Comments on: Bob Blakley Gets Future Shock Dead Wrong

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:26:48 +0000

Adam:
Durkheim is foundational, not definitional. _Suicide_ is the classic example of a work linking varying degrees of social integration to individual behaviors. There’s a clear parallel between the disorientation Toffler talks about modern, rapidly-changing society as engendering and the “anomie” Durkheim pointed to 70 years earlier.
I didn’t mean my comment to be read as expressing an opinion on Toffler.

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:22:01 +0000

Chris,
Sorry, the blog software is slow at handing comments.
Are you saying that Durkheim’s approach to sociology is definitional, and QED Toeffler is an ass? Because I find it hard to see how work written ~60 years before T. refutes his.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:33:07 +0000

I think my earlier comment was eaten. Anyway, the ur-citation in this area would be Emile Durkheim’s _Suicide_, 1897.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:25:18 +0000

Citations, you say?
Emile Durkheim’s “Suicide”, 1897.

By: beri

beri — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:14:58 +0000

I agree with Adam about the issues facing society at the present. One datum he did not include is the number of “gated communities,” where local police have no jurisdiction and where the residents seem to fear their neighbors in the adjacent “gated community.” Some of these communities, like the Disney one in Florida, have even given up on local government and let the “association” run things. Almost as bad as those cameras in England.

By: Adam

Adam — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:27:45 +0000

Tim,
Usually we expect people to offer up arguments and citations, not ad-hominum and contradiction.
If you think I should read a little more history, feel free to either suggest a book or drop one in the mail. If you disagree with Future Shock, feel free to explain why. I found it an interesting prediction of several years of my life.
Seriously.

By: Garry

Garry — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:59:27 +0000

I have to agree with Tim, and I think we thus share a hopeful and not a dismal view of (1) society, (2) privacy, and (3) secrecy.
Things may seem like they’re falling apart and that’s a hallmark of America and indeed of all societies in all time and in all places. Things change, people over-think the reasons why (or why not) and adopt a selectively solipsistic view of their particular worlds.
Going back specifically to privacy and secrecy, spend some time in any culture that is less technologized than our own (and the less the better) and you will quickly find that privacy and secrecy become pretty loose ideals. The average American will probably be shocked and appalled by the constant and unending “invasions of privacy” that are the normal social modes in other cultures (I am thinking of my own lengthy experiences in SE Asia).
Privacy isn’t dead, but it was never all it’s cracked-up to be.

By: tim

tim — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:38:13 +0000

“We no longer have a society”
We never had society as idealized by you. Read a little history (especially about how vile some of the early presidential elections were) and maybe you will understand that the more things change the more they stay the same.
And you are quoting “Alvin Toeffler”? Seriously? I haven’t gotten into an argument about him since I was beta testing AOL back in the late 80s and the head of the Mac Communications forum was a devotee (and a complete idiot). I threw out ‘future shock’ years ago as a waste of space.

By: tim

tim — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:35:27 +0000