The Third Wave

by Alvin Toffler

Overview

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.

Structure

The 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.

Table of Contents

1. A Collision of Waves
   1. Super-Struggle
2. The Second Wave
   1. The Architecture of Civilization
   2. The Invisible Wedge
   3. Breaking the Code
   4. The Technicians of Power
   5. The Hidden Blueprint
   6. A Frenzy of Nations
   7. The Imperial Drive
   8. Indust-Reality
   9. CODA: The Flash Flood
3. The Third Wave
   1. The New Synthesis
   2. The Commanding Heights
   3. De-Massifying the Media
   4. The Intelligent Environment
   5. Beyond Mass Production
   6. The Electronic Cottage
   7. Families of The Future
   8. The Corporate Identity Crisis
   9. Decoding the New Rules
   10. The Rise of the Prosumer
   11. The Mental Maelstrom
   12. The Crack-Up of the Nation
   13. Gandhi with Satellites
   14. CODA: The Great Confluence
4. Conclusion
   1. The New Psycho-Sphere
   2. The Personality of the Future
   3. The Political Mausoleum
   4. Twenty-First Century Democracy

• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index