text: why are people going backward lately??? the world seems to be getting dumber by the year.?   i don't know if anyone's heard of this guy but a man named alvin toffler explained it all in a book called the third wave.   he explains that we are in our third wave of history which is the age of technology and learning. the first wave was an agricultural based society and the second wave was an industry based society.   well, since we jump from each wave of history so quickly, people experience something called future shock. this is a term to describe a sort of disorientation fromn too much change in too short a period of time.   so basically, that's why so many adults are overwhelmed by computers and have to ask the younger egneration to explain how to use them. because, we are in a an age of technology, it's very rare to see people reading anymore. people used to read constantly and now most people only read for educational purposes insread of for pleasure. we rely onj technology to do all the dirty work for us. calculators, computers, are great examples of this.   my history teacher was telling us that less than 100 years ago the average high school senior had a vocablary of about 40,000 words. in our stupid society today, the average high school senior has a vocabulary of about 20,000 words. what happened to the lost 20,000 words? yeah, we are allowing our selves to become more and more moronic.