Introduction. Impressions about the book
The Principe of the evolution according to AlvinToffler First
wave Second
wave Third wave
Watching the shift. Conclusion
Reading the book “The Third
Wave” by Alvin Toffler left a very deep mark in my memory.
There are only a few
people in the entire world that have the kind of mind that allows them
to look at
regular life differently, analyse it and make assumptions that regular
people
wouldn’t even notice. I think that Alvin Toffler is one of
these people.
Even though I don’t agree
with the author on some matters, I want to admit that “The
Third Wave” is the
book that was written by a man who really cares about the issues he is
exploring and who is also a great expert in his field of study. Even if
I did
not know Alvin’s biography, after reading the book I could
assume that
exploring human evolution, social issues and history has always been a
goal of
his life.
Basically, the book tells
us about the author’s seeing the evolution of the human
society. I can imagine
how fresh and outstanding seemed his idea of dividing the flow of human
history
and development into several phases that he called
“waves” twenty years ago
when his book was first published in 1980. Since that time
“The Third Wave” has
been translated into all major languages and became very popular all
over the
world.
While reading “The Third Wave”
I kept asking myself the question: “What would Alvin change
if he wrote this
book nowadays” . I don’t want to judge him for some
of his forecasts that never
came true especially because he urged the readers not to filter out
single
items, but look at the system in its entirety.
Lots of changes have
happened since the book first saw the world. World Wide Web brought a
piece of
informational freedom into almost every house, the big empire U. S. S.
R
collapsed (even Alvin did not believe in this p. 314) , finally, we met
the new
millennium. We are now much deeper in the third wave and this
Alvin’s work is
still popular and very actual. Moreover, it became a reference frame
for the
future research and is being studied in colleges like DeVRY.
Another issue I want to
point out here is the importance of the Alvin Toffler’s work.
Even if there
were still some people who do not want to look back and to explore our
history,
they would probably want to know what is going to happen to them
tomorrow or
after a certain period of time in future. At the very beginning of the
book, in
the introductory part, Alvin warns the readers about expecting any kind
of
prognosis or predictions throughout the entire book so it would not
look like a
Nostrodamus prophecy or an encyclopaedia of the future. He is aware
that he
does not have enough information and/or knowledge to make some
judgements and
purposely leaves this type of questions wide open for dispute. The
author gives
the reader or the future explorer directions, the basic outlines that
should be
filled up by them. “Sometimes it is better to ask the right
question rather
than to give the right answer to the wrong one” (6) .
II.
The Principe of the
evolution according to Alvin Toffler
The book consists of two
major parts where the author describes the first two waves that the
human
society came through and also the third wave. It is the wave that we
are living
in right now. But first, let’s take a look at the whole
theory that Alvin tries
to explain in his work.
According to the author,
the human evolution is not stepless but it consists of several stages.
So far,
the society has experienced three of them. When there is a coincidence
of
several factors, we can witness the shift between the waves. The shifts
are the
most painful moments in the human history. Most of the Civil wars
happened at
those times. “The Civil war was not fought exclusively, as it
seemed to many,
over the moral issue of slavery or such narrow economic issues as
tariffs. It
was fought over a much larger question: would the rich new continent be
ruled
by farmers or by industialazers, by the forces of the First Wave or the
Second?” (23)
Alvin Toffler
considers energy dependency to be a fundamental principle of any
civilisation.
The need for a new kind of energy is one of the causes of shifting to a
new
wave. For example, during feudalism people used horse power or even
human power
in agriculture or in construction, which was also considered to be a
source of
energy. “The precondition of any civilisation, old or new, is
energy. First
wave societies drew their energy from “living
batteries” – human and animal
muscle-power – or from sun, wind and water” (25) .
“As late as the French
Revolution, it has been estimated, Europe drew energy from an estimated
14
million horses and 24 million oxen” (25) .
