Alvin Toffler

Alvin Toffler is an American writer and futurist, known for his works discussing the digital revolution, communications revolution, and corporate revolution. His early work focused on technology and its impact. Then he moved to examing the reaction of and changes in society. His later focuse has been on the increasing power of 21st Century military hardware, weapons and technology proliferation, and capitalism.

A few of his well-known works are

• Future Shock(1970) ISBN 0553277375
• The Third Wave[?] (1980)ISBN 0553246984
• The Eco-Spasm Report[?]
• Powershift[?] (1990) ISBN 0553292153
• War and Anti-War[?]

Toffler explains, "Society needs people who take care of the elderly and who know how to be compassionate and honest. Society needs people who work in hospitals. Society needs all kinds of skill that are not just cognitive; they're emotional, they're affectional. You can't run the society on data and computers alone."

Toffler continues, "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."

Toffler would also add that we are moving away from a Second Wave Society into what he would call a Third Wave Society.

See also:

• Futurism (philosophy)
• Technological singularity
• Norman Swan[?]
• Heidi Toffler[?]
• Newt Gingrich
• The Shockwave Rider
• The National Committee For U.S.-China Relations[?]
• The U.S. Committee For Unifem[?]
• The United Nations Fund For Women[?] (UNIFEM)
• The Rand Corporation
• The Progress And Freedom Foundation[?]
• The Institute For Policy Studies[?]
• The United Nations
• The World Trade Organization
• The Pentagon