THE THIRD WAVE

By Alvin Toffler

The Second Wave (Industrialization) has several principles that made its unique
design:
1. STANDARDIZATION: Identical products,
Govt. Standards
2. SPECIALIZATION: of Jobs.
3. SYNCHRONIZATION: Punctuality, Work
by clock rather than daytime or seasons time.
4. CONCENTRATION: Urban centres, People
work in factories, Giant Corporations.
5. MAXIMIZATION: Big means efficient,
Growth important even if shortsighted.
6. CENTRALIZATION: Centralizing of Power,
Central Banking, Centralized Government.

Another 2nd Wave Institution: The Nation State.

Economic Integration impossible without political integration. 2nd Wave technology

could only be amortized if they produced goods for larger than local markets. 2nd
Wave multiplied the number of people with a stake in the larger world, so bit by bit,
psychological horizons expanded. Localism faded, National Consciousness stirred.
What we call the Modern Nation is a 2nd Wave Phenomenon: (a) a single integrated
political authority superimposed on or fused with (b) a single integrated economy.

Progress Principle

Second Wave society and Expansionism is based on 3 beliefs

1. Nature is to be exploited.
2. Humans are pinnacle of long process of evolution.
3. History flows irreversibly towards the progress of a better life for humanity.
Time was standardized and seen in a linear fashion. Space became organized: straight
lines and squares; Buildings and cities.
Segmenting to smallest single units: the atom. We believed we could accomplish or
understand anything if we could find the critical variables. Neither technology nor
ideas or values by themselves are the driving forces of history. Split between
Production and Consumption created marketplaces, stock exchanges, world markets,
etc.
2nd Wave improved standards of living and length of life. However, the 2nd Wave's
energies are spent. New realities are unfolding:
1. We have reached a turning point in our war against nature.
2. We can no longer rely on non renewable energy.
3. Our value system is in crisis.

The second wave marketized the entire world. It was achieved in 3 ways:
 1. Getting new populations to enter the marketplace by whatever means
necessary to produce more, prosume less. They became dependent and tied to
it.
2. Commoditization of life-goods and services were designed FOR the market.
3. The amount of steps from producer to consumer increased - wholesalers,
retailer...

Marketization is disappearing

It can no longer grow. The 1st method is essentially complete. The 2nd could
grow, but the rise of prosumers and de-marketization is ending that. 3rd: steps are
saturated with new technology going more directly form producer to consumer.

2nd wave belief that integration into the market was progressive while self-
sufficiency was backwards. It promoted materialism and money motivation. A
Society bound together by contracts - "marriage contract", " social contract", etc. Thus
it shaped the thoughts and values and actions of billions worldwide. One could argue
this market building and elaborate sociological and psychological structure for
exchange and human relationships was the most impressive achievement of 2nd wave
civilization.
Now the world is essentially completely marketized, it will no longer be the central
project of civilization. The 3rd wave will produce history's 1st "Trans-market"
civilization. A civilization dependent of the market but no longer consumer by need to
build, extend, elaborate and integrate structure - it is already done. We can move to
new agendas for mankind. New religions, fantastic scientific achievements, new
social and political institutions - who knows what else. A complete transformation.

The Third Wave: The new synthesis

Most people are culturally more skilled as analysts than synthesists. Four clusters
of related industries are poised for major growth and are likely to become the
backbone industries of the 3rd wave era, bringing with them major shifts of economic
power and social and political alignments:
1. Electronics and computers,
2. Space industry: satellites etc.
3. The Sea: Aquaculture, mining,
4. Biological Industries.

1. Computers will change our whole world, social structure, even family life. 
(Industries that lurk just beyond the present.)
 3rd wave industries require less and less
(RBFing)
  Copper wires gone because of fibre optics,
which are thousands of times more efficient
and durable.
 Shift in electronics requires less and less
equipment.
2) Satellites can outmaneuver other things: Cellular phones, etc.
3) Aqua-aquaculture, undersea mining, aqua villages with energy produced on the
spot.
4) Gene industry
We could clone ourselves, make a super race.
We are truly first hand gods. Holds good and bad potentials. New plants, future of
evolution itself.
These potentially hazardous technologies (biological version of 3 mile island could
make AIDS seem like a joke).
Bringing these 4 technologies together will release a flood of innovation unlike any
seen before in human history.
We can't be hands off towards these. Full speed ahead, dam the torpedoes could be
devastating. Can't work with shortsightedness and selfish criterias the 2nd wave was
based on. Basic questions asked before of technology was do they contribute to
economic gain or military clout. Now must have stiffer tests - ecological and social as
well as economic and strategic. Not surprisingly there is public resistance to new
technologies because of fear.
Techno-rebels (3rd Wavers) putting together new ways to look at technology.

