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Future Shock

Future Shock

1972 · Film · documentary · 43 min

Directed by Alexander Grasshoff

Documentary

“Our modern technology has achieved a degree of sophistication beyond our wildest dreams. But this technology has exacted a pretty heavy price. We live in an age of anxiety, a time of stress. And with all our sophistication we are in fact, the victims of our own technological strength. We are the victims of shock … of future shock.” No, this isn’t a quote from a Huffington Post column on the Facebookization of modern communication. Nor is it pulled from an academic treatise on the phenomenologies of post-industrial existence. This statement was made by Orson Welles in the 1972 futurist documentary Future Shock, and, unlike some of the more dated elements of 1970s educational films, Future Shock remains shockingly current in verbalizing the concerns and anxieties that come along with rapid societal and technological change. (Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive)

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4 comments on Hacker News

  1. Neutralfortran77Jun 2, 2020

    Yes -- in my lifetime. Amazing to think about. (I was born in '62). And here I am--in 2020 and I'm married to a same-sex partner. This was shocking when I was growing up. In the North where I was you'd see interracial couples but it was very, very rare.

    I remember seeing a movie when I was 10 or so called Future Shock (in 1972) that had a scene with a same-sex wedding and the audience gasped! (It was the second feature at the Uniondale Mini Cinema.)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkUwXenBokU

  2. NeutralslededitNov 19, 2017

    > I think parents themselves are not adult enough to deal with Facebook and avoid being manipulated or cheated. I think the world hasn't caught up with addictiveness of social media yet.

    I hear this criticism a lot and to me it strikes a similar tone as the 1972 documentary Future Shock. Effectively that the pace of change is too rapid and humans cannot adjust. Its a compelling argument on its face, but its been falsified over much of history.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkUwXenBokU

  3. PositiveuxhackerJul 7, 2017

    Future Shock by Alvin Toffler in 1972 narrated by Orson Welles is well worth adding to the list of documentaries to watch. Much of what Toffler/Welles touch is very relevant now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkUwXenBokU

  4. NeutralSCAQTonyJun 30, 2016

    He called gay marriage in the 1972 movie 'Future Shock' when homosexuality was still listed as a mental illness