The term “culture shock” has already begun to creep into the popular vocabulary. Culture shock is the effect that immersion in a strange culture has on the unprepared visitor. Culture shock is what happens when a traveler suddenly finds himself in a place where yes may mean no, where a “fixed price” is negotiable, where to be kept waiting in an outer office is no cause for insult, and where laughter may signify anger. It is what happens when the familiar psychological cues that help an individual to function in society are suddenly withdrawn and replaced by new ones that are strange or incomprehensible. The culture shock phenomenon accounts for much of the bewilderment, frustration, and disorientation that plague Americans in their dealings with other societies. It causes a breakdown in communication, a misreading of reality, and an inability to cope. Yet culture shock is relatively mild in comparison with the much more serious malady (弊病), future shock. Future shock is the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future. It may well be the most important disease of tomorrow. Take an individual out of his own culture and set him down suddenly in an environment sharply different from his own, with a different set of cues to react to --- different conceptions of time, space, work, love, religion, sex, and everything else --- then cut him off from any hope of retreat to a more familiar social landscape, and the dislocation he suffers is doubly severe. Moreover, if this new culture is itself in constant turmoil (混乱) , and if --- worse yet --- its values are incessantly changing, the sense of disorientation will be still further intensified. Given few cues as to what kind of behavior is rational under the radically new circumstances, the victim may well become a hazard to himself and others. Now imagine not merely an individual but an entire society, an entire generation-including its weakest, least intelligent, and most irrational members-suddenly transported into this new world. The result is mass disorientation, future shock on a grand scale. This is the prospect that man now faces. Change is avalanching(纷至沓来) upon our heads and most people are absurdly unprepared to cope with it.