Positive policy for managing transition to a 3rd wave future:

Realization that:

1. Eco-sphere is fragile, all new technologies must be screened to avoid harming

it more.
2. Require democratization of technological decision making.

Believe technology need not be big, costly or complex in order to be "sophisticated".

2nd wave technology seems efficient because pollution costs, looking after
employment etc. have been passed on to public.
Favour "appropriate technologies" intended to provide humane jobs, avoid pollution,
spare the environment and to produce for personal or local use rather than for national
and global marketing alone.
Wide recycling, cheap construction, simple transport experiments.
Some combine latest materials and combine them with old technologies.
Techno-rebels provide basis for humanizing the technological thrust.
Spies are popular in TV, movies because their business is information.
We all have a mind model of reality. Our images of information create our world.
As our environment changes, so does the sea of info. Mass media imagery helped
produce standardization of behaviour required by industrial production system.
 3rd wave does more than accelerate information flow, it transforms the deep
structure of information on which our daily actions depend.
De-massified Mass media; gone is LIFE, Saturday Evening Post, now are mini-
magazine and E-zines. Special interest type. Narrowcasting of radio stations, TV,
Internet.
VCRs and Videocameras consumers become own producer. New infosphere is
emerging will change our personal one and it de-massified our minds as well.
Blip culture - we are more at ease with it - instead of receiving our mental model of
reality, we are forced to invent it and re-invent it.
Places tremendous burden on us but leads to greater individuality, de-massification
of personality as well as culture. Illiterate can find voice speech readers. Computers
and internet - true narrowcasting.
Computers enhance our mind power as 2nd wave enhanced our muscle power.
Will help all of us to think more deeply about ourselves and the world.
Because we can only deal with 2 or 3 factors, we evaluate huge problems on the
basis of this, General Systems Theory, or Big Picture is possible with computers and
networking.
Making the World work - all enviro people can contribute.
Systematic, conscious thinking about a great many variables is damnably difficult.
Computers can help synthesize all this and deepen culture's views of causality and
synthesize meaningful wholes.
The intelligent environment may eventually begin to change not merely the way
we analyze problems and integrate information, but even the chemistry of our brains -
brain is a muscle which needs exercise. Kids brought up in "smart" environment
which is complex and stimulating may develop at different sense of skills; Less parent
dependence, sense of mastery, or competence. They can afford to be inquisitive,
exploratory, imaginative, and to adopt a problem-solving approach to life.
SOCIAL MEMORY
All memories are either private or social. Social memory lives with us and is the
secret to our species evolutionary success. Anything that significantly alters the way
we construct, store or use it touches on the very well-springs of destiny.
Twice before, humankind has revolutionized its social memory. Today, in
constructing a new info-sphere we are on the brink of another such transformation.
Mass literacy was the first - file cabinets, museums, found new ways to store info.
Today we are jumping to whole new style of social memory. First way in mind
only was dynamic, active, it was literally alive.
When it became second it became objectivized, static, frozen.
The Third Wave social memory is both extensive and active. This combination will
prove to be propulsive. Activating this newly expanded memory will unleash fresh
cultural energies. It makes possible a whole flood of new ideas, theories, ideologies
and accelerates historic change and fuels the thrust towards 3rd wave social diversity.
Beyond mass production: Only 5% of manufacturing is of astronomical quantities.
Most highly skilled work on one-off and short-run. At Hewlett Packard runs of 50 or
100 units is common. 78% of Pentagon goods budgets was runs of under 100.
Eventually we will have true custom making. Laser cutters - custom tailoring on high
tech basis. Death of Secretary: Paperless offices?
Electronic Cottage
Big % can and will work at home. This may help keep families together. Leads to
community awareness and belonging. Energy requirements become less centralized,
more likely to renewable. Also less commuting gas.
 Economic impact - some industries benefit, some won't.
Psychological impact: face to face emotional relationships in neighbourhood, and
vicarious outside.
Families of Future:
In 1930s people felt guilty about being laid off, even though it was not their fault.
Now in the 1980s it is the same with marriage, not purely personal. Nuclear family
(Husband, wife, and kids) may no longer be an ideal model for society. Reasons
include: decentralizing, de-massified people, women's freedom, young have money,
less dependence on others for money. Now alot more singles, living togethers,
childless by choice, extended families.
Corporate Identity Crisis:
2nd wave sought global marketplace. Now they can't understand what is going on.
We can have inflation and unemployment at same time. Speedup of corporate
metabolism: shorter product life-cycles, more leasing and renting, more frequent
buying and selling, more ephemeral consumption patterns, more fads, more training
required for workers, more negotiations and legal work, etc, all exacerbated by
