Futurism is a scientific and philosophical field that seeks to predict large-scale social, cultural, economic, and technological trends, tendencies, and events. Alvin Toffler, in his first book, Future Shock (1970), introduced the concept of „future shock“, which refers to the psychological state of disorientation and stress that people and societies experience when radical changes occur in a short period. Toffler believes that people have a limited ability to adapt to social and technological transformations, so the speed of change is the one that causes the greatest negative psychological consequences, and not the direction or orientation of the change. The future shock will only increase over time, as technological and social changes will be even more drastic. The consequences of this process are many: changes in interpersonal relations, increased individual and collective mobility, increased social stratification, diversity, increased consumption of new goods, and the like. He believed that societies must actively manage these changes because they are taking place at such a speed that individuals and societies cannot manage to adapt to them.

References:

Bainbridge. The Future of Religion (1985);

     -     American Values and the Future of Technology (1991);

     -     Nanotechnology: Societal Implications–Individual Perspectives (2006);

     -     Goals in Space: The Secular Abyss (2007);

     -     An Information Technology Surrogate for Religion (2014);

     -     The Meaning and Value of Spaceflight (2015);

     -     Computer Simulation of Space Societies (2018);

     -     Virtual Local Manufacturing Communities: Online Simulations of Future Workshop Systems (2019);

Grinin. The Cybernetic Revolution and the Forthcoming Epoch of Self-Regulating Systems (2016);

Toffler. Future Shock (1970);

     -     The Futurists (1972);

     -     Learning for Tomorrow (1974).