Bantam Books by Alvin Toffler Ask your bookseller for the books you have missed FUTURE SHOCK THE THIRD WAVE This edition contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition. NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED. THE THIRD WAVE A Bantam Book I published in association with William Morrow & Co., Inc. PRINTING HISTORY William Morrow edition published March 1980 5 printings September 1980 A Literary Guild Selection October 1979 A Selection of Preferred Choice Bookplan October 1979 and the Macmillan Book Club May 1980. Serialized in Industry Week, February 1980; East/West Network, February 1980; Across the Board, March 1980; Independent News Alliance, March 1980; Rotarian, April 1980; Mechanix Illustrated, May 1980; Reader's Digest, May 1980; Video Review, May 1980; Journal of Insurance, July 1980; Reader's Digest (Canada), August 1980; and Modern Office Procedures, September 1980. Bantam edition /April 1981 13 printings through May 1989 THE THIRD WAVE also appears in translation: French (Editions Deneol); German (Bertelsmann); Japanese (NHK Books); Spanish (Plaza y Janes and Editorial Diana); Danish (Chr. Erichsens Forlag); Dutch (Uilgenerij L.J. Veen); Hebrew (Am Oved); Portuguese (Distribuidora Record); Serbo-Croatian (Jugoslavia); Swedish) (Esselte Info AB); Turkish (Altin Kitaplar); Chinese (Dushu-Peking); U.K. (William Collins & Sons); India (Pan Books); Greece (Edition Cactus); Poland (Pantswowy Instytut Wydawniczy); Romania (Editura Politica); Portuguese (Livros do Brazil); Indonesia (P.T. Pantja Simpati); Korea (Korean Economic Daily). All rights reserved. Copyright © 1980 by Alvin Toffler. Cover art copyright © 1981 by Bantam Books. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Bantam Books. ISBN 0-553-24698-4 Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Regis- trada. Bantam Books, 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA KR 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 FOR HEIDI Whose convincing arguments helped me decide to write The Third Wave. Her tough, tenacious criticism of my ideas and her professionalism as an editor are reflected on every page. Her contributions to this book extend far beyond those one would expect of a colleague, an intellectual companion, a friend, lover and wife. Did we come here to laugh or cry? Are we dying or being born? Terra Nostra by Carlos Fuentes CONTENTS INTRODUCTION A COLLISION OF WAVES 1 / SUPER-STRUGGLE The Revolutionary Premise The Leading Edge Waves of the Future Goldbugs and Assassins THE SECOND WAVE 2 / THE ARCHITECTURE OF CIVILIZATION The Violent Solution Living Batteries The Technological Womb The Vermilion Pagoda The Streamlined Family The Covert Curriculum Immortal Beings The Music Factory The Paper Blizzard 3 / THE INVISIBLE WEDGE The Meaning of the Market The Sexual Split 4 / BREAKING THE CODE Standardization Specialization Synchronization Concentration Maximization Centralization CONTENTS 5 / THE TECHNICIANS OF POWER The Integrators The Integrational Engine The Power Pyramids The Super-Elites 6 / THE HIDDEN BLUEPRINT Mechano-Mania The Represento-Kit The Global Law Factory The Reassurance Ritual 7 / A FRENZY OF NATIONS Changing Horses The Golden Spike 8 / THE IMPERIAL DRIVE Gas Pumps in the Garden The Margarine Plantation Integration a VAmericain Socialist Imperialism 9 / INDUST-REALITY The Progress Principle The Software of Time Repackaging Space The "Sjuff" of Reality The Ultimate Why 10 / CODA: THE FLASH FLOOD THE THIRD WAVE 11 / THE NEW SYNTHESIS 12 / THE COMMANDING HEIGHTS The Sun and Beyond Tools of Tomorrow Machines in Orbit Into the Depths The Gene Industry The Techno-Rebels 13 / DE-MASSIFYING THE MEDIA A Warehouse of Images The De- massified Media Blip Culture CONTENTS 14 / THE INTELLIGENT ENVIRONMENT Enhancing the Brain The Social Memory 15 / BEYOND MASS PRODUCTION Mouse Milk and T-Shirts The Presto Effect The Death of the Secretary? 