inflation.
De-massified markets - no longer mass market but ever multiplying, ever changing
sets of customization. Jobs become less interchangeable, so do people - emphasize
unique characteristics. Ethnic, sex, etc and reassert identity and long-denied rights to
jobs.
Forces that make mass society thrown into reverse. Nationalism in high tech
context becomes regionalism instead. Melting pot pressures replaced by new
ethnicity. Media de-massifies further. All these developments parallel emerging
diversity of energy which forms and advances beyond mass production. All these
interrelated changes create a totally new framework in which we will all function.
Mass society is gone.
People are distrustful of big business. People attack the artificial divorce of
economics from politics, morality, and other dimensions of life. A new type of
corporation is demanded - responsible for making profit and contributing to solutions
of ecological, moral, political, racial, sexual and social problems.
Social pollution: Unemployment, community
disruption, etc.
Newfound pressures on the corporation:
 Environmental,
 Societal,
 Informational - access to information
 Moral.
These are now all part of "Production", marketing etc. Multiple bottom lines all
interconnected and accountable to and for- having to create new systems of judging
and goals. Social scientists, Societal accounting.
New Societal Rules.
New rhythms and a shift in time perception. Flexible work hours, part-time and
night-time work. Mealtime are changing-grazing. VCR program changing. Interac
bank machines all shifting a de-massification of time. Spreads out energy costs.
Computer time - instant communications.
Attack on Standardization-Customization- all this leads to a profusion of lifestyle
and more highly individualized personalities. This will create its own problems and
confusions.
 Attempts to achieve uniformity-like standardization of education are essentially
rear-guard actions of a spent civilization.
De-centralization - neighbourhooding. Decentralized banking and economic
managements.
Reduced centralized control of government and also business from head office.
New leadership forms; matrix organization. Workers have many tasks.
All this creates whole new society, making yesterday's rules obsolete. Appropriate
scale technology - meshing of both big and small is ideal. One of 2nd wave's rules
was "Specialize to succeed" now is changing- emerging generalists.
3rd wave organizations - small components linked together in temporary
configurations. Adaptability.
Health self-care. home pregnancy tests, stethoscopes etc. create and encourage a
new perception of the body and oneself.
2 types of economy:
Sector A: self work, unpaid.
Sector B: Production of goods and services.
In 1st wave A was more important, in 2nd Wave B was more important, in 3rd
wave A and B are equally important.
The rise of the "prosumers" who consume what they produce. Shift from B to A.
Self-help, self-health, self-diagnosis, direct dialing, self-serve gas, self-banking,
assemble at home, fix it yourself, homebuilding TV shows.
Customer input in design, one-person business. Literacy helps the workers.
Rise of Prosumer
The reintegration of the consumer into production will force us to look far more
closely at interrelations. Prosumer will change role of market and future of
civilization. They are changing the whole sociosphere. Their concern for
environmentalism and naturalism is creating the need for enviro-products.
Colliding visions rock our mental universe. Everyday brings some new fads, attack
on established science, belief in something. Collisions of emerging 3rd wave anything
culture with entrenched ideas and assumptions.
This will all change the role of the market, or exchange network, in our lives.
Lifestyles with half self-work and half other work is common. It is possible to create
lifestyles that are more varied, less monotonous and less market-intensive. The
internet explosion is an example of this.
Third Wave Economics
People are working hard, passionately, but maybe not at work. They are committed
to a project or homework. Economics will have to take that into account. They will
have to rethink things. People are choosing whether it is more productive (and
fulfilling) for them to do it themselves rather than work to get money to pay someone
else to do it. What is unemployment now? The problems of labour supply - both gluts
and shortages may not be able to be solved within the Second Wave framework.
Status quo preventative measures will try to stem the tide of people self-doing, yet it
may be unstoppable.
Never before have so many people, worldwide, been so overwhelmed. Attacks of
established science, searching for cults. Much of this confusion is because of cultural
war between Third wave society and the entrenched ideas of the industrial society.
View of nature has switched: eco-awareness. New understanding of evolution:
simpler life forms may have been descended from more complex; Evolution may have
occurred in leaps and bounds. With DNA and our knowledge we can become
designers of evolution.
 "Progress" is being redefined to not just be technology or standard of living - we
are looking at the past, eastern religions, etc. We are redefining what that is.
We are shifting our ideas of time, space, matter and
causality.
Notions of time which may not be a straight line. Time is not absolute, it is
relative. While these theoretical notions may seem impractical, it was Einstein's
E=mc2 that led to the smashing of the atom.
Space: with technology less need for urban areas. Change is normal, constant.
