The Third Wave: The Classic Study of Tomorrow [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

I've finished this book last year. For me I need a lot of time and peaceful moment to read this book. To actually think along. Tofler give the reader trend and fact of what will happen for the next period in our lives. He began with the historic past and the situation now. and provide the reader some idea and evidence for the thing which will happen in his opinion. Some change is inevitable. Many information in this book will take you to another side of your thought. I will not comment whether I beleive him. But one thing I need to hi-light here is that I love reading this book. The book which contain a lot of information and trend which gives you other view to the future-world. the reader themselves are the people to judge whether they should believe.

I decided to reread this book after 27 years to see how accurately it represented the experiences of the past 27 years. How nice a surprise I received when I found that the broad themes were beautifully portrayed against the background of the prior agricultural and industrial economies. This long term perspective made the articulation of the future vision clearer.

Particularly impressive in retrospect is the description of a forecast for mass customized products. The customer "will become so integrated into the production process that we find it . . . difficult to tell . . . who is the producer." One might be reading about someone ordering a computer on the Dell Web site.

Almost equally impressive is the appreciation of how electronic connections will establish horizontal connections. "Even a partial shift towards the electronic office will be enough to trigger an eruption of social, psychological, and economic consequences." "It promises to restructure all human relationships and roles in the office as well."

Key insights related to:

(1) Companies needing to take on full responsibility for the consequences of their actions on society and the environment;

(2) Companies becoming much more important social institutions of change;

(3) Information moving to the center of major decisions;

(4) Government spreading its influence so that business and politics become inextricably entwined; and

(5) Institutional ethics coming to more closely reflect social ethics.

In fact, this is the first book I have located that sees the business organization as the critical institution in making ecological, moral, political, racial, sexual and social change, as well as the usual transactional ones.

The fundamental vision of humanity as seeking a more appropriate civilization that is built around individual choice in coordinating social interests is a remarkably accurate description of the evolution of the free market democracies over the last 20 years.

Realizing how hard it is to forecast anything, one comes away with a remarkable appreciation for Alvin Toffler's fundamental estimation of human potential. He took that understanding, tied technology to it, and found the answer quite well.

After enjoying this remarkable book (for the first time or) again, I encourage you to consider how these same human characteristics will take us forward in the future. How can you facilitate this felicitous development?

Make your actions and those you cooperate in serve everyone's best interests!

....by the Tofflers' Wave theory, which makes a lot of sense of very disparate historical and contemporary movements. The Tofflers have a fine intuitive grasp of the psychohistorical dynamics that inform many different realms: economic, political, military...well worth reading, though a bit rah-rah in places (I don't quite share their optimism that the Third Wave will make everything better...but then I'm a counselor who has seen a lot).