From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Tue Jul 30 2002 - 12:51:57 MDT
On Tuesday, July 30, 2002, at 05:46 am, Avatar Polymorph wrote:
> I've just joined the list, having been active at bjklein.com for a
> while.
Greetings! And welcome to the fray!
> I believe that there are a number of interesting issues ahead including
> the issue of Stasis Shock to be experienced after the Future Shock we
> are beginning to pass through (in the fashion of a kind of aggravated
> Toffler).
Very good points about these concepts. However, I am beginning to doubt
the whole concept of Future Shock. It never really hit during the end
of the last century as was predicted. Science and technology are
accelerating as predicted, but the massive social disruptions have been
subdued compared to predictions.
I believe that this is due to the fact that there is too much
information for us to grasp already. We each can only keep up with a
small portion of technology. The rest blurs into a footnote that there
is more information available. That vague knowledge of more information
remains uneffected by all these advances. Sure, there are riots about
GM foods, but only a small percentage of people actually participate.
For most people, this is some news item on the television. They never
actually stop to consider what is in their own food. Cryonics has hit
the mainstream news. But it is still a wacky Jerry Springer type of
story that makes people laugh at how outrageous and outside the
mainstream some people are. There are fights about stem cells and
cloning in Congress, but most people think these issues are limited to
laboratories and theoretical academic circles somewhere else.
Future Shock is just not hitting people. They will see digital movies
with VR-like special effects. They will get faster Internet service and
global communications which they use for games. They will see cars and
computer radically change, but all they know is that they buy a new
model every few years. The technology wave is not making any difference
to the average consumer. As soon as we invented TV to keep people at
home and cubicles to keep them boxed in at work, peoples lives stopped
changing. Everything happening outside their little boxes is a minor
distraction to them. They don't care, it doesn't affect them, and they
aren't paying enough attention to be shocked.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
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