Chapter 20 Summary and Analysis

Will it be possible to live in a society suffering from the accelerative thrust and future shock. Many social policies have erratic undesirable effects. Economic planning takes place in most societies but the goal here is economic change not the control of acceleration. The fact that society is out of control is evidenced by the rise of crime, mysticism and cults and other pre-scientific ideas and interest on nostalgia. Planning has fallen out of favor since many people feel it restricts the future by imposing values on the future. Yet, non-planning is just as bad.

Super-industrial gives rise to changes in the financial system. Mutual funds are given as an example of new investment vehicles. In spite of all the statistics and indices, there is no measure of the live-ability of a country and this basically perpetuates the technocracy. Some kind...