Future Shock

Alvin Toffler (First Edition Publication: 1970)

Part One: The Death of Permanence
Chapter 3: The Pace of Life
Durational Expectancy
To understand why acceleration in the pace of life may prove disruptive and uncomfortable, it is
important to grasp the idea of “durational expectancies.”
Man’s perception of time is closely linked with his internal rhythms. But his responses to time are
culturally conditioned. Part of this conditioning consists of building up within the child a series of
expectations about the duration of events, processes or relationships. Indeed, one of the most
important forms of knowledge that we impart to a child is a knowledge of how long things last.
This knowledge in taught in subtle, informal and often unconscious ways. Yet without a rich set
of socially appropriate durational expectancies, no individual could function successfully.
From infancy on the child learns, for example, that when Daddy leaves for work in the morning,
it means that he will not return for many hours. (If he does, something is wrong; the schedule is
askew. The child senses this. Even the family dog- having also learned a set of durational
expectancies- is aware of the break in routine.) The child soon learns that “mealtime” is neither a
one-minute nor a five-hour affair, but that it ordinarily lasts from fifteen minutes to an hour. He
learns that going to a movie lasts two to four hours, but that a visit with the pediatrician seldom
lasts more than one. He learns that the school day ordinarily lasts six hours. He learns that a
relationship with a teacher ordinarily extends over a school year, but that his relationship with his
grandparents is supposed to be much longer duration. Indeed, some relationships are supposed to
last a lifetime. In adult behavior, virtually all we do, from mailing an envelope to making love, is
premised upon certain spoken or unspoken assumptions about duration.
It is these durational expectancies, different in each society but learned early and deeply ingrained,
that are shaken up when the pace of life is altered.
This explains a crucial difference between those who suffer acutely from the accelerated pace of
life and those who seem rather to thrive on it. Unless an individual has adjusted his durational
expectancies to take account of continuing acceleration, he is likely to suppose that two situations,
similar in other respects, will also be similar in duration. Yet the accelerative thrust implies that at
least certain kinds of situation will be compressed in time.
The individual who has internalized the principle of acceleration- who understands in his bones as
well as his brain that things are moving faster in the world around him- makes an automatic,
unconscious compensation for the compression of time. Anticipating that situations will endure
less long, he is less frequently caught off guard and jolted than the person whose durational
expectancies are frozen, the person who does not routinely anticipate a frequent shortening in the
duration of situations.
In short, the pace of life must be regarded as something more than a colloquial phrase, a source of
jokes, sighs, complaints or ethnic put-downs. It is a crucially important psychological variable that
has been all but ignored. During past eras, when change in the outer society was slow, men could,
and did, remain unaware of this variable. Throughout one’s entire lifetime the pace might vary
little. The accelerative thrust, however, alters this drastically. For it is precisely through a step-up
in the pace of life that the increased speed of broad scientific, technological and social change
makes itself felt in the life of the individual. A great deal of human behavior is motivated by
attraction or antagonism toward the pace of life enforced on the individual by the society or group
within which he is embedded. Failure to grasp this principle lies behind the dangerous incapacity
of education and psychology to prepare people for fruitful roles in a super-industrial society.

Part Two: Transience

Chapter 6: People: The Modular Man
The Duration of Human Relationships
Sociologist like Wirth have referred in passing to the transitory nature of human ties in urban
society. But they have made no systematic effort to relate the shorter duration of human ties to
shorter durations in other kinds of relationships. Nor have they attempted to document the
progressive decline in these durations. Until we analyze the temporal character of human bonds,
we will completely misunderstand the move toward super-industrialism.
For one thing, the decline in the average duration of human relationships is a likely corollary of
the increase in the number of such relationships. The average urban individual today probably
comes into contact with more people in a week than the feudal villager did in a year, perhaps even
a lifetime. The villager’s ties with other people no doubt included some transient relationships, but
most of the people he knew were the same throughout his life. The urban man may have a core
group of people with whom his interactions are sustained over long periods of time, but he also
interacts with hundred, perhaps thousands of people whom he may see only once or twice and who
then vanish into anonymity.
All of us approach human relationships, as we approach other kinds of relationships, with a set of
built-in durational expectancies. We expect that certain kind of relationships will endure longer
than others. It is, in fact, possible to classify relationships with other people in terms of their
expected duration. These vary, of course, from culture to culture and from person to person.
Nevertheless, throughout wide sectors of the population of the advanced technological societies
something like the following order is typical:
Long-duration relationships. We expect ties with our immediate family, and to lesser extent with
other kin, to extend throughout the lifetimes of the people involved. This expectation is by no
means always fulfilled, as rising divorce rates and family break-ups indicate. Nevertheless, we still
theoretically marry “until death do us part” and the social ideal is a lifetime relationship. Whether
this is a proper or realistic expectation in a society of high transience is debatable. The fact remains,
however, that family links are expected to be long term, if not lifelong, and considerable guilt
attaches to the person who breaks off such a relationship.
Medium-duration relationships. Four classes of relationships fall within this category. Roughly in
order of descending durational expectancies, these are relationship with friends, neighbors, job
associates, and co-members of churches, clubs and other voluntary organizations.
Friendships are traditionally supposed to survived almost, if not quite, as long as family ties. The
culture places high value on “old friends” and a certain amount of blame attaches to dropping a
friendship. One type of friendship relationship, however, acquaintanceship, is recognized as less
durable.
Neighbor relationships are no longer regarded as long-term commitments- the rate of geographical
turn-over is too high. They expected to last as long as the individuals remains in a single location,
an interval that is growing shorter and shorter on average. Breaking off with a neighbor may
involve other difficulties, but it carries no great burden of guilt.
On-the-job relationships frequently overlap friendships, and less often, neighbor relationships.
Traditionally, particularly among white-collar, professional and technical people, job relationships
were supposed to last a relatively long time. This expectation, however, is also changing rapidly,
as we shall see.
Co-membership relationships- links with people in church or civic organizations, political parties,
and the like- sometimes flower into friendship, but until that happens such individual associations
are regarded as more perishable than either friendships, ties with neighbors or fellow workers.
Short-duration relationships. Most, though not all, service relationships fall into this category.
These involve sales clerks, delivery people, gas station attendants, milkmen, barbers, hairdressers,
etc. The turn-over among these is relatively rapid and little or not shame attaches to the person
who terminates such a relationship. Exceptions to the service patterns are professionals such as
physicians, lawyers, and accountants, with whom relationships are expected to be somewhat more
enduring.
This categorization is hardly airtight. Most of us can cite “service” relationship that has lasted
longer than some friendship, job or neighbor relationship. Moreover, most of us can cite of a
number of quite long-lasting relationships in our own lives- perhaps we have been going to the
same doctor for years or have maintained extremely close ties with a college friend. Such cases
are hardly unusual, but they are relatively few in numbers in our lives. They are like long-stemmed
flowers towering above a field of grass in which each blade represents a short-term relationship, a
transient contact. It is the very durability of these ties that make them noticeable. Such exceptions
do not invalidate the rule. They do not change the key fact that, across the board, the average
interpersonal relationship in our life is shorter and shorter in duration.