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Title: The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler ISBN: 0-553-24698-4 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 May, 1984 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.44 (16 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Absolutely brilliant
Comment: I was recommended this book by a collegue. This is a very influencial book in terms of 'future thinking'. I'm told that one should read Future Shock first, but I started w/ Third Wave and managed along just fine.
As was stated by another reviewer, it shouldn't be a must-read b/c it requires vast patience at times to get through tome of information he writes about the first two "waves", but it is worth-while checking out if you're interested in seeing how someone in 1980 could have accurately predicted many events in the past 20 years.
Being 22, this book did open my eyes quite a bit though, and I've bought several copies to give to friends b/c it was pretty influencial to me.
Rating: 5
Summary: Packed with Knowledge!
Comment: Perhaps the reason that Alvin Toffler's classic book feels so relevant some 25 years after its initial publication is the fact that he wrote it in a time which, in retrospect, was not so different from our own: The world was trembling before the threat of terrorism embodied, in Toffler's age, by Iranian terrorists, and radical new technologies, in the form of powerful and increasingly affordable computers, were drastically altering business and society. But probably, the book resonates simply because he was right about almost everything. For that reason, we from getAbstract recommend this book as a basic requirement for any professional.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Broad Vision of the Potential for Individualization
Comment: I decided to reread this book after 20 years to see how accurately it represented the experiences of the past 20 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!
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Title: Future Shock by Alvin Toffler ISBN: 0553277375 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 June, 1984 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Powershift : Knowledge, Wealth, and Power at the Edge of the 21st Century by Alvin Toffler ISBN: 0553292153 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 November, 1991 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: War and Anti-War:Making Sense of Today's Global Chaos by Alvin & Heidi Toffler ISBN: 0446602590 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 1995 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: The World in 2020: Power, Culture and Prosperity by Hamish McRae ISBN: 0875847382 Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: September, 1996 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Rethinking the Future: Rethinking Business, Principles, Competition, Control & Complexity, Leadership, Markets and the World by Rowan Gibson, Alvin Toffler, Heidi Toffler ISBN: 1857881087 Publisher: Nicholas Brealey Pub. Date: June, 1999 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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