People are interested in local community and neighbourhood, at the same time in
the global view "Think globally, act locally." Viewing earth from space and new map
designs such as Buckminster Fuller's are literally creating a new way of looking at the
world.
Second Wave culture emphasized study of things in isolation from one another.
Third Wave culture emphasizes contexts, relationships and wholeness (General
Systems Theory). A revolt against overspecialization towards interdisciplinary
thinking combined with looking at the whole and individual parts.
Second wave gave us comfortable assurance that we knew what caused things to
happen. Every phenomenon occupied a unique, determined location in time and
space. Same conditions always produced same results. Chaos theory and reevaluating
ideas of order, chance, necessity and causality.
Feedback studies-negative feedback which help maintain stability-like thermostat
which swing back and forward equilibrium. Studies of positive feedback which
amplify and swing onto itself explain vicious cycles and swings and trends i.e. rich
getting richer, and see how this affects all systems - body, political, social etc.
understanding of complexity; things not so predictable.
Equilibrium can be smashed and create a wholly new structure at a higher level. It
may be more differentiated order out of chaos. Change dominates change. Termites
random activities can turn into highly elaborate non-random structures. Chaos theory
re-evaluates old causality; we see world not as a mechanical clock, but as an open
universe. All these concepts are moving us forward to the new culture of the third
wave.
This new culture is oriented to change and growing diversity. It attempts to
integrate new view of nature, of evolution and progress; new, richer concepts of time
and space, fusion of reductionism and wholism with a new causality.
The decay of 2nd wave thought system leaves millions grasping for things to hold
onto - mysticism, anything. They attempt to import and modernize old ideas not
appropriate nowadays, rather than constructing new culture. However, a positive new
culture is emerging.
Nation states are pressured from Above and Below.
From Below: Throughout highly technologically advanced countries, national
attitudes are being tested and sectional pressure are mounting - Native self-
government, Quebec's, etc potentially explosive internal stresses. Need for a 3rd wave
energy base. These stresses can gain support because national governments are unable
to respond flexibly to rapidly de-massified society. As conditions diversify, national
decision-making is very difficult. Local and individual needs are forgotten or ignored.
From Above: global communications, global economy, worldwide environmental
repercussions.
Multinational (or Transnational) corporations set their own agendas, have huge
money resources, loyal to themselves, not national, play countries against each other,
have their own quasi-diplomats and intelligence gathering agencies. Their power to
deploy technology and move relatively quickly often outflank and outrun national
governments.
Non-governmental Transnational Associations; Red cross, Greenpeace, UN,
OPEC, Internet
Global Economy:
Growth of regional economies the scale of national economies. New global
economy dominated by transnationals and served by financial industry no nation can
regulate. Their ideologies are that nationalism is obsolete. An emerging planetary
consciousness shared by environmentalists and money people. Next decades will be a
struggle of newly created global institutions capable of fairly representing prenational
as well as postnational peoples of the world.
A matrix type (Geodesic network) system is emerging that mesh different kinds of
organizations with common interests. Rapid emergence of Third wave not only
foreshadows end of 2nd wave imperium, it explodes traditional notions of ending
poverty. Common method was to copy industrialized nations now which always met
with failure. Switching to 1st wave methods of Green Revolution, intermediate
technology. Alot to be said for this in that it avoids urbanization, eco-aware, local
resourced, improves conditions of poor - yet it is only Band-Aid stuff - keeps poor
down.
Third Wave civilization has many features which resemble 1st wave; decentralized
production, appropriate scale, renewable energy, de-urbanization, work in home, high
levels of prosumption, to name a few. We will be combining elements of the past with
the future to make a new present.
Energy will be decentralized and renewable.
Less fertilizers will be required-better crops, controlled release pesticides.
We should be encouraging and rewarding ($) prosumption.
Encouraging people to build old homes.
New educational models - literacy may not be relevant anymore. (Operacy??)
1st Wave world may resist 2nd wave technology because it goes against their
cultures, but 3rd wave technology is so similar it may be more acceptable transition.
Their backwardness in 2nd wave terms may be advantageous in 3rd wave.
Today, behind the confusion of change, there is a growing coherence of pattern:
the future is taking place. If we look back at this newcoming civilization we will find
profound and parallel changes at many levels simultaneously. Changes are in:
technosphere, biosphere, population sociosphere, infosphere, and relationships with
outside world and a shifting superideology (powerful cultural assumptions that
structure its view of reality and justify its operations) Often, we see only social decay
around us, yet that is the compost bed of the new civilization.
The emerging 3rd wave civilization is coherent and workable in ecological,
