Future SHock

Future Shock was a bestselling book written by futurist, Alvin Toffler in 1970. His basic premise was the the pace of change, in contrast with earlier times,  was accelerating at an ever increasing speed  and that this was having and would continue to have an unsettling effect on individuals and society.  After I read the book, i looked out for signs of this phenomena and nothing much seemed  to me to be  happening  until 1989 when the fall of the Berlin Wall became the symbol for dramatic changes which were happening all over the world and continue to happen ever since then.  The widespread proliferation of the internet in the years that followed exacerbated the situation so we have now arrived at a place in history where  instability is the norm and the stability of the past is but a distant memory

Future Shock

In 1989, the spies came in from the cold
The Berlin Wall came tumbling down
A new world began to unfold
We were leaving the past behind
The way that things used to be
And we headed for the future
And all its uncertainties
 
Stop the world I want to get off
That’s the way we’re beginning to feel
This global village is spinning too fast
We’re all beginning to reel
It’s spinning faster everyday
In oh so many ways
This constant change
Has us nearly deranged
And it’s not going to go away
 
Chorus
Now we’re in future shock
We can’t turn back the clock
To the way we'd like things to be 
We’re spending so much time on the internet
And more time watching TV
And we’re living in our virtual worlds
Divorced from reality
We’re in future shock
We can’t turn back the clock
To the way we’d like things to be
 
Their downsizing our jobs
In the interests of efficiency
And where there used to be a smiling face
There’s more new technology
Oh I don’t understand
Can anyone explain it to me?
Will our lives have any meaning?
In this brave new reality
Chorus
 
This world is shrinking fast
And I can talk easily
To someone on the other side of the earth
Who doesn’t mean a thing to me
But I find it hard to talk
To those nearest and dearest to me
I’ve a pain in my heart
My world is falling apart
What’s going to happen to me
Chorus

Alvin Toffler Bio

Documentary featuring Orson Wells exploring the the concepts dealt with in "Future Shock"

​Recording Notes
Contact Studios, Tallaght, Dublin 24.  Engineer and Instrumentalist Gerry Horan.  Guitarist and Vocalist Tony Bardon
Backing Vocals, Danai Kelleher and Andrea Brink Siem