16 / THE ELECTRONIC COTTAGE Doing Homework The Telecommuters The Home-Centered Society 17 / FAMILIES OF THE FUTURE The Pro-Nuclear Campaign Non- Nuclear Life-Styles The Child-free Culture "Hot" Relationships Love Plus The Campaign for Child Labor The Electronic Expanded Family Parental Malpractice Easing into Tomorrow 18 / THE CORPORATE IDENTITY CRISIS Kabuki Currency The Accelerative Economy The De-massified Society Redefining the Corporation A Pentagon of Pressures The Multipurpose Corporation Many Bottom Lines 197 DECODING THE NEW RULES The End ofNine-to-Five The Sleepless Gorgon Schedule-a-Friend Computers and Marijuana The Post-Standardized Mind The New Matrix Small-Within-Big Is Beautiful The Organization of the Future 20 / THE RISE OF THE PROSUMER The Invisible Economy CONTENTS Overeaters and Widows The Do-It-Yourselfers Outsiders and Insiders Prosumer Life-Styles Third Wave Economics The End of Marketization 21 / THE MENTAL MAELSTROM The New Image of Nature Designing Evolution The Progress Tree The Future of Time Space Travelers Wholism and Halfism The Cosmic Playroom The Termite Lesson 221 THE CRACK-UP OF THE NATION Abkhazians and lexicons From the Top Down The Global Corporation The Emerging "T-Net" Planetary Consciousness Myths and Inventions 23 / GANDHI WITH SATELLITES The Second Wave Strategy The Broken Success Model The First Wave Strategy The Third Wave Question Sun, Shrimp, and Chips The Original Prosumers The Starting Line 24 / CODA: THE GREAT CONFLIJENCE Tomorrow's Basics The Concept of Practopia The Wrong Question CONCLUSION 25 / THE NEW PSYCHO-SPHERE The Attack on Loneliness Telecommunity The Heroin Structure CONTENTS The Secret of the Cults Life-Organizers and Semi-Cults 26 / THE PERSONALITY OF THE FUTURE Growing Up Different The New Worker The Prosumer Ethic The Configurative Me 27 / THE POLITICAL MAUSOLEUM The Black Hole Private Armies The Messiah Complex The World Web The Inter-Weave Problem The Decisional Speedup The Collapse of Consensus The Decisional Implosion 28 / TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY DEMOCRACY Minority Power Semi-Direct Democracy Decision Division The Expanding Elites The Coming Super-Struggle A Destiny to Create ACKNOWLEDGMENTS NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX INTRODUCTION In a time when terrorists play death-games with hostages, as currencies careen amid rumors of a third World War, as embassies flame and storm troopers lace up their boots in many lands, we stare in horror at the headlines. The price of gold—that sensitive barometer of fear—breaks all records. Banks tremble. Inflation rages out of control. And the governments of the world are reduced to paralysis or imbecility. Faced with all this, a massed chorus of Cassandras fills the air with doom-song. The proverbial man hi the street says the world has "gone mad," while the expert points to all the trends leading toward catastrophe. This book offers a sharply different view. It contends that the world has not swerved into lunacy, and that, in fact, beneath the clatter and jangle of seemingly senseless events there lies a startling and potentially hopeful pattern. This book is about that pattern and that hope. The Third Wave is for those who think the human story, far from ending, has only just begun. A powerful tide is surging across much of the world today, creating a new, often bizarre, environment in which to work, play, marry, raise children, or retire. In this bewildering context, businessmen swim against highly erratic economic currents; politicians see their ratings bob wildly up and down; universities, hospitals, and other institutions battle desperately against inflation. Value systems splinter and crash, while the lifeboats of family, church, and state are hurled madly about. Looking at these violent changes, we can regard them as 4 2 THE THIRD WAVE isolated evidences of instability, breakdown, and disaster. Yet, if we stand back for a longer view, several things become apparent that otherwise go unnoticed. To begin with, many of today's changes are not independent of one another. Nor are they random. For example, the crack-up of the nuclear family, the global energy crisis, the spread of cults and cable television, the rise of flextime and new fringe-benefit packages, the emergence of separatist movements from Quebec to Corsica, may all seem like isolated events. Yet precisely the reverse is true. These and many other seemingly unrelated events or trends are niter-connected. They are, in fact, parts of a much larger phenomenon: the death of industrialism and the rise of a new civilization. So long as we think of them as isolated changes and miss this larger significance, we cannot design a coherent, effective response to them. As individuals, our personal decisions remain aimless or self- canceling. As governments, we stumble from crisis to crash program, lurching into the future without plan, without hope, without vision. Lacking a systematic framework for understanding the clash of forces in today's world, we are like a ship's crew, trapped in a storm and trying to navigate between dangerous reefs without compass or chart. In a culture of warring specialisms, drowned in fragmented data and fine-toothed analysis, synthesis is not merely useful—it is crucial. For this