On After Shock
Schroeter, John, ed. After Shock: The World’s Foremost Futurists Reflect on 50 Years of Future Shock—and Look Ahead to the Next 50. Kennewick: John August Media, 2020. pp. 544. Cloth. $32.00.
I’m sorry, but I wasn’t impressed. This lengthy anthology gathers responses and reflections to Alvin and Heidi Toffler’s 1970 classic Future Shock. A few of the essays are good, but the bulk are either far too optimistic or borderline insane — one discusses the solar system entering a region of the galaxy with “weird energy” as a driver of climate change, which the author reframes as our entering a new ice age, in not so many words.
The collection also leans considerably more conservative than the Tofflers’ book ever did, which I suspect owes partly to John Schroeter having chosen the contributors. His own piece urges us to look past social categories and see each other as individuals. We are individuals, yes, but human society — American society included — is structured above all by social groupings. We can push for groups to win emancipation and other forms of liberation, but the dissolution of social categories, whether racial, gendered, national, class, or any other, strikes me as impossible. If you want a good sense of techno-utopian insanity, this is the place to start. For serious, cautious, calculated futurism, look elsewhere.