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Review:The Third Wave
Alvin Toffler is an historian and futurist. In The Third Wave he presents an historical view of our two previous civilizations types, a look at the new Third Wave economy, and an analysis of the conflicts that arise between the warring forces of these three civilization types as change sweeps across the globe. Now sure, we've all read the endless Wired articles about the New Economy with it's virtuous circles, network effects, and general cyberiffic rosy view of the future, but this book is where it all came from. The truly amazing thing is that Toffler wrote the third wave almost 20 years ago, in an era before the World Wide Web, before the IBM PC, and before anyone knew that Vader was Luke's father. While some of the ideas never came to fruition, it remains an amazingly accurate picture of the future.
StructureThe book starts off with a lengthy description of First and Second Wave civilizations. A First Wave economy is agrarian society where everyone makes their own products for their own consumption and there is little or no trading between households. A Second Wave civilization is an industrial society. Rampant specialization and economies of scale have taken over as people form into larger and larger groups like corporations and nation-states. The key indicators of a Second Wave economy are standardization, specialization, and centralization. Almost no one creates products for themselves, but instead people spend most of their time working in a factory creating products to be sold to others. This split of producer and consumer is the primary sign of a Second Wave economy and, according to Toffler, one of the major reasons for strife and chaos in the modern world.
After covering the first two economies (with most of his time spent on the second) Alvin Toffler begins his description of a Third Wave economy, which America has already started to become. (This was true at the time of the writing. I'd say it's well underway now). The key tenets of a Third Wave economy are de-massification and de-centralization. Products will no longer be standardized in huge factories, but, using new manufacturing technology, will be customized in extremely small production runs; sometimes a single unit. Consumers will have a bigger part in the creation of the products they buy, turning the producers and consumers into 'prosumers'. All bureaucratic structures will be de-centralized. National governments will divest more power to regional governments and global organizations that deal with the problems of our new world wide economy. Corporate structures will also be de-massified, giving more power (and economic payoff) to people lower on the ladder.
The key to a Third Wave civilization is flexibility: people work when they want, where they want, and for whom they want. These are all traits found in technology startups and are becoming more common in traditional industries. Flextime, tele-commuting, and stock options all fit very nicely into this future. And they are all features we should look for in prospective companies.
What's Bad?The Third Wave is an amazing book, but it's not without it's flaws. First of all, it's too long. Minus the ninety odd pages of index, notes, and bibliography, the book weighs in at a hefty 445 pages. That's not huge, but it's pretty big for a non-fiction, non-narrative book. The Third Wave is very in-depth and covers a lot of ground in detail, but a smaller book of one to two hundred pages would give the reader the basics without being so heavy on history and examples.
Secondly, as surprisingly current as the book is, it still is dated in some areas. He had big hopes for the space and undersea industries that haven't panned out. And even with as much time as he spent talking about the possibilities of computing, he was unable (understandably) to anticipate the true growth of the industry.
So What's In It For Me?This is a good book that should be read by anyone planning on being a part of business in the Information Economy. We can see de-centralization and de-massification all around us, and it's growing in power. Slashdot, MP3s, tele-commuting, block grants, indie-films, non-nuclear families are all signs of the coming 21st century civilization. The Third Wave may be a little out of date and a little too optimistic, but it's still the closest thing we have to a history of the last fifty years and a roadmap of the next hundred.
To purchase this book, head over Amazon.
Table of Contents- A Collision of Waves
- Super-Struggle
- The Second Wave
- The Architecture of Civilization
- The Invisible Wedge
- Breaking the Code
- The Technicians of Power
- The Hidden Blueprint
- A Frenzy of Nations
- The Imperial Drive
- Indust-Reality
- CODA: The Flash Flood
- The Third Wave
- The New Synthesis
- The Commanding Heights
- De-Massifying the Media
- The Intelligent Environment
- Beyond Mass Production
- The Electronic Cottage
- Families of The Future
- The Corporate Identity Crisis
- Decoding the New Rules
- The Rise of the Prosumer
- The Mental Maelstrom
- The Crack-Up of the Nation
- Gandhi with Satellites
- CODA: The Great Confluence
- Conclusion
- The New Psycho-Sphere
- The Personality of the Future
- The Political Mausoleum
- Twenty-First Century Democracy
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Good to see that Dialectical Materialism is still as popular as ever.