economic and democrating terms. The transition will be marked by extreme social
disruption, wild economic swings, sectional clashes, secessionist attempts,
technological disasters, political turbulence, violence, and threats of war. In climate of
disintegrating institutions and values, authorities , demagogues and movements may
achieve their goals.
The third wave civilization will draw on an amazing variety of energy source. A
shift to a society based on self-sustainable, renewable energy. A Diversified
technological base which will be more small scale, simple to operate systems.
The most basic raw material - that can never be exhausted - is information.
Restructuring education, redefining scientific research, and reorganization of
communication media will be priorities. Work, even factory work, will be more
humane, smaller scale. Workers will be capable of discretion and resourcefulness
rather than rote response. Education will have to work on these skills. Society built
around a network rather than a hierarchy of standard bureaucracy, which will be gone.
Hierarchies will be flatter and more transient.
It will not be a Utopia, but a Practopia. This is not a static perfection of an
imagined ideal. It is a positive, realistically attainable future. It makes allowance for
individual differences, embraces racial, regional, religious and subcultural variety.
Built in considerable measure around the home. It will be pulsing with innovation, yet
provide enclaves of relative stability for those who need it. Potentially democratic and
humane, in better balance with the biosphere, and no longer dependent of exploitive
subsidies.
Why is the 2nd wave system suddenly unworkable? Alot of reasons; Running out
of oil, Eco-awareness, technological advances, sexual revolution, new attitudes to
work, raw materials decline. Plus so many more reasons.
The decisions we make today, as individuals, as countries, as societies, will affect
the outcome of the third wave potentials. Currently, the acceleration and
demassification strains individuals and institutions alike, and intensifies the super-
struggle. One result is future shock, we are left with only one option; Be willing to
reshape ourselves and our institutions to deal with new realities. We must take a
totally fresh and imaginative look at two important issues: the future of personality,
and politics of the future.
THE FUTURE:
Crime is rising. Drug use is rampant. People are confused, nervous breakdowns are
commonplace. Cults and other religions are filling this void. They are all indications
of a dying Second Wave.
To create a fulfilling emotional life and a sane psychosphere for the emerging
civilization of tomorrow, we must recognize three basic individual requirements:
 needs for community,
 structure,
 and meaning.
Understanding how the second wave's collapse undermines them suggests how we
might redesign our environment successfully. Social isolation and loneliness is a real
truth in current society. A SENSE OF COMMUNITY IS ESSENTIAL. It offsets
loneliness and gives people a sense of belonging. Community demands more than
emotionally satisfying bonds between individual. It also requires strong ties of loyalty
between individuals and their organizations. People hunger for institutions worthy of
their respect, affection and loyalty. A warm, participatory feeling emerges during
crisis, stress, disaster, or mass uprising.
The rising level of de-massified, social diversity accentuates differences rather than
similarities. We make it possible for each of us to more nearly individualize
themselves. This makes it more difficult to find compatible mates or friends.
Once loneliness and the importance of community are recognized, we can do
something about it. We can begin at the FAMILY level first. We can include all
generations, by including the elderly, and encourage the family to take a larger role in
children's education. At the same time, schools could promote a sense of belonging,
encouraging teamwork and cooperation to promote the ideas of being responsible for
others. Corporation could help building human ties afresh. Helping build morale and a
sense of belonging and breaking up into small, self-managed units which could
unleash enormous new productive energies and build community at the same time.
(SATURN). Group cooperatives are possible within the current frameworks.
Retirements should be re-examined; partial retirements could work, or part-pay
systems could help. Older people in the community could be encouraged. A feeling of
self-worth would be essential.
We need new ways to bring lonely hearts, or even friends, together. We should
take the embarrassment away from them.
We should look at the tele-commuting and working on integrating people within
this reality. Stronger homes, neighbourhood restaurants. Even virtual community
relationships are better than the one-way truth of television.
Individuals need life structure. A life lacking in comprehensible structure is an
aimless wreck. The absence of structure breeds breakdown. Structure provides the
relatively fixed points of reference we need. Work, by making clear demands of
people's time and energy, provide and element of structure around which the rest of
their lives can be organized. By taking away a conventional structure, many people
find a loss of meaning in their lives. The feeling that our lives "count" comes from
healthy relationships with the surrounding society and seeing ourselves as part of a
larger, even cosmic, scheme of things. Surveying the world around them, most people
see only chaos and suffer a sense of personal powerlessness and pointlessness.
