LOS ANGELES-Alvin Toffler, author of the influential 1970 futurist bestseller “Future Shock,” died Monday in his sleep at his home in Bel-Air, according to Yvonne Merkel, a spokeswoman for his Reston, Va.-based consulting company, Toffler Associates. He was 87.
Toffler’s description of a nation bewildered by the rapid changes sweeping the globe made him a household name. He derived the term “future shock” from “culture shock” and asserted that technology would usher in a new era – a “Third Wave” – in which the explosion of choice and ease of communication would transform commercial, public and private life.
Toffler was dubbed the “Buck Rogers of predictive sociology” by The Washington Post. His books were described as survival manuals for the future.
While some critics derided them as glossily packaged over-simplifications, Toffler got many things right, predicting, for example, increased use of renewable energy, a shift away from traditional nuclear families, and the advent of a computer-driven information age.
With typical foresight, he questioned the wisdom of the European Union in an interview with The Guardian newspaper in the late 1990s. The problem was that the European Union “still believes bigger is better,” he said. Toffler said this was a mistake: flexibility, diversity and micro-markets would rule the future, he said.