions about any i

First, bitter experience should have taught us by now to look far more carefully at the potential physical side effects of any new technology. Whether we are proposing a new form of power, a new material, or a new industrial chemical, we must attempt to determine how it will alter the delicate ecological balance upon which we depend for survival. Moreover, we must anticipate its indirect effects over great distances in both time and space. Industrial waste dumped into a river can turn up hundreds, even thousands of miles away in the ocean. DDT may not show its effects until years after its use. So much has peen written about this that it seems hardly necessary to belabor the point further.

Second, and much more complex, we must question the long-term impact of a technical i

We can no longer afford to let such secondary social and cultural effects just "happen." We must attempt to anticipate them in advance, estimating, to the degree possible, their nature, strength and timing. Where these effects are likely to be seriously damaging, we must also be prepared to block the new technology. It is as simple as that. Technology ca

It is quite true that we can never know all the effects of any action, technological or otherwise. But it is not true that we are helpless. It is, for example, sometimes possible to test new technology in limited areas, among limited groups, studying its secondary impacts before releasing it for diffusion. We could, if we were imaginative, devise living experiments, even volunteer communities, to help guide our technological decisions. Just as we may wish to create enclaves of the past where the rate of change is artificially slowed, or enclaves of the future in which individuals can pre-sample future environments, we may also wish to set aside, even subsidize, special high-novelty communities in which advanced drugs, power sources, vehicles, cosmetics, appliances and other i

A corporation today will routinely field test a product to make sure it performs its primary function. The same company will market test the product to ascertain whether it will sell. But, with rare exception, no one post-checks the consumer or the community to determine what the human side effects have been. Survival in the future may depend on our learning to do so.

Even when life-testing proves unfeasible, it is still possible for us systematically to anticipate the distant effects of various technologies. Behavioral scientists are rapidly developing new tools, from mathematical modeling and simulation to so-called Delphi analyses, that permit us to make more informed judgments about the consequences of our actions. We are piecing together the conceptual hardware needed for the social evaluation of technology; we need but to make use of it.

Third, an even more difficult and pointed question: Apart from actual changes in the social structure, how will a proposed new technology affect the value system of the society? We know little about value structures and how they change, but there is reason to believe that they, too, are heavily impacted by technology. Elsewhere I have proposed that we develop a new profession of "value impact forecasters" – men and women trained to use the most advanced behavioral science techniques to appraise the value implications of proposed technology.

At the University of Pittsburgh in 1967 a group of distinguished economists, scientists, architects, pla

Fourth and finally, we must pose a question that until now has almost never been investigated, and which is, nevertheless, absolutely crucial if we are to prevent widespread future shock. For each major technological i

The problems of adaptation already far transcend the difficulties of coping with this or that invention or technique. Our problem is no longer the i

Does a proposed i

Here, then, is a pressing intellectual agenda for the social and physical sciences. We have taught ourselves to create and combine the most powerful of technologies. We have not taken pains to learn about their consequences. Today these consequences threaten to destroy us. We must learn, and learn fast.