This can lead to the rise of cults. Cults offer a sense of community, structure and
meaning. They offer friendship, impose tight behavioral constraints, and a single-
minded version of reality. It provides a synthesis in offering an alternative framework
to the fragmented culture around us. By giving the members a sense that their reality
is meaningful, they feel compelled to carry that meaning to outsiders, which offers
purpose and coherence in a seemingly incoherent world. So the Third Wave society
must offer STRUCTURE AND MEANING as well. There are simple ways to get this
started. Why not have a cadre of paraprofessional "life organizers" helping us with
budgeting, finding work, following a diet, getting partners and so on. Need to study
the structure of modern societies; schools, businesses, and how they are changing
under The Third Wave. Worth examining meaning and structure providing
institutions - even cults.
A sensible society should provide a spectrum of institutions ranging from free-
form to highly structured. Certain groupings such as vegetarians and others might be
encouraged to form communities in which moderate to high structure is imposed on
those who wish to live that way. Perhaps a variety of civilian service corps - along the
lines of workfare? In addition to providing useful services and a degree of life-
structure, they could bring much needed meaning into member's lives - not some
mystical of political theology, but the simple ideal of service to community.
We need to integrate personal meaning with a larger, more encompassing world
view. They must understand their own mall contribution and also how they fit into the
larger scheme of things.
Meaning, Structure, and Community are interrelated preconditions for a livable
future. In working towards these ends; it will help to understand that the present
agony of social isolation, the impersonality, structurelessness, and sense of
meaninglessness from which so many people suffer are symptoms of the breakdown
of the past rather than intimations of the future.
As we change society through our daily decisions and actions, the Third Wave
civilization will in turn shape us. A new psycho-sphere is emerging that will
fundamentally alter our character: The Personality of the Future.
As we change the deep structure of society, we also modify people. In any culture,
there are widely shared traits that make up the social character. In turn, social
character shapes people so that "their behavior is not a matter of conscious decision as
to whether or not to follow the social pattern, but one of wanting to act as they have to
act and at the same time finding gratification in acting according to the requirements
of the culture." (Erich Fromm) We can look at the traits most likely to be valued in
the civilization of tomorrow to discover that personality.
These character traits springs from the tensions between the inner drives of many
individuals and outer pressures of society. Once formed, these character traits play an
influential role in the economic and social development of the society.
The second wave was accompanied by the spread of the protestant ethic with its
emphasis on thrift, toil, and deferral of gratification which channeled enormous
energies into the tasks of economic development. It brought changes in objectivity -
subjectivity, individualism, attitudes towards authority, ability to think abstractly, to
empathize and to imagine. Peasants had to be educated, informed and moulded.
Communications, politics, even imagination was democratized. The third wave should
have similar profound effects on the personality.
YOUTH:
Children of tomorrow will grow up in a far less child-oriented society.
Adolescence won't be as prolonged or painful a process as they will be required to fit
in and understand at an earlier age. Education will also change - more outside
learning, it will become interspersed and interwoven with work and more spread out
over a lifetime. Youth will be less responsive to peers, more responsible earlier, less
consumption-oriented and less hedonistically self-involved.
WORK:
Work will be less repetitive and less fragmented with each person doing a
somewhat larger, rather than smaller, task. Workers will face frequently changing
tasks. Therefore, workers will be required to accept responsibility, understand how
their work dovetails with others, can handle ever larger tasks, adapt swiftly to
changed circumstances, and who are sensitively tuned to the people around them.
They will want a sense of fulfillment in work and be able to tailor their benefits
packages. They will balance work more with the rest of their lives. They will have
multiple objective in work. There will be various matrix style authority at work.
Workers will question authority, exercise discretion, be morally responsive and
responsible. Prosumption will promote self-reliance, adaptability and ability.
Versatility and balance will be key. Firsthand contact with things and people.
Handwork will be respectable again. Objective subjectivity and Subjective objectivity
will be pronounced.
The de-massification of the media will have people aware of their self-image,
people will demand to be treated as individuals. We will become producers of our
own self-imagery - to project our image to the world; the technology of
consciousness.
Individuals will vary more vividly tomorrow. They will crave balance in their live;
between work and play, between production and prosumption, between headwork and
handwork, between the abstract and concrete, between objectivity and subjectivity. To
match this shift in personality, politics must shift as well.