Although Toffler was a key figure in Newt's "Conservative Revolution" which failed so brilliantly that Newt had to quit congress.
/. already has a creepy group philosophy.
Oh please let the book reviews stay in the technical realm. I really don't want to log in one day and see Dianetics reviewed -
Firstly, if you want to read a real guru, take a look at Peter Drucker. He's always been more vital and less...flakey.
Secondly, the reviews in here are fairly worthless - when is the last time a book got a bad review? I'm sorry to be so blunt, but a more experienced reviewer could easily pull apart Toffler.
While some of the ideas never came to fruition, it remains an amazingly accurate picture of the future.
:)
I would like an amazingly accurate picture of the winning lottery numbers please.
Especially since they already posted this crappy review earlier this week.
"before anyone knew that Vader was Luke's father"
Actually, since "darth vader" is German for "dark father", lots of people already had an inkling that this was the case.
Please pull Toffler apart. After all, nothing in The Third Wave is relevent today, is it? The "Information Revolution" never came about. And the era of the prosumer never arrived.
Prediction is one of the primary tests of any hypothesis. And on that front, "The Third Wave" succeeds.
But please, pull it apart. Be my guest.
Yeah, that's stretching it a bit. Still, with a liberal artistic license ... I mean it sorta sounds like it; maybe in some archaic German dialect like Flemish or Yiddish or Old Middle English or something it might mean something.
Peter Drucker... the druggist from green acres, right? ;-)
Here's another appropriate fortune:
"It is better for civilization to be going down the drain the to be coming up it - Henry Allen"
Is of course the First Wave all over again, only in disguise as something new. Therefore in a few years after some crisis and some change we'll all see the light and go back to being peaceful farmers... ;-)
Those of you who profess profound dislike for Mr. Gingrich have probably only been exposed to his ideas in 30 second sound bites designed to portray him as evil/extreme/mad, etc. If you ever get a chance to listen to him at some length, you will probably come to some different conclusions. I am not saying that he is always right or anything, just that he is a reasonable person who is right on many issues.
Dunkler Vater indeed. Darth Vader doesn't sound anything like anything Germanic except maybe some Star Wars over-besotten dreamer has dreamt too much while preparing his thesis on Beowulf. (Hwaet! We gardena in geardegum, Darth Vaderas, thrym gefrunon) or something ...
Aber ich hatte vielleicht viel Deutsch vergessen so I may be wrong.
And what's this got to do with Alvin Toffler except for his apparently Germanic family name?
Tschuss!
-MikeR-
Look out buddy, your looking at getting moderated down to -1. Better not say something cynical, funny or anti-apple; especially if it's short'n'sweet. Watch out; we can traceroute you're I.P. address.
There is some evil 1930's, early 1940's Germanic
imagery in Darth. I mean, just look at that
helmet tell me you'd wear it to a Battle of the Bulge survivors convention. Those geezers would rip you up.
It's THX 1138.
Yeah. Slashdot is also creepy. This touchy-feeley moderation is sickening. Don't say anything that might possibly offend anyone anywhere.
It's funny but the other night my local PBS station ran an American Masters tribute to the comedy team of Mike Nichols and Elaine May. They had a clip from the 11th Emmey Awards. Nichols played the role of a typical putz TV producer of medicore product. When asked the secret of his mediocrity Nichols replied: "One: I take all the advice offered by the advertisers. Two: I never say anything that might possibly offend anyone anywhere in the world."
The difference is Slashdot really believes those words of "wisdom" once uttered by Nichols as a sarcastic jab at blandness and mediocrity and conformity.
