We recently lost a true avant-garde with the passing of futurist Alvin Toffler. I had the pleasure of meeting this great writer and forward thinker on several occasions. Toffler was a visionary who brought the subject of the future to both mainstream media and business with his groundbreaking book Future Shock (1970).

I first met Alvin and his amazing wife, Heidi, in the late 1980s; they were in the front row as I delivered a keynote speech about the future of technology-driven change, a speech I will never forget. I can clearly remember him hitting the table in agreement as I made key points, and after the speech, he shared his kind words of encouragement.

In his writing and speeches, he repeatedly warned businesses how technological progress would usher in an unrelenting era of change. He first used the phrase “future shock” in a 1965 magazine article to describe the accelerated pace at which the world was evolving. Today, the term futurist is common, but the fact that Toffler was talking about the subject over 50 years ago is a testament to his foresight. 

Toffler is also credited with the phrase “information overload.” Once again he accurately predicted the incoming deluge of data that was about to dominate our lives. On the other hand, he often said that, “No serious futurist deals in ‘predictions,’” yet as we all know, he couldn’t help but make many predictions in his books and speeches.

The most relevant and poignant observation about our modern digital world was the suggestion that the days of clocking into the same job for 25 years were about to disappear. It took some time for reality to catch up with this prediction, but once again he nailed it. One of my favorite Toffler quotes was “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Although Toffler specialized in cautionary tales of the importance of keeping up with technological change, his messages were always delivered with a mix of pessimism and optimism. Critics will point out that he got a number of areas wrong along the way such as the creation of artificial cities beneath the waves as well as space colonies. Maybe we just need more time for this prediction to become reality.

What makes Toffler’s insights so special is that he defied conventional thinking to offer insight into a future that few had considered, a future that was quite different from the reality of 1970. Forty-six years after Future Shock was released, many of his teachings are widely considered to be common sense.

Alvin Toffler’s real talent was breaking down complex theories into a language that everyone can understand. The line “If you don’t have a strategy, you’re part of someone else’s strategy” feels more appropriate now than ever before.

I’ve been a professional futurist for over three decades now. I’ve written six books, a dozen audio books, hundreds of articles, and delivered almost 3,000 keynote speeches about the future during that time. When I started, there were only a handful of professional futurists, and I can safely say we all saw Alvin Toffler as the father of modern futurism.