future shock

English

Etymology

From future +‎ shock. Coined by American writer, futurist and businessman Alvin Toffler in his 1970 book Future Shock, written together with his spouse Adelaide Farrell.

Noun

future shock (uncountable)

1. A sense of being unable to cope with a large amount of societal or technological change that has taken place in a relatively short time.
   • 1977, Bruce Stirling, Involution Ocean, published 1988, page 76:

     And of course, future shock and death-wish encroachment eventually got everyone, especially on advanced planets. Deep down, deep down, we all want to die.

   • 2023 March 15, Kevin Roose, “GPT-4 Is Exciting and Scary”, in The New York Times‎^[1]:

     GPT-4 […] exacerbated the dizzy and vertiginous feeling I’ve been getting whenever I think about A.I. lately. And it has made me wonder whether that feeling will ever fade, or whether we’re going to be experiencing “future shock” — the term coined by the writer Alvin Toffler for the feeling that too much is changing, too quickly — for the rest of our lives.