The increase in human
population evoked the need for bigger fields and more buildings, which
could no
longer be achieved by using the existing tools. In order to move
forward,
people needed new tools, such as tractors, trains, cars etc.
However,
the need for a new kind of energy was
not a sufficient condition to make a shift. Many agricultural
civilisations
like China, Rome or Greece died and never moved to the next stage. The
need
should be backed by developments in science and technology which
manifests the
coincidence needed for the civilisation shift. A good example of that
was the
invention of the steam engine in the 18th
century when the
agricultural civilisation received a great push that moved it into the
industrial age later.
All other issues, such as
technical progress and even political, economical and social sides of
the
society are only the consequences and they are being changed in order
to fit
the new reality. “Industrialism was more than smokestacks and
assembly lines.
It was a rich, many-sided social system that touched every aspect of
human life
and attacked every feature of the First Wave past” (22) .
First two waves
According to the author, the
people of the First
Wave were the first civilization that ever existed on the face of the
Earth. He
does not deny that people did exist before that, but I did not find any
evidence that he considered those people to be a civilisation. In his
book he
talks of “civilised” people, those who adopted the
agricultural style of life,
and the rest of the population, people called
“primitive” , the ones who could
not switch to the progressive way of living and were left behind in
barbaric
world. “During the long millennia when First Wave
civilisation reigned supreme,
the planet’s population could have divided into two
categories – the
“primitive” and the “civilised”
. The so-called primitive peoples, living in
small bands and tribes and subsisting by gathering, hunting, or
fishing, were
those had been passed over by the agricultural revolution”
(21) .
The distinctive feature of
the agricultural
society was the decentralisation of power. People still had to live
together
mostly in small groups because it was the only way to feed themselves
and to
survive. But there was no centralised government over them that would
lead them
or try to organise people for bigger projects. Brutal physical force
was used
as a method of solving either private or social conflicts.”
In most
agricultural societies the great majority of people were peasants who
huddled
together in small, semi-isolated communities. They lived on a
subsistence diet,
growing just barely enough to keep themselves alive and their masters
happy”
(37) . The trading was developed very poorly and the market itself did
not
exist at all. Even though that there was some simple division of labour
and
several communities specialised in producing a particular kind of food
or
simple labour tools, mostly they just naturally exchanged their
products with the
other groups. Money did not exist in the agricultural era.
As I already mentioned in
the basic principles of
the Alvin Toffler’s theory, the social life of the people is
a secondary issue
and is subordinated to certain civilisation rules. The agricultural age
was a
nice example. The family structure was also preconditioned by the human
needs
for survival. Lots of relatives lived at the same place mostly because
it was
easier to cultivate land and grow their harvest this way.
The social life of the
majority of people was
quite monotonous due to the lack of travelling. An average person
living in
agricultural age probably met fewer people during his or her life than
we do in
one month or even a week.
The agricultural era was
and, probably, will be
the longest in the history of the human society. It took more than a
1500 years
for several little currents of the first wave to come together and form
the big
stream that would later grow into the Second Wave.
Causes of shifting into the second wave
Like I said before there
should have been a coincidence of several factors to come together in
order for
a civilisation to come into the next stage. After a series of
unsuccessful
attempts the human society finally made the move towards its future and
started
the big clock of history again. According to Toffler, it happened in
the 18th
century (All Second Wave societies began to draw their energy from
coal, gas,
and oil – from irreplaceable fossil fuels. This revolutionary
shift, coming
after Newcomen invented a workable steam engine in 1712, meant that for
the
first time a civilisation was eating into nature’s capital
rather than merely
living off the interest it provided” (25) .
The future need for new
kinds of energy later conduced to the development in industry and
technology.
Finally, all the sides of the human life in the new age were changed in
order
to get more efficiency out of new industrial formations such as
manufactories,
factories, plants etc. At this stage the civilisation needed entirely
new
methods of organising people, totally new economical and political
systems.
