The Third Wave

By Alvin Toffler

Review by Charles Letherwood

It’s been 40 years since Alvin Toffler published this groundbreaking book, The Third Wave, and the insights it offers have never been more relevant. Though he was writing at the dawn of the internet and computers, Toffler has remained a shining light on today’s society because he looked deeper than the beeps and bangles.

Toffler drew conclusions about the way society itself was structured, and saw deep patterns in the way we deal with the world. His description of human civilization in three phases- agrarian, industrial, and information ages- wasn’t groundbreaking. Neither was the observation that change was happening particularly new. No, it was the observation that the pace of change is changing, that society is changing faster than we have been able to keep up with. And it may be changing faster than we can keep up with.

Toffler isn’t a rose-glassed futurist spinning Star Trek tales of Utopia, though there are touches of that in Third Wave. He’s grounded in technology, sociology, and history, and offers a way to look at the world that makes sense of the largest trends in society. It may not be comforting but it is extremely clarifying, and we can recommend no better book for dealing with the reality of today.