FUTURE SHOCK

In 1970 futurist Alvin Toffler wrote the blockbuster Future Shock, in which he predicted that the pressures of accelerating change from an industrial to a post-industrial society would lead to stress and even mental illness. Certainly the effects of stress are all around us. In this current election year, many voters are so frightened of terrorism that they not only want to return to the mythical “good old days,” but also will accept simplistic, racist ideas like those proposed by Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Whether the stress also results from changes in our social environment is debatable, but it seems likely.

 

Even driving a car has become more stressful in recent years. Driving used to be fun. My first car, a VW Beetle, was easy to drive (once I adapted to the stick shift) and to care for. It was cheap, too; even as an impoverished young editor, I could afford to buy the  car brand new. Gas cost something like 37 cents a gallon, and some gas stations sweetened the deal with free glasses. I bought the car in Colorado, did some fabulous mountain driving, and drove the bug home to Chicago. I even named the car Adalia (the generic name for ladybugs). That may have been a little too cute; however, I really loved that little car. Selling it when I moved to New York was a major mistake.

 

Though I am fond of my current car (a Honda Fit), too, getting on most roads today is no fun at all. I much prefer riding on a train, but passenger trains are becoming rare, and they are often delayed while the more profitable fright trains have priority. Like driving cars, riding on planes was once fun; today, security checks and all the other difficulties of flying make it a horrendous experience.

 

I do not especially enjoy driving the View, either (though handling it is quite easy). Having a high perch from which to see the scenery, and knowing that a galley and bathroom are just a few steps behind the driver’s seat, make it less stressful than the alternatives.

           

Auto-driven cars are already appearing, and the idea scares me. On the other hand, when I consider the idiotic behavior of some human drivers, I think a robotic car may be an improvement.

 

Another major and stressful area of change is medicine. When I was very young, Doc Brown would make house calls, or prescribe pills to patients who sat on the horsehair couch in his office. That was before the polio vaccine and other wonderful medical advances, and I would never willingly return to those days.

 

In some ways, though, I wonder if medical care has declined. Ever since my years as a caregiver, I have carried a spiral notebook in which I record the results of every medical visit. Practitioners tend to smile condescendingly when they see it, but many times I have been able to supply information that has somehow disappeared from their computerized records.

 

I have been fortunate in finding competent doctors wherever I have lived, but am somewhat unnerved by office visits when the doctor or their assistant has sat at a computer asking me questions and presumably Googling for information about my condition. Being touched during an examination has become rare. I hope the myriad lab tests and X-rays are more informative.

 

Modern medicine relies greatly on modern electronics. Electronic devices of all types have changed greatly, even during the past few months. Whatever gizmo I buy is already obsolete. Back in the eighties, I decided to write my PhD dissertation on a PC, and spent $2000 for an Apple IIe computer and dot-matrix printer. That was an enormous expense for a grad student, but I reasoned that I could use them in writing and editing for many years, and it would be a good investment. Of course, they were out of date within a year, and in succeeding years I have bought many computers and learned countless word-processing programs. Sometimes I long for an old electric typewriter with a correctable ribbon.

 

The financial world has also evolved quickly, mainly because of computers. Today even individuals can do our banking online. It’s a great convenience, but we also need to worry that our bank accounts and charge accounts can be hacked. Our very identities can be stolen, endangering Social Security records, investments, and other important assets.

 

Though change tends to come at a glacial pace in education, computers and other factors have affected even that part of our environment. Education seems from a distance to be far superior to what it was back in the forties and fifties when I attended a two-room rural grade school and a small-town high school. Materials for students are beyond the wildest dreams of teachers and students back then. One would think that the entire U.S. population would be extremely well educated, but it is not. The top students still do well, encouraged by parents and schools that can afford to help them. However, it is rare to find clerks in stores who can add up prices without a computer, and rarer still to see letters that contain no misspellings or obvious grammatical errors. There are many reasons for this (such as education being a lower spending priority than defense),  but even I sometimes long for a return to the “three Rs.” Recently I ran across a letter written by my grandfather, who dropped out of school after the eighth grade. It was much more legible and literate than some of the scientists’ manuscripts I have edited.

Even the RV life—once a complete escape from the shocks of modern life—has changed dramatically. Only a few years ago, an RV might have a small TV set, but other technology was sparse. Today few owners seem satisfied with less than remote-controlled cable TV, Wi-Fi, GPS, and a disgusting collection of other electronics. They might as well stay home.

Fortunately, actually using all those gadgets is a matter of choice. We can still drive off into a national forest or park, or a public land, and get away from future-shock stress for a while. We can read, walk, swim, just as people have done throughout history. Any problems of campground life and maintaining an RV are miniscule compared with those of society at large.