
Alvin Toffler, Author of ‘Future Shock,’ Dies at 87 - petethomas
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/30/books/alvin-toffler-author-of-future-shock-dies-at-87.html
======
nabla9
Toffler was one of those thinkers who shadow permeate our culture.

If you read their books soon after they are published, you see the world
developing trough the the lens of his ideas.

If you first read their books several decades afterwards, you nod in agreement
and are amazed how well this kindred spirit writes down what you have had in
your mind, without realizing that you have been exposed to his ideas all this
time and they are originally his.

~~~
turnip1979
I think you are right but wonder if it is just some kind of bias. Do you have
other authors in mind who are leading the way today?

I've heard of Verner Vinge being spoken of in similar term btw.

~~~
ideonexus
I think Vinge deserves to be spoken of in similar terms. "A Fire Upon Deep"
was so incredibly ahead of its time, and the virtual-reality-real-world mashup
of "Rainbow's End," written almost 10 years ago, sounds like the inevitable
way we will experience the world in the future with augmentation... At the
same time, he made some outright silly predictions... so it's a matter of what
you choose to focus on.

Toffler's the same. I've only read "Future Shock," but his predictions in that
book can either seem completely ridiculous and off-base or like someone
outside of our present culture giving you the perspective only an outsider can
give. Here's some quotes from the book. Remember, these were written in 1970,
but I leave it to the reader to decide if these quotes a prescient,
insightful, or absurd:

 _The techno-societies, far from being drab and homogenized, are honeycombed
with just such colorful groupings—hippies and hot rodders, theosophists and
flying saucer fans, skindivers and skydivers, homosexuals, computerniks,
vegetarians, bodybuilders and Black Muslims... Today the hammerblows of the
super-industrial revolution are literally splintering the society. We are
multiplying these social enclaves, tribes and minicults among us almost as
fast as we are multiplying automotive options. The same destandardizing forces
that make for greater individual choice with respect to products and cultural
wares, are also destandardizing our social structures. This is why, seemingly
overnight, new subcults like the hippies burst into being. We are, in fact,
living through a "subcult explosion."_

.....

 _One response to the loss of control, for example, is a revulsion against
intelligence. Science first gave man a sense of mastery over his environment,
and hence over the future. By making the future seem malleable, instead of
immutable, it shattered the opiate religions that preached passivity and
mysticism. Today, mounting evidence that society is out of control breeds
disillusionment with science. In consequence, we witness a garish revival of
mysticism. Suddenly astrology is the rage. Zen, yoga, seances, and witchcraft
become popular pastimes. Cults form around the search for Dionysian
experience, for non-verbal and supposedly non-linear communication. We are
told it is more important to "feel" than to "think," as though there were a
contradiction between the two._

.....

 _If a smaller number of families raise children, however, why do the children
have to be their own? Why not a system under which "professional parents" take
on the childrearing function for others? Raising children, after all, requires
skills that are by no means universal. We don't let "just anyone" perform
brain surgery or, for that matter, sell stocks and bonds. Even the lowest
ranking civil servant is required to pass tests proving competence. Yet we
allow virtually anyone, almost without regard for mental or moral
qualification, to try his or her hand at raising young human beings, so long
as these humans are biological offspring. Despite the increasing complexity of
the task, parenthood remains the greatest single preserve of the amateur._

I have more quotes here if anyone is interested in reading more. I apologize
for the website style and formatting. It's an old application I wrote for
myself to keep notes:

[http://mxplx.com/reference/1525/](http://mxplx.com/reference/1525/)

~~~
Lordarminius
>>" Why not a system under which "professional parents" take on the
childrearing function for others? ...."

We already have these. We call the system 'schools' and the professionals
'school teachers'

------
jamespitts
I read Toffler's Third Wave in high school as part of a class. A lot of what
Alvin Toffler talked about was over my head at the time. Still, the material
was very interesting to me and I looked forward to the new world he described.
Only later on in college did it all come together as I learned about business
and got involved with the early web.

This is a good lesson: full comprehension is not immediately necessary but
there is a lot future value in plodding through unfamiliar content.

~~~
spinchange
Your last point is the secret to enjoying a lot of great, "difficult" things.

