Meanings
- uncountableA sense of being unable to cope with a large amount of societal or technological change that has taken place in a relatively short time.
And of course, future shock and death-wish encroachment eventually got everyone, especially on advanced planets. Deep down, deep down, we all want to die.
1977, Bruce Stirling, Involution Ocean, published 1988, page 761 more example
GPT-4 […] exacerbated the dizzy and vertiginous feeling I’ve been getting whenever I think about A.I. lately. And it has made me wonder whether that feeling will ever fade, or whether we’re going to be experiencing “future shock” — the term coined by the writer Alvin Toffler for the feeling that too much is changing, too quickly — for the rest of our lives.
2023 March 15, Kevin Roose, “GPT-4 Is Exciting and Scary”, in The New York Times
Origin
From future + shock. Coined by American writer, futurist and businessman Alvin Toffler in his 1970 book Future Shock, written together with his spouse Adelaide Farrell.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
future shock. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/future%20shock
“future shock.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/future%20shock. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “future shock,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/future%20shock.
Source: future shock on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.