Face it. Slashdot has lost it.
No, the point is that, historically, the Welsh and Scottish have had distinct ethnic backgrounds. Ethnicity of Edinboroughians(?) == ethnicity of Glasweigans. Ethnicity of Glasweigans != ethnicity of Geordies. It's called National Self-determination...
But Scottish and Welsh nationalism is not based on being opposed to English oppression! You might just as well say that British nationalism is based on being opposed to French nationalism or American nationalism is based on being opposed to Canadian nationalism.
Of course nationalism is based just as much on who is excluded from the group as is included; by definition, it divides people into two groups.
BTW, I failed to see the point of your first paragraph. Are you saying that two Scotsmen are less alike than a Scotsman and a Welshman? If so, rereading it might point out the logical flaw.
So please say why you believe that Welsh/Scottish nationalism is based on opposition to another country.
I don't see why the fact that you can become an American citizen means that American nationalism is not based on opposition to another country. If Scotland and Wales became independent, you could do the same thing; both the Welsh and Scottish national parties have prominent English-born members.
As you mentioned, even "Creating A New Civilization" was published a while ago(1994).
So why is even CANC big news? You guys really gotta get out from behind the keyboard once in a while.
Although it was written almost 3000 years ago, it's a really cool book. It's got lots of fighting and screwing and gods and demi-gods and stuff. I think the prediction that "Trojan Horses" will be a threat to computers was really forward looking. Basically, though, it's a rip-off of "Gilgamesh" which was written at Palo-Alto Research Center in Sumeria.
The fact that millions of people consider themselves Scottish or Welsh as opposed to British simply indicates the successful exploitation of latent primordial identities by interested political parties. Needless to say, these identities can be rather randomly chosen among the countless ones characterizing every person as belonging to some group. They might've very well pushed Edinburgh as the defining commonality. Hence 'imaginary.'
AC
I read this book 20 years ago, on the recommendation of a friend. I continue to think that his "insights" are not as profound and pervasive as claimed.
What immediately occurred to me was the nonsense of small scale manufacturing alone. What is the dominant scale of the larger enterprises? As a US citizen, it's clear that it's no longer just "nationwide" that companies aspire to, and occasionally become. It's now multinationals that stretch beyond the legal systems that nations have established over the years. There are many other examples: the spread of fast-food (e.g. McDonalds) over the whole planet); and even the development of Linux, which has taken inspiration from the minds of individuals in many countries [hey, I didn't say it was *all* bad]. I just think that Toffler's view of the future wasn't terribly insightful, at least in comparison with other thinkers of that book's time. In contrast, there are a number of books that you can think of that have had a much bigger impact on peoples' thinking, for a much longer time-span. Toffler is no better than your average science fiction writer.
Why do you think Wales and Scotland's national identities are imaginary? Surely the fact that millions of people consider themselves to have a Welsh or Scottish nationality means that they have one. By definition, a national identity is what people consider themselves to be.
If you are saying that the idea of an ethnic identity is imaginary, that is wrong too. Welsh and Scottish are more ethnically different as, say, the Serbs and the Albanians.
Yow. I'm gonna go home, put on Neil Young and Pink Floyd, and contemplate suicide. Yikes.
Unfortunately, I agree with the tone of your post.
I don't agree with all of your presumptions, let alone all of your conclusions, though. For instance, there hasn't been a breakdown of "national identity," because there's been little national identity at all. Almost all of these ethnic confilicts have been festering in the populace for many years. This whole Kosovo thing is a direct result of re-drawn political lines in post-WWII Europe, driven by the US and its insane egoism. Scotland (and Ireland) have always maintained their own distinct ethnic identity.
The collapse of industrialism is not a direct condemnation of capitalism (as intrinsically evil as capitalism is), but rather a direct result of the collapse of industrialism itself. In the '70s, the US underwent some traumatic changes in the automotive industry. Even now, there are many under-employed ex-auto workers, but it isn't nearly the crisis it was 20 years ago. A lot of this is temporary, if scary, just as the collapse of the cotten plantations due to the industrial revolution led to the US Civil War. The crisis is over, even if we still bear the scars.
