The Third Wave (Paperback)

The future world Toffler describes has the bulk of the workforce working from home, traffic in cities dramatically diminished, literacy as unimportant and creativity being all - boring old procedures, logical thinking and plain hard work being yesterday's thing. This bears no resemblence to the world of 2005 as I see it.

It's also remarkably long-winded and for its size, contains very few truly testable propositions. The first section, an analysis of industrial revolution history, is by far the best section; the rest is mostly flatulent speculation and propositions based on loose and faulty logic. To take the home-working example: yes, we all know that office space is expensive and if a firm could function without it, and achieve the same results, they'd make a mint; the harder questions, e.g. how many people's jobs could be done entirely from home, how companies control their home working employees, how home workers can be given access to all data and facilities they need ... I have both worked from home quite a lot and managed (or attempted to manage) staff who work from home. Outside the ivory tower, Alvin, it ain't easy - that's why the roads are every bit as clogged up now in rush hours as they were when you wrote the book ....

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.

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!