The Third Wave (Toffler book)
Paperback cover
|
|
| Author | Alvin Toffler |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Social Science, History, Futurology |
| Publisher | Bantam Books (USA) |
|
Publication date
|
1980 |
| Media type | Hardcover, Paperback |
| ISBN | (hardcover), (paperback) |
| Preceded by | Future Shock |
| Followed by | Powershift |
The Third Wave is a book published in 1980 by Alvin Toffler. It is the sequel to Future Shock, published in 1970, and the second in what was originally likely meant to be a trilogy that was continued with Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century in 1990. A new addition, Revolutionary Wealth, was published, however, in 2006 and may be considered as a major expansion of The Third Wave.
Toffler's book describes the transition in developed countries from Industrial Age society, which he calls the "Second Wave", to Information Age "Third Wave" society.
In the book Toffler describes three types of societies, based on the concept of 'waves'—each wave pushes the older societies and cultures aside.
"The Second Wave Society is industrial and based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass recreation, mass entertainment, and weapons of mass destruction. You combine those things with standardization, centralization, concentration, and synchronization, and you wind up with a style of organization we call bureaucracy."
The transition from the earlier hunter-gatherer societies to the agrarian and agricultural societies is also known as the Neolithic Revolution. This coincides with the transition from the Mesolithic era to the Neolithic era (respectively, the Middle and Late Stone Age). The transition from the Paleolithic to the Mesolithic (Early to Middle Stone Age), in turn, largely coincides with the emergence of the modern Homo sapiens from earlier, related archaic human species.
...
Wikipedia