Three Waves of Alvin Toffler. The Basic Points
I. Introduction. Impressions about the book.
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,
analyze 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 millenium. 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 encyclopedia 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 civilization. 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 civilization, 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 civilizations 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 civilization shift. A good example of that was the invention
of the steam engine in the 18th century when the agricultural civilization
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).
III. First two waves.
1. First wave.
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 civilization. In his book he talks of
“civilized” 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 civilization
reigned supreme, the planet’s population could have divided into two
categories – the “primitive” and the “civilized”. 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
decentralization 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 centralized government over them that would lead them or
try to organize 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 labor and several communities specialized in producing a
particular kind of food or simple labor 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 civilization 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 wold later grow into the Second Wave.
2. 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 civilization 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
civilization was eating into nature’s capital rather than merely living off
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