The quality of life is going up in general, all over the world. (I'm disregarding warring nations, because in war, there is no quality of life. However, the wars fought today are smaller and less bloody, if more frequent.) This biggest slowdown in the increase in quality-of-life is the wealth-hoarding of the major corporations. (Wealth-hoarding and empire-building (which contributes to wealth-hoarding) are the two biggest flaws of unfettered capitalism, IMHO.) A corrallary: anyone who contributes to a corporation that practices wealth-hoarding or empire-building is stealing from the quality-of-life of someone. In a generic sense.
Personal accountability is more important than political accountability. Politicians should be personally accountable for every decision made, and every life lost due to those decisions. And everyone should be personally accountable for every decision they make. At least, if you ask me. (Which you didn't.)
Decadence? Perhaps. Are we in for a crash in a few years? Perhaps. But our world is expanding, and our only hope is to work for our beliefs-- no matter what those beliefs are. If you dislike what you see in the world, work to change it, to the best of your abilities. Help out a single person in a nightmare position. Do what you can to make the world the world you want, and not the world you were given.
Anyway, just a long ramble. I'm working on a counteragent to your depression and cynicism, no matter how well-founded your cynicism is.
At least, that's my opinion. I could be wrong.
I don't know whether The Third Wave understands that a lot of what we're currently seeing has analogies in previous cycles of history. The whirling dervish of culture and society of the 90s echoes what was happening in the 20s. The scary aspect is that the next cycle is, inevitably, a "crisis" cycle in which society is likely to change quickly and enormously. According to Strauss and Howe, this should happen in the middle of the next decade.
The master author of "1945" himself. Wow!
Seriously, I can't think of Toffler without thinking about Newt Gingrich. And to be honest, I hate the former speaker. I think when Gingrich left office, he had a popularity "rating" of 18% or so. So, did Gingrich misunderstand Toffler? Is Toffler a "right-wing" nut? Can Toffler redeem himself?
"The master author of "1945" himself. Wow! [...]
Seriously, I can't think of Toffler without thinking about Newt Gingrich."
The first 2/3 of "1945" wasn't bad. Not up to what Harry Turtledove and Steve Sterling could have done, but reasonable for a first effort.
The last third was unbelievably bad. A few interesting ideas spun to utterly extreme and totally unworkable conclusions.
Not too much different from the Newtster's career in the House, if you think about it. And not too different from what happens to most futurists, either, although very few have as much power in their hands as Newt did.
I think the key is that even the most successful/perceptive futurists need to keep a sense of proportion and also a sense of humour about their own work. IMHO that's where Newt fell apart - he started to believe too deeply in too many of his own ideas, and lost his sense of what is ridiculous.
Of couse, Toffler has never actually been in a position of social power, so even if he makes the same mistake he can't do as much damage as a Speaker of the US House.
My 0.02 (discounted to 1980).
sPh
Alvin and Heidi Toffler, "Creating A New Civilization: Politics of the Third Wave". It summarizes the main points of the larger tome, and is 112 pages long and published first in 1994.
... who can pass THAT up?
Plus, it has a forward by Newt Gingrich hisself
Can we now look forward to a review of Around the World in 80 Days? Or I, Robot?
It's easy and fun! Fool your friends! Win the lottery over and over again!
First, you must accept the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Now that you accept the fact that every quantum action splits the universe into a vast number of alternate universes, the rest is simple.
1. Randomly select your lottery numbers using a quantum process. 2. If numbers do not win, destroy universe. Implementation of step 2 is left as an exercise for the reader.
Blatently stolen from the Jargon File .
I was not aware that anyone had written a review of this before. When was it? I don't recall seeing one by anyone since I've started reading /. (a little over a year).
- joshy
Prop me up beside the jukebox if I die.