reason, The Third Wave is a book of large-scale synthesis. It describes the old civilization in which many of us grew up, and presents a careful, comprehensive picture of the new civilization bursting into being in our midst. So profoundly revolutionary is this new civilization that it challenges all our old assumptions. Old ways of thinking, old formulas, dogmas, and ideologies, no matter how cherished or how useful hi the past, no longer fit the facts. The world that is fast emerging from the clash of new values and technologies, new geopolitical relationships, new life- styles and modes of communication, demands wholly new ideas and analogies, classifications and concepts. We cannot cram the embryonic world of tomorrow into yesterday's conventional cubbyholes. Nor are the orthodox attitudes or moods appropriate. Thus, as the description of this strange new civilization unfolds in these pages, we will find reason to challenge the chic pessimism that is so prevalent today. Despair—salable and self-indulgent—has dominated the culture for a decade or INTRODUCTION 3 more. The Third Wave concludes that despair is not only a sin (as C. P. Snow, I believe, once put it), but that it is also unwarranted. I am under no Pollyannaish illusions, It is scarcely necessary today to elaborate on the real dangers facing us—from nuclear annihilation and ecological disaster to racial fanaticism or regional violence. I have written about these dangers myself in the past, and will no doubt do so again. War, economic debacle, large-scale technological disaster—any of these could alter future history in catastrophic ways. Nevertheless, as we explore the many new relationships springing up—between changing energy patterns and new forms of family life, or between advanced manufacturing methods and the self-help movement, to mention only a few—we suddenly discover that many of the very same conditions that produce today's greatest perils also open fascinating new potentials. The Third Wave shows us these new potentials. It argues that, in the very midst of destruction and decay, we can now find striking evidences of birth and life. It shows clearly and, I think, indisputably, that—with intelligence and a modicum of luck—the emergent civilization can be made more sane, sensible, and sustainable, more decent and more democratic than any we have ever known. If the main argument of this book is correct, there are powerful reasons for long-range optimism, even if the transitional years immediately ahead are likely to be stormy and crisis-ridden. As I've worked on The Third Wave in the past few years, lecture audiences have repeatedly asked me how it differs from my earlier work Future Shock. Author and reader never see quite the same things in a book. I view The Third Wave as radically different from Future Shock in both form and focus. To begin with, it covers a much wider sweep of time—past as well as future. It is more prescriptive. Its architecture is different. (The perceptive reader will find that its structure mirrors its central metaphor—the clash of waves.) Substantively, the differences are even more pronounced. While Future Shock called for certain changes to be made, it emphasized the personal and social costs of change. The Third Wave, while taking note of the difficulties of adapta- 4 THE THIRD WAVE tion, emphasizes the equally important costs of not changing certain things rapidly enough. Moreover, while in the earlier book I wrote of the "premature arrival of the future," I did not attempt to sketch the emergent society of tomorrow in any comprehensive or systematic way. The focus of the book was on the processes of change, not the directions of change. In this book, the lens is reversed. I concentrate less on acceleration, as such, and more on the destinations toward which change is carrying us. Thus one work focuses more heavily on process, the other on structure. For these reasons, the two books are designed to fit together, not as source and sequel, but as complementary parts of a much larger whole. Each is very different. But each casts light on the other. In attempting so large-scale a synthesis, it has been necessary to simplify, generalize, and compress. (Without doing so, it would have been impossible to cover so much ground in a single volume.) As a result, some historians may take issue with the way this book divides civilization into only three parts—a First Wave agricultural phase, a Second Wave industrial phase, and a Third Wave phase now beginning. It is easy to point out that agricultural civilization consisted of quite different cultures, and