The Third Wave

by Alvin Toffler

Paperback

Published June 1, 1984

About the author

Alvin Eugene Toffler was an American writer, futurist, and businessman known for his works discussing modern technologies, including the digital revolution and the communication revolution, with emphasis on their effects on cultures worldwide. He is regarded as one of the world's outstanding futurists.
Toffler was an associate editor of Fortune magazine. In his early works he focused on technology and its impact, which he termed "information overload". In 1970, his first major book about the future, Future Shock, became a worldwide best-seller and has sold over 6 million copies.
He and his wife Heidi Toffler (1929–2019), who collaborated with him for most of his writings, moved on to examining the reaction to changes in society with another best-selling book, The Third Wave, in 1980. In it, he foresaw such technological advances as cloning, personal computers, the Internet, cable television and mobile communication. His later focus, via their other best-seller, Powershift, (1990), was on the increasing power of 21st-century military hardware and the proliferation of new technologies.
He founded Toffler Associates, a management consulting company, and was a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, visiting professor at Cornell University, faculty member of the New School for Social Research, a White House correspondent, and a business consultant. Toffler's ideas and writings were a significant influence on the thinking of business and government leaders worldwide, including China's Zhao Ziyang, and AOL founder Steve Case.

Reviews

[Taha Tariq]

I like to think that I try to approach all books with a positive and constructive attitude. This book has truly broke me in that regard. It is a great example of how not to write or analyze history.

Alvin Toffler’s futurist perspective from the 1980s tries to mask what is a flattening analysis of the history in this simplistic and repetitive nightmare of a book. It seems that he wants to drill the concept of “Third Wave” in our head by sheer volume of repetition.

To begin, the analogy of the waves is an admittedly clever one. It caught my eye as I grabbed this book during a book sale in a local community centre. However, what clearly happened was that instead of utilizing a metaphor as part of a larger book, Toffler centered it and tried to connect everything he could to it. This plainly flattens all of history and brushes aside exploitation/racism/class struggle/sexism/homophobia/etc.

Toffler regardless of intention leans into a neoliberal framing of politics and economics. He diverts away from the primary cause of inequality in the world today and chooses to say that we are simply disconnected as producers and consumers. There is no materialist analysis or analysis of how power concentrates in capitalist countries and the socioeconomic chokehold that capital owners impart on the world. He takes every opportunity to dismiss Marxist/Communist ideology by simply playing to the centre. This is dangerous and ignorant as it creates the false notion that the centre lies in the middle between capitalism and socialism. Ignoring power/ownership/exploitation/material conditions can make it easy for one to believe that everything that is wrong is due to a disconnect between the production and consumption. That it is simply a market issue. Even within his writing is a pointedly right leaning stance towards capitalism. Again the centre is not the centre.

Building on this he describes the “third wave” as one of de-massification from the industrial “second wave”. However, with the benefit of hindsight, we now have larger monopolies than we ever could have imagined. Power is more concentrated. This is the neoliberal lie. This false narrative that somehow if we play to markets, we can create more equitable conditions for all. No doubt capitalism and the modern age has improved life for many, but it has also created systems of control and power to manipulate whole populations in service of the few. We are in the age of seeing the negative consequences of neoliberal policies. We have crippled the regulatory systems in the pursuit of this “futurist” vision.

It is interesting how Toffler correctly predicts work from home, changing family structures, the rise of part time work, corporate structure changes, and many more things. He simply ignores the role of power and ownership. This changes the analysis completely as he shifts the blame from capitalism to industrialism. Industrialism becomes the villain. It is the thing that needs to be discarded, not capitalism. If we just decentralize and deregulate then everything would be better. Instead we live in Tofflers world of centralized power in the hands of few billionaires and corporations that give us the illusion of choice and control, while ultimately exploiting the majority of the world’s population.

Another thing I despise about this book is the structure and writing. It is a repetitive mess of words that could be one fifth the length and still communicate the point. But it indulges too heavily in side tracks and meaningless asides that serve no purpose. I think this may be a stretch on my part, but I think that the book is intentionally written that way as to hide its flaws. Throw in enough buzzwords and historical context, and you may seem like you know what you are talking about.

In conclusion, do not read this book. It is a waste of time and honestly it shows the dominant thinking that has led to the world of today. This undying love of markets and capitalism. The diversion to industrialism as the root cause of all evil. It’s a prime example of how we can come up with a bad analogy, obfuscate the true sources of power and control. Blanket in this global-techno futuristic view that is a bit too shiny for its own good. Upon further examination it’s full of cracks and analysis so poor, I consider it intentional obtuse.

[Bernie4444 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Decades since its writing we see he was right on the mark.

Heidi Toffler, Unsung Force Behind Futurist Books, Dies at 89. With this information, I went back to my shelf of Alvin Toffler's books and started re-reading.

I only have room for 9,000 books so I have to be very selective of what to keep and Toffler made the keep list under social change.

I know “Future Shock” (1970) by heart, as it was part of a class I was taking at the time. His other books are sort of a blur as to where one stopped and the other started. So, it is re-read time.

It is amazing to see how many people including political leaders are still living in the past even today as they were covered in the late ’70s in “The Third Wave” (1980.)

A quote from the introduction “Author and reader never see quite the same things as in a book. I view “the third wave” as radically different from “Future Shock” in both form and focus. To begin with, it covers a much wider sweep of time passed as well as the future. It is more perceptive. Its architecture is different. (The prospective reader will find that its structure mirrors a central metaphor - the clash of waves.)

Although the book is worth reading from front cover to back cover, my favorite section of focus is “Tools of Tomorrow” underneath “The Commanding Heights.” This shows how classic industries of the Second Wave such as steel, coal, etc. are leaving first-world countries like the US. If we ever see those industries returning, they will be part of a higher technical world and not as labor-intensive as they used to be. As in this book written in 1980, we still see archaic governments trying to recapture the second wave.

This book not only points out the future which is the past but also helps one cope with the present which in this book was the future.

So, you will want to go back to read this book, and it too will probably become part of you to keep the library.