Future Shock

by Alvin Toffler

All this cannot—and does not—leave us unchanged. It accelerates the rate at which the individual must process his imagery if he is to adapt successfully to the churning environment. Nobody really knows how we convert signals from outside into images within. Yet psychology and the information sciences cast some light on what happens once the image is born. They suggest, to begin with, that the mental model is organized into many highly complex image-structures, and that new images are, in effect, filed away in these structures according to several classificatory principles. A newly generated image is filed away with other images pertaining to the same subject matter. Smaller and more limited inferences are ranged under larger and more inclusive generalizations. The image is checked out for its consistency with those already in file. (There is evidence of the existence of a specific neural mechanism that carries out this consistency-checking procedure.) We make a decision, with respect to the image, as to whether it is closely relevant to our goals, or whether, instead, it is remote and hence, for us, unimportant. Each image is also evaluated—is it "good" or "bad" for us? Finally, whatever else we do with the new image, we also judge its truth. We decide just how much faith to place in it. Is it an accurate reflection of reality? Can it be believed? Can we base action on it? A new image that clearly fits somewhere into a subject matter slot, and which is consistent with imag...

How individuals process images