"Future shock,” as described by Alvin Toffler in the book by the same name, “is the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future”—and that was in 1970, when a computer required its own building. Today every iPhone is a million times smaller and cheaper and more powerful than its mammoth ancestor. According to computer-science guru and futurist Raymond Kurzweil, “That’s a billion-fold increase in capability per dollar that we’ve actually experienced since I was a student. And we’re going to do it again in the next twenty-five years.”Toffler believed that most of the enormous social problems and unrest of the sixties were symptoms of this too-rapid rate of change. Now, nearly half a century later, the rate at which technological change occurs is orders of magnitude greater than that which we experienced during the era of the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and the assassination of President Kennedy. Just think: In a few short years driverless cars and trucks will barely have to slow down through unpeopled gas, food, and coffee dispensers, perhaps leaving millions feeli …