Fred Polak: Quotes about change

Fred Polak was Dutch futurologist. Explore interesting quotes on change.
Fred Polak: 26   quotes 0   likes

“Modern technology could advance to the point at which social engineers would be true masters of a complete conformist society which could no longer distinguished from a mass concentration camp. We might ultimately be directed by a superstructure of intelligent machines… Revolutionary changes in the next 30 years would be farther-reaching that many over the past 3.000 years.”

Fred Polak

Quote about the future challenges that industrial society faced due to the societal catastrophe, which was considered to be 20 to 50 years away. Cited in: Ian Murray (1972) " Workers told of peril of technology http://www.kwilliam-kapp.de/pdf/Kapp%20in%20NYT%2072.pdf". In: The Times, April 16, 1972

Intelligence , Change , Past

“Social change will be viewed as a push-pull process in which a Society is at once pulled forward by its own magnetic images of an idealized future and pushed from behind by its realized past.”

Fred Polak

Source: The Image of the Future, 1973, p. 1 (as cited in: H.C. Marais (1988) South Africa: perspectives on the future. p. 15)

Change , Past , Future

“The rise and fall of images of the future precedes or accompanies the rise and fall of cultures. The image of the future can act not only as a barometer, but as a regulative mechanism which alternately opens and shuts the dampers on the mighty blast-furnace of culture. It not only indicates alternative choices and possibilities, but actively promotes certain choices and in effect puts them to work in determining the future. A close examination of prevailing images, then, puts us in a position to forecast the probable future. Any culture which finds itself in the condition of our present culture, turning aside from its own heritage of positive visions of the future, or actively at work in changing these positive visions into negative ones, has no future…”

Fred Polak

Source: The Image of the Future, 1973, p. 300

Change , Future