Too Many Choices
By Bruce Shawkey I recently asked AI to summarize a chapter from Alvin Toffler's book, Future Shock, about over-choices, and this is how it turned out. Some of his predictions were right on target; others not so much. The central argument of this chapter that technology will destroy individual freedom. Toffler argues that industrial society has indeed produced enormous amounts of standardization—mass-produced cars, standardized schools, mass media, uniform products and similar lifestyles. But he says that advanced technology is beginning to reverse that process. Instead of giving people fewer choices, the future will give them so many choices that choosing itself may become a problem. 1. The old fear: technology will make everyone alike Toffler begins by challenging a common prediction of his time: that technology would turn people into standardized, passive consumers. Writers such as Jacques Ellul argued that industrial society was eliminating genuine human choice. As technology...