Unlike those of the Third
Wave, the economical issues of the Second Wave can be talked about with
quite a
great deal of persistency. For almost three hundred years, we have had
enough
time to witness and analyse the process that took place and, finally,
formed
the economy of the industrial society.
Now we can definitely say
that the main concept that made the industrial production different
from the
agricultural one was the division of labour. Establishment of the first
manufactories is considered to be one of the first steps of
transferring into
the industrial age. The further development of the Second Wave economy
was
preconditioned in many aspects by this principle.
According to Toffler, there
are six basic fundamentals the economy of any industrialised society
stands on:
Standardization, Specialization, Synchronization, Concentration,
Maximization
and Centralization. Not getting into details, all of them meant to
optimise the
economy of an industrial society by raising the efficiency of labour,
decreasing the production costs, speeding up the process etc.
The main point that proves
the accuracy of Toffler’s theory is that these principles
work in any kind of
industrialised society whether it is a capitalistic, socialistic or
even the
communistic one. With some margin of error, they could be found in the
economics of either USA, former USSR or China. Countries with
absolutely
different history, human nature, traditions or, what is the most
important,
different kinds of governance, still had to come through the same
economical
cycles as they entered the industrial stage.
The economic rules were not
the only ones that were developing in a similar way in different
industrialised
countries. The political and the social part of life also obeyed the
strict
laws of the Second Wave.
Even though the political
systems were rather different, they all had one attribute that
differentiated
the industrial societies from the agricultural ones. It was the strong
centralisation of power that made possible the establishment of big
corporations and, as a result, the realisation of big projects.
The author raises a very
interesting issue about the force that really makes the power decisions
and
integrates the whole system in the industrial society. That force was
the
product of the narrow specification and expansion of production. The
representatives of that force became managers of all levels. They were
the ones
who got between the owners and the workers and made the thing run when
the
owner could no longer control the technological process.” In
the larger firms
no individual, including the owner or dominant shareholder, could even
begin to
understand the whole operation. The owner’s decisions were
shaped, and
ultimately controlled, by the specialists brought in to co-ordinate the
system.
Thus a new executive elite arose whose power rested no longer on
ownership but
rather on control of the integration process” (63) .
According to Toffler, the “executive
elite” is the force that really has
control over the industrial society. Even though the real tools of the
industrial production like plants or factories belong either to
capitalists or
to the state in communistic societies, neither the owners, nor the
state has
the real power in the Industrialism.
“Executive elite” is the people who are
surfing on the edge of the Second
Wave that came with the Industrialism. Those are the people who really
rule and
have the power. They make corrections to the laws through their
representatives
in parliament or through their people in the headquarters of the
communist
party, they settle and stop wars, they are in control of destiny of the
whole
peoples in the industrial age.
Anyway, we should admit that industrial era made our lives
much more
exiting. People got an incredible number of opportunities they
couldn’t dream
of during the agricultural age. We can travel anywhere in the world
within
reasonable amount of time; telephone also made communication between
people
much easier; the achievements in medicine helped us to get rid to many
of fatal
diseases and have greatly extended the human life, mass-media made the
distribution of information much easier too. Nevertheless, the
industrial era
kind of human beings were still used only as a tool for achieving
certain aims.
It was still not considered to be a primary link in the chain of the
human
existence.
Third Wave
The chapter where the author asks more questions that provides
answers.
Alvin gives the reader the right to decide which answers will most
likely fit
the system. Anyone who can answer them will probably be able to obtain
a clear
picture of what is going to happen to us in the near future.
In this chapter I found the most places where I want to argue
with the
author. It was not surprising for me because this part of the book was
meant to
describe the future structure of the society. Like I mentioned before,
I have
been wondering, what would be different in this book if it were written
now, not
twenty years ago. On the other hand, even now we still do not have
enough
experience to decide whether Toffler's theory is right.
