Future Shock Documentary (1972)
Why Hacker News recommends it
Recommended as a period piece whose worries about rapid change still feel relevant to current tech anxieties.
What it is
The 1972 documentary based on Alvin Toffler's book Future Shock, narrated by Orson Welles. It is a dystopian look at the accelerating pace of technological change and its psychological toll.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2017 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Recommends uxhacker · 2017-07 · on “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011)”
Future Shock by Alvin Toffler in 1972 narrated by Orson Welles is well worth adding to the list of documentaries to watch. Much of what Toffler/Welles touch is very relevant now. [this video]
Cites cpeterso · 2019-07 · on “Lee Iacocca Has Died”
> My wife and I identify thrift stores, in part, by the number of copies of "Iacocca" (his autobiography) that are on the shelf. Another thrift store metric is the number of copies of "Jerry Maguire" VHS tapes. A video performance group called Everything Is Terrible has collected over 15,000 Jerry Maguire tapes. They've hosted pop-up video stores that only rent Jerry Maguire. Their new project is raising $500,000 to build a Jerry Maguire pyramid in the desert. [LINK] > (I tried reading "Future Shock", our other perennial thrift store classic, and couldn't make it thru.) Orson Welles narrated a 40-minute 1972 film version of Future Shock. It's available on YouTube: [this video]
Cites fortran77 · 2020-06 · on “Interracial marriage in US became legal only in 1967”
Yes -- in my lifetime. Amazing to think about. (I was born in '62). And here I am--in 2020 and I'm married to a same-sex partner. This was shocking when I was growing up. In the North where I was you'd see interracial couples but it was very, very rare. I remember seeing a movie when I was 10 or so called Future Shock (in 1972) that had a scene with a same-sex wedding and the audience gasped! (It was the second feature at the Uniondale Mini Cinema.) [this video]
Cites ben_w · 2026-07 · on “AI 2040 and the Cult of Intelligence”
As someone who considers themselves in the "safetyism contingent", the only thing I find myself agreeing with about the rollout of LLMs has been the argument that it has to be shown to and used by the public while under development. Every specific prediction not only sounds like science fiction before it arrives, it tautologically is science fiction because such predictions are narratives about something science-y that has yet to exist: [LINK] Even when we accurately predict something in the future, we often have no clue what the implications are for society until it is in our hands: [LINK] Go too fast, suddenly drop in tech with too many novel implications all at the same time, and we likel
Critical slededit · 2017-11 · on “Startup Ideas”
> I think parents themselves are not adult enough to deal with Facebook and avoid being manipulated or cheated. I think the world hasn't caught up with addictiveness of social media yet. I hear this criticism a lot and to me it strikes a similar tone as the 1972 documentary Future Shock. Effectively that the pace of change is too rapid and humans cannot adjust. Its a compelling argument on its face, but its been falsified over much of history. [this video]