“It is the thesis of this book that there are discoverable limits to the amount of change that the human organism can absorb, and that by endlessly accelerating change without first determining these limits we may submit masses of men to demands they simply cannot tolerate. We run the high risk of throwing them into that peculiar state I have called future shock …Put more simply, future shock is the human response to overstimulation.”

When was this written? Post Pandemic? No. A 21 st Century book ‘of its time’? No. 1970? Yes. (The giveaway might be calling humanity “men”!)

It is however a remarkably prophetic book to have on your shelf, not necessarily to read cover to cover about technical things to come but to choose sections to dip into. To hold onto sanity in stressful times. Because its focus is about the biological organism “person”, dealing with change. It is a proper book with notes and an index. Alvin Toffler was a scholar who pioneered the academic study of “future values”, yet wrote this simple, popular classic. He popularised the term “information overload”.

There is, as yet no science of adaptation, per se, he writes.

One chain of argument he follows shows research done in those days when most scientific research was public spirited and public funded. But we have shifted over 50 years to a predominantly commercially funded research model. For which caveat emptor. Indices for change were measured and health measured against them. The general health of individuals declined more in the one-to-two years succeeding experiences of profound change in the highest categories (spousal death, divorce etc.) than it did in those that had more settled lives. This would have been good research to pull out of the drawer in the wake of a pandemic. Yet we are instead implementing policies of accelerated change without reference to it. With a crashing health service there is no government department of adaptation.

By inference, the Private Residential Sector in Wales has undergone more change in one step 18 months ago than for 50 years. The push is ongoing. Many established landlord businesses are crashing and make your own mind up whether this follows Toffler’s pattern! The same vectors of change are coming to England.

Take this book to your heart! Don’t be reckless. Let’s remind ourselves of the human values behind our efforts to make a positive change to our wealth.