Future Shock

by Alvin Toffler

When a dog hears a strange noise, his ears prick, his head turns. And we do much the same. The change in stimuli triggers what experimental psychologists call an “orientation response.” The orientation response or OR is a complex, even massive bodily operation. The pupils of the eyes dilate. Photochemical changes occur in the retina. Our hearing-becomes momentarily more acute. We involuntarily use our muscles to direct our sense organs toward the incoming stimuli—we lean toward the sound, for example, or squint our eyes to see better. Our general muscle tone rises. There are changes in our pattern of brain waves. Our fingers and toes grow cold as the veins and arteries in them constrict Our palms sweat Blood rushes to the head. Our breathing and heart rate alter. Under certain circumstances, we may do all of this—and more—in a very obvious fashion, exhibiting what has been called the “startle reaction.” But even when we are unaware of what is going on, these changes take place every time we perceive novelty in our environment. The reason for this is that we have, apparently built into our brains, a special novelty-detection apparatus that has only recently come to the attention of neurologists. The Soviet scientist E. N. Sokolov, who has put forward the most comprehensive explanation of how the orientation response works, suggests that neural cells in the brain store information about the intensity, duration, quality, and sequence of incoming stimuli. When new stimuli arri...