It was written about the same time as The Third Wave
Umm. Future Shock was published in 1971. Third Wave in 1980.
I agree those books where GREAT but they are just too old now, aren't they?
You should read The Power Shift. It was published around 1994 and very good.
Alejo.
-Peter
I try to avoid essentialising nationality, simply because it is an empirical fact that all humans are almost entirely the same. Any two Scotsmen would be less alike than the 'average' Welsh and Scot.
But nationality identity has provided a potent way of uniting a country, think how much the British empire depended on a cohesive notion of Britishness. Now the British empire committed some terrible crimes but national identity can function in a positive way, for example the USA, when it is based on progressive principals. Scottish and Welsh nationalism on the other hand is distinguished by being opposed to English 'oppression'. I can see very little good coming from it.
I disagree, US national identity was based on a shared ethos, it had its downside of course, but it wasn't based on opposition to another country.
One can emigrant to the US and become an American citzen for example.
I meant that the differences between two humans (from any ethnic group) are more than the differences between the averages of any particular ethnic group.
Well listen to an SNP member, what is the need
for a separate Scottish state if not to escape
English 'oppression'.
As with all books of prediction, this is really a comment on the present. The dominant trend of the past decades has been a declining industrial base in the advanced countries (second wave, or capitalist as they are usually called), now rather than seeing this as a failure of capitalism (which it certainly is), the theorists of the new economy redefine unemployment as flexibility, low paged, irregular work as service jobs, the breakdown in national identity and cohesion in favour of largely imaginary "ethnic" identities (for example Scotland and Wales) as decentralisation. When the author predicts that goods will be designed almost for each person this is clearly a fantasy, out of reach of all but the richest, the modern trend being noted here is twofold, first towards definitions of identity based mainly on consumption and secondly towards a shift of responsibility onto the individual. If we are 'prosummers' then we have no need or desire to put complain about our circumstances, join political parties or trade unions, in short social life is completely privatised. This is not a utopia, except for those who are benefiting from a lack of political accountability, but a nightmare. Decadence is the only way to describe it.
It should also be noted that the computer industries growth has chiefly come from consolidation, it is only the fantasy world of the US stockmarket that makes it appear otherwise.
--
Yours, depressingly
Y'all can have fun in your little world. :-)
See y'all on the other side
(Humming the refrain from Once in a Lifetime,
"Same as it ever was..."), I'm...
Saint Stephen
P.S. Check out THX-1187 (or is it 1137) for a perfect description of "The World of Today"
yeah i'm inclined to agree. ol' newty boy was pretty detestable but less so than most southern republican politicians (well okay thats not much of a standard...) seemed to at least have a _clue_ that half of what he was saying was bullshit, as opposed to most who seem to actually believe that they are righteous, and not just puppets for people with real power.
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
Toffler is management-guff. If you like the subject, try one of the serious books on it; Castells' _The Rise of the Network Society_, for instance.
I haven't yet read The Third Wave, but I did read Future Shock, which covers how the individual deals with the changing society around him/her.
It was written about the same time as The Third Wave, and from the above review, they tie into it in several key places.
It even quantifies how people are changing, such as the number of words a mordern person is exposed to everyday versus their grandparents.
Very interesting book, and very insightful.
Get your heads out of the encyclopedias and into the real world. Read a little history while you're at it.
Communism is extreme socialism for control of power which represents that culture's medium of value for intellectual and emotional reasons. Note I don't subscribe to too many theories on cultural identity that discuss much beyond coincindence. Two people can have culture as I see it.
Protectionism is extreme capitalism for control of money which represents that culture's medium of value for intellectual and emotional reasons.
You want a real picture?
Two erasable marker clipboards:
One for social class and one for education in the ways of the world, that is, training to be a VB slave is not an education.
In blue magic marker stands the current distribution of information. In black magic marker stands the need for information. In green magic marker we have the desire for information. In red magic marker we have the ability to use information.
