SOURCE: Blendon, Edith. Review of Future Shock, by Alvin Toffler. American Archivist 35, no. 1 (January 1972): 62-3.

In the following review, Blendon discusses the implications of Toffler's predictions in Future Shock for archivists of the future.

[In Future Shock,] Toffler theorizes that society's rapidly accelerating change may submit masses of men to demands that they simply cannot tolerate. “Future shock” is the resultant disease—the physical and psychological distress that arises from an overload of the adaptive systems of the human organism.

In some respects Toffler's work simply summarizes much of the conjectural, futurist literature; but it also suggests some important considerations for nearly every individual and his “subcult”—the archivist notwithstanding.

The archivist is charged with preserving the permanently valuable, noncurrent records of an institution. Yet Toffler predicts the “death of permanence.” In a society of ephemeral human relationships and social values, the archivist's task of appraising records for...