Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives

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  "Revolutionary Wealth" is the latest of a series of excellent books by the husband and wife sociology team, Alvin and Heidi Toffler. The attempt to increase state control over law and society of the second Bush administration and the attempt to increase state control of the economy of the Obama administration are phenomenon indirectly discussed in this book. Instead of listening to politicians and pundits screaming about this or that reason, or this or that conspiracy, you should ... (show more)

  "Revolutionary Wealth" is the latest of a series of excellent books by the husband and wife sociology team, Alvin and Heidi Toffler. The attempt to increase state control over law and society of the second Bush administration and the attempt to increase state control of the economy of the Obama administration are phenomenon indirectly discussed in this book. Instead of listening to politicians and pundits screaming about this or that reason, or this or that conspiracy, you should instead read this book and catch a glimpse of the bigger picture, or the continued evolution of our technology supercharged global human society.

  Alvin and Heidi Toffler have been very accurate in their descriptions of the overall evolution of our global society since "Future Shock". Their original thesis, from the early 1970s, is that technology is supercharging the speed at which we live. This conclusion is now "old hat" and nothing new, but when I read the book in 1975 it was quite novel. Their second thesis, presented in their 1980 book, "The Third Wave" described the "Information Revolution" (the "third wave" of civilization) that was just then taking shape that was going to eventually outmode the "Industrial Revolution" (second wave), which had in turn outmoded the "Agricultural Revolution" (first wave). Again their sociological model was novel to many at the time but now produces a yawn to everyone living it now. Subsequent books expanded on the details of the Information Revolution/Third Wave in terms of warfare ("War and Antiwar") and even politics ("Powershift"). In their book "War and Antiwar" the Tofflers briefly touched on what could follow the Information Revolution by simply saying it was difficult to know; the rate of technological innovation would continue to increase to such a rapid pace that it was simply difficult to know what would come next (this is the essence of Kurzweil's book, "The Singularity is Near" which would, I guess, be a Tofflerian "fourth wave"). Significantly, and to the point of this review, "Powershift" introduced the idea that the Information Revolution is introducing forces into societies across the planet that threaten the stability of all governments, not just the defunct Soviet Union. Ad hoc relationships (introduced in "Future Shock"), powered by communication and computational technologies (e.g., Internet) are blurring cultural, social, national and economic boundaries to the point where artificial political boundaries are becoming increasingly meaningless. Much of the Toffler's writings are ironic in that while they describe a force pointing in one direction they tend to predict potential social forces which attempt to reverse said trend. For instance while governments and economic systems are weakening due to the impact of technology and to the continued evolution of the global human society, governments and economic systems attempt to reverse these trends by trying to strengthen themselves, ultimately however to no avail. Witness the efforts of the second Bush administration to strengthen state control over law and also witness the efforts of the Obama administration in what many describe as the introduction of "socialist" controls over the economy. Assuming the Tofflers are correct in their assumptions one can predict that the increased statist and economic controls will ultimately not be effective. The reasons for this, and the potential results of this weakening, are the thesis of "Revolutionary Wealth".

  If there is a failing of the book is that the Tofflers felt they had spotted a trend and went ahead to write their book with little evidence to back them up. They bring to the table the phenomena of "open source" computer code and "do it yourself" trends as evidence of larger sociological trends. Personally I feel they are probably on to something, but using this scant evidence to make multi-decade predictions is a little risky. Then again that hasn't stopped the Tofflers before and they have been respectably prescient to date. (show less)

   

   

  by Nicole Tedesco on Jun 14, 2009 at 06:00PM

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  Don't let the title mislead you, it is not about money!! It is a good book that explains were we are in terms of globalization, social interactions and the use of technology to to bring people together as well as how society will change in the future as the information revolution gets on its way.

   

  by Facebook narys on Aug 18, 2007 at 01:39PM

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