Our patented VersaFlip Clipboard Animator would show socialism and capitalism were around for a fleeting moment (a few years) before bleating sheep allowed the clowns to get away with murder.
One last note:
Everything from Open Source to religion to has been called a communist plot. The fact of the matter is the Cold War or what some refer to as Communism was just that the Cold War, a vague but self-justified self-perpetuating paranoia. We got out as the Greeks would say when the Gods began to pity mankind or rather everyone was sick and tired of it. It went from Communism to Nationalism to Militarism to Totalitarianism back and forth as electrons do when we're not watching them. That's just it. We weren't watching them. All we saw was the propaganda. No real hard evidence for anything that was going on was available.
But who gives a crap? Feudalism, "Protectionism", Communism. It's all the same to me. Hierarchism is hierarchism is hierarchism regardless whether it is in fields of gold wheat, a meat packing plant, or a cubicle. Heck, early Egyptian cultures were socialist. Nothing new. Nothing to see folks. Move along.
The future is the past and the past is the future or some shit like that. It's all a matter of abuse.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
Just had to say it.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
Where 'supply and demand' are the determining factors, there the
S ocial.html
egoistic type of value is the only one that can come into reckon
ing. The 'market' relationship must be superseded by associations
regulating the exchange and production of goods by an intelligent
observation of human needs. Such associations can replace mere
supply and demand by contracts and negotiations between groups of
producers and consumers, and between different groups of
producers...
Work done in confidence of the return achievements of others
constitutes the giving of *credit* in social life. As there was
once a transition from barter to the money system, so there has
recently been a progressive transformation to a basis of credit.
Life makes it necessary today for one man to work with means
entrusted to him by another, or by a community, having confidence
in his power to achieve a result. But under the capitalistic
method the credit system involves a complete loss of the real and
satisfying human relationship of a man to the conditions of his
life and work. Credit is given when there is prospect of an
increase of capital that seems to justify it; and work is always
done subject to the view that the confidence or credit received
will have to appear justified in the capitalistic sense. And what
is the result? Human beings are subjected to the power of
dealings in capital which take place in a sphere of finance
remote from life. And the moment they become fully conscious of
this fact, they feel it to be unworthy of their humanity...
A healthy system of giving credit presupposes a social structure
which enables economic values to be estimated by their relation
to the satisfaction of men's bodily and spiritual needs. Men's
economic dealings will take their form from this. Production will
be considered from the point of view of needs, no longer by an
abstract scale of capital and wages.
Economic life in a threefold society is built up by the
cooperation of *associations* arising out of the needs of
producers and the interests of consumers. In their mutual
dealings, impulses from the spiritual sphere and sphere of rights
will play a decisive part. These associations will not be bound
to a purely capitalistic standpoint, for one association will be
in direct mutual dealings with another, and thus the one-sided
interests of one branch of production will be regulated and
balanced by those of the other. The responsibility for the giving
and taking of credit will thus devolve to the associations. This
will not impair the scope and activity of individuals with
special faculties; on the contrary, only this method will give
individual faculties full scope: the individual is responsible to
his association for achieving the best possible results. The
association is responsible to other associations for using these
individual achievements to good purpose. The individual's desire
for gain will no longer be imposing production on the life of the
community; production will be regulated by the needs of the
community...
All kinds of dealings are possible between the new associations
and old forms of business--there is no question of the old having
to be destroyed and replaced by the new. The new simply takes its
place and will have to justify itself and prove its inherent
power, while the old will dwindle away... The essential thing is
that the threefold idea will stimulate a real social intelligence
in the men and women of the community. The individual will in a
very definite sense be contributing to the achievements of the
whole community... The individual faculties of men, working in
harmony with the human relationships founded in the sphere of
rights, and with the production, circulation and consumption that
are regulated by the economic associations, will result in the
greatest possible efficiency. Increase of capital, and a proper
adjustment of work and return for work, will appear as a final
consequence...
Exerpted from:
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Steiner-