Facing the 70's;

              It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?"—Thoreau
FACING
20
By Michael N. Chetkovich
As Haskins & Sells rounds out its
seventy-fifth year, the calendar reveals
the Nineteen Seventies stretching out
ahead of us, unexplored, a bit mysteri­ous,
challenging certainly and even in
some ways frightening. One is re­minded
of the old Chinese curse: "May
you live in interesting times"—for inter­esting
times they will be. And one
knows that to those for whom challenge
means opportunity, "living in interest­ing
times" is a blessing and not a curse.
At such a point we must consider
thoughtfully the unfolding picture and
what it holds for all of us connected
with H&S. Thinking and planning
ahead are nothing new for most of us.
But the rapidity of change in our en­vironment
demands that we think and
plan ahead today on a scale to which
we have not been accustomed in the
past, even as we recognize that our
plans are more susceptible to change
than ever before. Only if we look at
the future as clearly and objectively as
possible may we expect to meet the
Michael N. Chetkovich, Executive Office partner,
has been designated as Managing Partner to suc­ceed
John W. Queenan in June 1970.
challenges which lie ahead, to respond
affirmatively to change and to progress
as a vigorous and constructive enter­prise.
For we live in a time that is without
precedent, a time when change is tak­ing
place at an incredibly accelerating
rate. One can have no confidence that
past patterns necessarily provide guide­lines
for what will occur in the future.
In the period just ahead we may easily
find that some of the best trained, most
productive people in our present day
society will be unable to keep up with
the times, because their orientation is
outmoded so swiftly.
In Horizon magazine a few years
back Alvin Toffler, who was an associa-ate
editor of Fortune, wrote an article
called The Future as a Way of Life. In
this article he coined the term "future
shock" to express an idea similar to the
"culture shock" which anthropologists
have called the bewildering effect that
immersion in a strange culture has on
an unprepared visitor. Toffler describes
future shock as "the dizzying disorien­tation
brought on by the premature ar­rival
of the future." He warns that
unless intelligent steps are taken to
combat this disease, many people may
find themselves increasingly disori­ented
and therefore progressively less
competent to deal rationally with their
environment.
We are experiencing this future
shock, the result of the enormously
accelerated rate of change which, in
effect, superimposes a new culture on
an existing one. And unlike an instance
of culture shock, one cannot return to
the culture he left behind. Change, of
course, is not new; it is an old and con­tinuing
phenomenon. But what is new
is the tremendous acceleration in the
rate of change in today's world. Tomor­row
is here, it seems, before we have
closed the door on yesterday. The late
Dr. Robert Oppenheimer put it pretty