The need for a new kind of energy and further discovering of
irreplaceable
fossil fuels was the reason of shifting into the second wave. But as we
all
know, the reserves of fossil fuels are not endless on the Earth and
moreover,
with the current consumption rate we are going to have them for a
hundred more
years. All this plus the increasing need for more powerful energy have
created
the potential situation for transferring into the next era or
“The Third Wave”
.” In 1973, when the Yom Kippur War broke out and the
Organisation of Petroleum
Exporting Countries suddenly stepped out of the shadows. Choking off
the
world’s supply of crude oil, it sent the entire Second Wave
economy into a
shuddering downspin” (131) .
I found the author’s opinion about the nuclear
energy power surprising. He
considers both nuclear energy and the fossil fuels to be obsolete, and
he is
looking for something else in terms of new era’s energy.
“In short, though
nuclear reactors or coal gasification or liquefaction plants and other
such
technologies may seem to be advanced or futuristic and therefore
progressive,
they are, in fact, artefacts of a Second Wave past caught in its own
deadly
contradictions” (138) .
In my opinion, deriving energy from nuclear fuel cannot be
called obsolete.
On the contrary, this kind of energy is only at the very first stage of
being
used by humans. There are still lots of problems like the poor safety
of
nuclear reactors or technical impossibility to create a compact nuclear
engine
at the current stage, but we should not forget, that the efficiency of
the
steam engine was also very poor and comprised less than 5%!
Of course, new sources of energy will be discovered by human
beings in
future, but today the use of nuclear energy is very advanced. I think
that this
the Third Wave civilisation kind of energy. Moreover, I tend to think
that the
beginning of the new era should be considered in connection with the
discovery
of nuclear power rather than with the potential exhaustion of fossil
fuels.
In terms of economic and political issues, the
author’s conclusions seem to
be pretty clear and logical. New discoveries in technology contribute
to free
information flow. Such a great popularity of the Internet in many
countries all
over the world is a very nice proof for Alvin’s ideas about
semi-direct
democracy as the political structure of the new society.
There is no doubt that the existing political system will not
work after the
shift into the new era. Terrorism became an every-day word in our
language. Big
and powerful countries like former U. S. S. R and now Russia are
struggling
trying to keep their territory together. Separatism became a very
important
problem in many other countries in all parts of the world. This all
indicates
that the existing political system is already obsolete and the
governments no
longer keep the situation under control.” No government, no
political system,
no constitution, no charter or state is permanent, nor can the
decisions of the
past bind the future forever. Nor can a government designed for one
civilisation cope adequately with the next” (417) .
Alvin sees the solution in an absolutely new political system
where, unlike
in an industrialised era, the minorities have the power and form the
structure
of the society. “The first, heretical principle of Third Wave
government is
that of minority power. It holds that majority rule, the key
legitimating principle
of the Second Wave era, is increasingly obsolete. It is not majorities
but
minorities that count” 419.
Implementing the minority power principle into our life is
supposed to
change the whole political system and end up as a new kind of a
democratic
society – semi-direct democracy.
Watching the Shift. Conclusion
If we look back at our history, we can easily notice that the
time during
the transition into the Second Wave was the most violent and brutal. We
are now
observing another transition, now into the Post-industrial
civilisation.
It took us less than three
hundred years to jump from Second Wave into post-industrial society
which much
faster than agricultural civilisation could make it into Industrialism.
This
could mean not only acceleration in social development or the technical
progress; the “wave glitch” we are living in may
turn out to be a bigger drama
than it used to be three hundred years ago.
One of the questions that
Alvin did not raise in his book is that the people themselves could be
in
control of civilizational changes. All the achievements in technical,
political
and technical sciences should not only be used as a self-developing
tool, but
people can and should use that knowledge in order to control the
development of
their history. We do not want to think that the civilisation we are
entering
now is going to be the last one on the face of the Earth. Our children
and the
children of our children have the same right to leave and enjoy their
lives as
we do now. We are the ones who have to make sure that the human history
will
not stop today and the shift into another era will be completed.
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