Future Shock

by Alvin Toffler

We cannot and must not turn off the switch of technological progress. Only romantic fools babble about returning to a “state of nature.” A state of nature is one in which infants shrivel and the for lack of elementary medical care, in which malnutrition stultifies the brain, in which, as Hobbes reminded us, the typical life is “poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” To turn our back on technology would be not only stupid but immoral. Given that a majority of men still figuratively live in the twelfth century, who are we even to contemplate throwing away the key to economic advance? Those who prate anti-technological nonsense in the name of some vague “human values” need to be asked “which humans?” To deliberately turn back the clock would be to condemn billions to enforced and permanent misery at precisely the moment in history when their liberation is becoming possible. We clearly need not less but more technology. At the same time, it is undeniably true that we frequently apply new technology stupidly and selfishly. In our haste to milk technology for immediate economic advantage, we have turned our environment into a physical and social tinderbox.