It is impossible to be simultaneously blasted by revolution in energy, technology,
family life, sexual role, and communication without also facing - sooner or later - a
potentially explosive political revolution. All of our traditional methods are obsolete
and about to be transformed. A third wave civilization cannot operate with a Second
Wave political structure. Around the world there is a paralysis of political machinery
and decision-making. It is essentially a vacuum. It confuses the businesses, the people
and the politicians themselves. No longer can outcomes of actions be predicted. This
power has not passed to the ordinary people, however. People become cynical and
feel helpless.
The dangers of this have led to racism and terrorism, and frustration with the
system. It has led to instability where new parties crop up if they offer even a glimmer
of hope. Many believe there are strong, ominous overtones to all this. How to deal
with economics, both within and without a country. There is the simple notion that
what we need is a Messiah to save us. A masterful leader who is able to seize the rein
of power is so appealing. Left and Right wing organizations put forward their beliefs
and threaten to take over, by any means necessary. The cry for leadership is based on
three misconceptions; the first is the myth of authoritarian efficiency, the notion that
an Autocrat can "make the trains run on time". Yet even Hitler's Third Reich was not
very efficient. The second is the assumption that the old style leadership that worked
in the past will work now. We imagine Churchill or Roosevelt. Yet not all leaderships
will work in all circumstances. The First Wave Monarch was a leader from birth, and
was free to lead as he thought fit. The Second Wave leader dealt in impersonal and
abstract power. He controlled a variety of decisions, from the media to the economy.
His authority was based on power from the people. A first wave leader would be unfit
to lead in the second wave. A Third Wave leader would be the same. The strength or
weakness of a leader has nothing to do with an institution's breakdown. As the third
wave society gets more complex and diversified, all leaders must depend on
increasing numbers of people for decision-making. The more powerful he is, the more
dependent he becomes. The new leadership qualities are not quite clear. Ability to
listen to others may be more important than assertiveness. The third misconception is
that our current system of leadership is right for our society, which it is clearly not.
The current political framework is complex because local and national interests can
affect international ones. Much of a national leader's power is lost. Our political
institutions also reflect an out of date organization of knowledge. It is virtually
impossible to integrate all of the government's activities effectively. All of the social
and political problems are interwoven. Energy affects economics, which affects
health, which affects education, work, family life, and a thousand other things. The
attempt to deal with each neatly defined problem in isolation creates only confusion
and disaster. Yet this is how the government system is set up. This anachronistic
structure leads to interminable jurisdictional power struggles, the externalization of
costs, and to the generation of adverse side effects. Governments attempt to solve
these problems by further centralization. Society and decision-making is accelerated
and putting additional pressures on the decision-makers. Politicians careers have even
accelerated. They cannot churn out intelligent decisions as fast as events require. Also
as the society de-massifies, it creates a collapse in consensus. The sense of "national
purpose" is gone. Special interest groups vie for their beliefs. The electorate and
splinter groups are splintering into smaller, more transitory groups. Politicians find
themselves besieged by these groups. Second wave governing is too slow to keep
pace with change and the new levels of social and political diversity. It strikes at the
very basis of Second Wave political theory: the concept of representation. Thus, more
and more governments are minority governments. It forces us to question whether we
are truly being represented. What is happening to representative democracy? Not only
our second wave institutions, but the very assumptions on which they are based are
obsolete.
Too many decisions, too fast, about too many strange and unfamiliar problems
explain the gross incompetence of political and governmental decisions today. Our
institutions are reeling from decisional implosion. Working with out of date political
technology, our capacity for effective governmental decision-making is deteriorating
rapidly. This increasingly mirrors the disarray in the outside world. A political system
must not only be able to make and enforce decisions; it must operate on the right
scale, it must be able to integrate disparate policies, it must be able to make decisions
at the right speed, and it must both reflect and respond to the diversity of society. If it
fails on any of these it courts disaster. Politically, we are hundreds of years out of
date. It is like trying to fly a jumbo jet with Lindbergh's navigation systems. With
nuclear weapons and our abilities, it creates an enormous threat for all parts of the
world. The answer is not an Autocratic system, to take away our freedom, or
defending our existing institutions. We shall have to invent new ones. The
constitution of the US needs to be re-examined for the Third Wave. The old structures
are unworkable in our radically changed world. It will require a hard-fought