that industrialism itself has actually gone through many successive stages of development One could, no doubt, chop the past (and the future) into 12 or 38 or 157 pieces. But, in so doing, we would lose sight of the major divisions hi a clutter of subdivisions. Or we would require a whole library, instead of a single book, to cover the same territory. For our purposes, the simpler distinctions are more useful, even if gross. The vast scope of this book also required the use of other shortcuts. Thus I occasionally reify civilization itself, arguing that First Wave or Second Wave civilization "did" this or that. Of course, I know, and readers know, that civilizations don't do anything; people do. But attributing this or that to a civilization now and then saves time and breath. Similarly, intelligent readers understand that no one—historian or futurist, planner, astrologer, or evangelist—"knows" or can "know" the future. When I say something "will" happen, I assume the reader will make appropriate discount for uncertainty. To have done otherwise would have burdened the book with an unreadable and unnecessary jungle of reservations. Social forecasts, moreover, are never value-free or INTRODUCTION 5 scientific, no matter how much computerized data they use. The Third Wave is not an objective forecast, and it makes no pretense to being scientifically proven. To say this, however, is not to suggest that the ideas in this book are whimsical or unsystematic. In fact, as will soon become apparent, this work is based on massive evidence and on what might be called a semi-systematic model of civilization and our relationships to it. It describes the dying industrial civilization in terms of a "techno- sphere," a "socio-sphere," an "info-sphere," and a "power-sphere," then sets out to show how each of these is undergoing revolutionary change in today's world. It attempts to show the relationships of these parts to each other, as well as the "bio-sphere" and "psycho-sphere"— that structure of psychological and personal relationships through which changes in the outer world affect our most private lives. The Third Wave holds that a civilization also makes use of certain processes and principles, and that it develops its own "super-ideology" to explain reality and to justify its own existence. Once we understand how these parts, processes, and principles are interrelated, and how they transform one another, touching off powerful currents of change, we gain a much clearer understanding of the giant wave of change battering our lives today. The grand metaphor of this work, as should already be apparent, is that of colliding waves of change. This image is not original. Norbert Elias, in his The Civilizing Process, refers to "a wave of advancing integration over several centuries." In 1837, a writer described the settlement of the American West in terms of successive "waves"—first the pioneers, then the farmers, then the business interests, the "third wave" of migration. In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner cited and employed the same analogy in his classic essay The Significance of the Frontier in American History. It is not, therefore, the wave metaphor that is fresh, but its application to today's civ-ilizational shift. This application proves to be extremely fruitful. The wave idea is not only a tool for organizing vast masses of highly diverse information. It also helps us see beneath the raging surface of change. When we apply the wave metaphor, much that was confusing becomes clear. The familiar often appears in a dazzlingly fresh light. s THE THIRD WAVE Once I began thinking in terms of waves of change, colliding and overlapping, causing conflict and tension around us, it changed my perception of change itself. In every field, from education and health to technology, from personal life to politics, it became possible to distinguish those innovations that are merely cosmetic, or just extensions of the industrial past, from those that are truly revolutionary. Even the most powerful metaphor, however, is capable of yielding only partial truth. No metaphor tells the whole story from all sides, and hence no vision of the present, let alone the future, can be complete or final. When I was a Marxist during my late teens and early twenties— now more than a quarter of a century ago—I, like many young people, thought I had all the answers. I soon learned that my "answers" were partial, one-sided, and obsolete. More to the point, I came to appreciate that the right question is usually more important than the right answer to the wrong question.