Name: Present Shock
Rating: 3.7 (26 reviews)
Author: Douglas Rushkoff

What’s in it for me? Grasp what’s so confusing about our current culture.

Do you know that nagging feeling that you’re missing out on something really important, even though you’re constantly checking social media and news sites? Or are you done with being online all the time and dream of running away to live in some sequestered cottage?

We’ve surrounded ourselves with a world of digital information, and now these media are setting the pace for us, which can be overwhelming. After all, we’re not cyborgs yet, just creatures bound to natural rhythms.

In these blinks, you’ll find out how digital media are transforming our personal lives, our culture and even our perception of time – and learn about the conflicts that arise in the process.

You’ll also discover

why planning and patience are no longer our strong suits;
that we all have multiple personalities nowadays; and
why you can blame the remote control if your biography resembles that of Bart Simpson rather than Luke Skywalker.

We’re disoriented and stuck in an eternal present.

Imagine you’re practicing tennis with a ball machine, when the machine suddenly starts shooting balls out faster and faster until you can’t keep up. That’s how cultural and technological change has progressed for the last few decades.

Around 1970, the futurist Alvin Toffler predicted that we’d soon reach a rate of progress that was so fast we would enter a state called future shock.

In the twentieth century, we had a future-oriented view of technology. People obsessed over revolutionary inventions and business models they thought were on the way. Everyone was excited by the possibilities afforded by new technologies, like cell phones that let us talk to our friends, relatives or co-workers at any time.

The pace of change kept increasing, however. Computer processing speed doubled every two years.

That’s why Toffler predicted that we’d reach a point where we wouldn’t be able to keep up, mentally or emotionally. We’d experience future shock – a kind of culture shock that happens within your own culture.

That “future” is already here. People increasingly feel lost in the modern world and we’re no longer motivated by the technological optimism of the twentieth century. Future shock has turned into present shock.

We’re surrounded by change and lack a clear sense of direction, so we’ve given up on planning for a better tomorrow. Instead, we want everything now.

This feeling manifests in many ways. Few traders look for long-term investments, for instance, preferring deals with instant benefits instead.

Just think about the investors who already had Facebook shares the first day the company went public. Many sold them the very next day because they hadn’t risen enough.

We now prefer fragmented stories instead of linear stories, which adds to our disorientation.

Stories used to be laid out with a clear beginning, middle and end. Think of Snow White or Star Wars, for example. This is no longer the case, however.

People used this classic structure because it helped them make sense of things. After all, stories are instruments of thought: they give order to the world around us.

Digital technology distracts us, and distorts our identity and perception of time.

Your smartphone enables you to do something your ancestors could never do: be in more than one place at a time. That’s great in some ways, but it also makes life more confusing.

People conceived of time differently in the pre-digital era. They considered time to be linear and thought they could only be in any one given physical space – where their body happened to be!

We’ve lost sight of the importance of timescales.

Young people imagine that life lasts forever. Yet when you zoom out, the whole of human history seems to have lasted just a moment. The Big Bang happened about 13 billion years ago but modern humans have only been around for 200,000 years.

Does this mean there are multiple kinds of time? Not exactly. But there are several timescales, according to the writer Stewart Brand.

Key ideas in Present Shock