overhauling of our conventional democratic process. There will be many risks, but not
changing it will cause even greater risks.
THE PRINCIPLES OF THIRD WAVE
GOVERNMENT INCLUDE:
 minority power
 more direct citizen roles
 and putting decisions where they belong,
which helps political paralysis.
The first, heretical principle of Third Wave government is that of minority power.
It is not majorities, but minorities that count and our political systems must reflect
that. This is in keeping with our de-massified society. We need to get rid of the notion
that increased diversity automatically brings increased tension and conflict in society.
In fact, the reverse can be true. If everyone has different goals, they will be more
willing to cooperate and form symbiotic relationships. It is the lack of representation
and appropriate political systems that cause dissent.
We need to re-examine all methods of democracy. We might have a percentage
listing for each possibility. We must get rid of a yes-no system. Party politics is no
longer effective in our diverse societies. We need to empower the people, and
minorities. We need to encourage long-term planning. By working with various ideas,
we can come up with more appropriate structures and systems. With our
telecommunications whole new methods of direct democracy or semi-direct
democracy is possible. We could provide specific training to the public to educate
them about various items for them to contribute to and influence.
Today's political arrangements are not quick to deal with problems. The problems
have shifted, but the decisional power hasn't. Many problems are too busy for one
government. We need some international systems in place. We need far better
agencies in place. We must also move much decisionmaking down to local levels.
This can create more efficient and useful government. This decentralizing will happen
in business as well. Democracy came about because there were too many decisions
for the elite to deal with. With the third wave, there will be an even more expanding
elite, which will then become localized. The super-struggle politically will be those
who are trying to prop up the Second Wave industrial society and those who are ready
to advance beyond it. There are two political wars raging around us simultaneously.
At one level is politics as usual Second wave groups battling each other for immediate
gain. At a deeper level is these groups cooperating to oppose the new political forces
of the Third Wave. This explains why these groups almost seem like blurry mirror
images of each other. The second wave parties are committed to Second Wave
civilization and dedicated to preserving the core institutions of mass society: the
nuclear family, the mass education system, the giant corporation, the mass trade
union, the centralized nation-state, and the politics of pseudorepresentative
government. The Third Wave camp recognizes that today's most urgent problems,
from energy, war, poverty and ecological degradation, and the breakdown of family
relationships can no longer be solved within the framework of an industrial
civilization. Most of us are in both camps.
The defenders of the Second Wave typically fight against minority power; they
scoff at direct democracy as "populism"; they resist decentralization, regionalism, and
diversity; they oppose efforts to de-massify the schools; they fight to preserve a
backward energy system; they deify the nuclear family, pooh-pooh ecological
concerns, preach traditional industrial-era nationalism, and oppose the move toward a
fairer world economic order. By contrast, the forces of the Third Wave favour a
democracy of shared minority power; they are prepared to experiment with more
direct democracy; they favour both transnationalism and a fundamental devolution of
power. They call for a crack-up of the giant bureaucracies. They demand a renewable
and less centralized energy system. They want to legitimize options to the nuclear
family. They fight for less standardization, more individualization in the schools.
They place a high priority in environmental problems. They recognize the necessity to
restructure the world economy on a more balanced and just basis. They are suspicious
of all politicals and parties and feel that decisionmaking is not possible within the
current system. Third Wavers are difficult to define. Some head up major
corporations, others are environmentalists. It is not a movement, per se, but people
with a common recognition that the old system is now broken beyond repair. Each of
us play a role in this which can be either destructive or creative. We need to first
acknowledge that the system needs changing. We need to see long-term and be
creative. Never before have we had such a well-educated society, armed with an
incredible range of knowledge. Never before have we had such a global view. This
collective imagination can be tapped to design alternative political institutions based
on minority power, semi-direct democracy, and decision division. By re-examining
the system, we can help to avoid violent confrontation. We need public input. We
should use the most advanced tools available to us. We need to redesign all elements
within the systems. We need a vast process of social learning. We need to put on
pressure from all levels and ideas.
The responsibility for change lies with us. We must begin with ourselves; being
open-minded and creative minded. We must fight for freedom of expression. If we
begin now we can take part not only in a reconstitution of our obsolete political
structures, but also civilization itself. We have a Destiny to create.