Publications

- April 2010: Vol. 22 No. 4

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Right Lesson, Wrong Order

by Geoffrey Dohrmann

*Editor’s note: This article was first published in the July 1997 issue of The Institutional Real Estate Letter.

Way back in the 1980s, Alvin Toffler wrote a neat little book he titled Future Shock. Toffler’s main concern in that book was the impact technology was having on our lives. The problem? That the flow of information and the pace of change eventually would accelerate far beyond our limited ability as human beings to absorb, process and cope with it all. The future Toffler predicted clearly has arrived. Changes no longer occur linearly or even geometrically. Today, changes unfold according to the rules of the quantum — which is to stay, without any rules at all. Change presents itself randomly, sometimes viciously, along no predictable path any of us can fathom.

The implications are simple. Despite a tremendous increase in our ability to access and electronically process information, the knowledge developed in the past (which is what all information actua

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