“Future Shock”: Half a Century of Formation Alvin Toffler's Reading of Present Reality in the Arab Region

Abstract

Alvin Toffler died on June 27, 2016. At his funeral he was described as a philosopher, social scientist, and anthropologist, as well as one of the first to be dubbed a “futurist”. Of note, Toffler, whose wife Heidi Toffler contributed fundamentally to his work, received almost no formal education in any of those fields. Nevertheless, this did not prevent Toffler from being unrivalled in the breadth of his academic interests and writing. In part, this is due to the mass appeal of his writings and to the fact that some major industries around the world adopted his work. Whether this work is relevant to the current reality of the Arab states is debatable: true, the Arab world did not go through industrialization, but a large and growing proportion of Arabs are today working in postindustrial work places. Hence this study tries to predict how appropriate Toffler's writings are for contemporary Arab society.