"The Third Wave" by Alvin Toffler | Futurism / Economics | 92% Book Score
How we communicate has obviously been transformed resulting in a remote world (accelerated by the constraints of Covid-19) with many consumers evolving to produce their own food, products, and energy.
Author: Alvin Toffler
Published: 1980
Book Score: 92%
Though many of the more recent reviews of The Third Wave are more focused on critiquing the absolute accuracy of the author’s technological predictions, it’s Toffler’s pragmatic mapping of the most complex, politicized, and polarized components of our global society that makes this read critically relevant for our (rather recent) hyper-acceleration into a new civilization.
Well-researched and outlined in easier-to-digest frameworks, he focuses his readers on understanding patterns of the past to make room for a more comprehensive understanding of what patterns should evolve today. He does this by breaking up civilization into three major overarching phases: (1) First Wave, born from the invention of agriculture; (2) Second Wave, kicked into clock-work gear by industrial advances and assembly lines; and (3) Third Wave, a breaking up and re-structuring of society into mixed systems defined by collaborative matrices, consumers that produce goods themselves, and creative solutions for old far-reaching problems —from renewable energy sources to processes surrounding representative democracy.
A few major themes guide the book throughout its different topics, but none were more relevant than Toffler’s assertions surrounding the demassification of pretty much everything. We see it throughout our digital communications, our creator economies, and in the strongly individualized perspectives that humans are becoming more and more vocal about. Structurally, we’ve seen how work itself has been demassified from old world Second Wave factories & offices into Third Wave micro manufacturing with 3D printing / consumer-grade CNC units in the home, craft / woodworking shops in the garage, and AI-oriented workflows for creative writing in the home office. How we communicate has obviously been transformed resulting in a remote world (accelerated by the constraints of Covid-19) with many consumers evolving to produce their own food, products, and energy.
However, where this concept of demassification is most important today lies in what hasn’t yet changed: our perspective on government and the global market. Toffler’s frameworks give us more of an engineering perspective so that we’re better able to break down the logic (or illogic) of representative democracy. He posits that the very role of voting itself serves as a reassurance ritual to enable democracy’s “batch processing” —a switching on and off during short periods of the democratic process (as opposed to a continuous flow of influence). He points out how the key driver for representative democracy is the idea of majority rule. However, it’s pretty clear with how divided humanity has become that majority rule simply can’t offer what it used to (by design). As a solution, his analysis outlines our requirements for multiple minority governments, at levels and widths appropriate for solving real problems, to enable our compounding diversity.
Since many of us are becoming Prosumers (those that produce for both use and exchange), it’s interesting to contemplate a new civilization taking on more mixed roles throughout its institutions. Imagine a government that offers its citizen solutions to better augment their own production choices surrounding sustainable energy —as opposed to today’s (failing) mass implementation of renewables.
Though I’ve read a lot of books, I think this has to be one of the most important books I’ve ever read. Toffler’s ideas are directionally correct and are thus extremely important for us to contemplate in these times of accelerated re-structuring. As a millennial, I’d never heard of the best seller or its author until I attended a tech conference a few years ago where Isaac Ben-Israel, a highly decorated military scientist, excitedly recommended the book during his keynote. His enthusiasm encouraged me to order the book right there on the spot and his recommendation did not disappoint!