------
brandonmenc
Also excellent is 1975's proto-cyberpunk novel "The Shockwave Rider" by John
Brunner, which was directly influenced by "Future Shock."

~~~
yborg
Thirding. At least 15 years ahead of its time, and there's still some bits I'm
waiting for. The concept of "Hearing Aid" as a distributed universal ombudsman
is something we have parts of, maybe, in things like Wikileaks and the Tor
network, but the idea of implementing them as essentially a self-replicating
worm that runs on hundreds of millions of machines still hasn't been attempted
to my knowledge.

------
rmason
The best books that I've read in my life give you a framework to make sense of
individual events going forward. Third Wave was one of the best books of its
kind.

I'm currently reading Kevin Kelly's, the Inevitable, and he's another author
with similar power. Kelly in the early nineties was the first to make the
connection between software and biology.

------
transfire
Also read the Third Wave (well most of it anyway). Was a very intriguing
concept -- the general idea is applicable to any intelligent species -- it
will evolve through the Agricultural 1st Wave, the Industrial 2nd Wave and
then the Informational 3rd Wave.

------
partycoder
I own many of his books. A highly recommended author. The Third Wave is
probably my favorite, especially in the way it accurate anticipates the
information age, which in his opinion, begins with the invention of the
barcode.

~~~
stcredzero
_The Third Wave is probably my favorite, especially in the way it accurate
anticipates the information age_

E. M. Forster predicted YouTube in the early 20th century Sci-Fi novella, _The
Machine Stops_.

 _begins with the invention of the barcode_

The original Internet of Things.

------
bogomipz
I read "Future Shock" years ago. Very prescient and worth a read even now.
What a great thinker.

------
ehudla
As a kid I was engrossed by Previews and Premises. His background and early
experiences quite significant. [https://www.amazon.com/PREVIEWS-PREMISES-
Alvin-Toffler/dp/05...](https://www.amazon.com/PREVIEWS-PREMISES-Alvin-
Toffler/dp/055324874X)

It is also worth mentioning that he worked in partnership with his wife. One
can debate whether she got a fair share of the credit.

------
nathanvanfleet
Futureshock was a book I picked out of a box of books put out to the trash one
day a bit more than 10 years ago. I read it and was amazed at the accuracy.
And just now when I read he died I thought to maybe read it again and the blue
color of the cover is strongly still in my mind.

------
thom
It's weird for me in way, because I feel like the biggest impact of his work
on my life was second hand, hanging out on the SL4 mailing list back in the
day. I have no doubt that many of the denizens of that mailing list will go on
to shape large parts of our civilisation's technological future, hopefully in
ways that aren't completely insensitive to the sociological forces described
by Toffler.

------
nickbauman
Toffler is way ahead of Kurzweil. Especially when you consider the first
Gutenberg Bible was printed in 1454 and mass print communication emerged ~400
years later. The web was invented ~1990. We may not get it right for a looong
time yet.

------
bane
Not hugely known, but he also had a consulting firm:
[http://tofflerassociates.com/](http://tofflerassociates.com/)

------
eli_gottlieb
>He foresaw the development of cloning

But we don't have commonplace human cloning. Or in fact practical human
cloning of any kind.

>“The roaring current of change,” he said, was producing visible and
measurable affects in individuals that fractured marriages, overwhelmed
families and caused “confusional breakdowns” manifested in rising crime, drug
use and social alienation.

Aren't those issues mostly caused by the sharp neoliberalization of society?

>He was among the first authors to recognize that knowledge, not labor and raw
materials, would become the most important economic resource of advanced
societies.

Under what accounting system is that actually true?

>Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House, met the Tofflers
in the 1970s and became close to them. He said “The Third Wave” had immensely
influenced his own thinking and was “one of the great seminal works of our
time.”

This does not speak at all well of Toffler's work.

>He advised readers to “concern themselves more and more with general theme,
rather than detail.” That theme, he emphasized, was that “the rate of change
has implications quite apart from, and sometimes more important than, the
directions of change.”

This does not speak at all well for Toffler's work.

The bell tolls and it tolls for us all, but I can't help but wish he'd taken
the time to recant some of his more explicitly reactionary work.

~~~
CWuestefeld
>> >He was among the first authors to recognize that knowledge, not labor and
raw materials, would become the most important economic resource of advanced
societies.

> Under what accounting system is that actually true?

It's not that controversial idea anymore. See, for example [1]

 _Contrary to economists from Adam Smith to Karl Marx to Thomas Piketty, our
riches cannot be explained by the accumulation of capital, as the misleading
word capitalism implies. The Great Enrichment did not come from piling brick
on brick, or bachelor 's degree on bachelor's degree, or bank balance on bank
balance, but from piling idea on idea. The accumulation of capital was of
course necessary. But so were a labor force and the existence of liquid water.
Oxygen is necessary for a fire. Yet it would be unhelpful to explain the
Chicago Fire of October 8–10, 1871, by the presence of oxygen in the earth's
atmosphere._

[1] "Bourgeois Equality", Deirdre McCloskey,
[https://reason.com/archives/2016/05/12/bourgeois-
equality](https://reason.com/archives/2016/05/12/bourgeois-equality)

~~~
coldtea
> _our riches cannot be explained by the accumulation of capital, as the
> misleading word capitalism implies. The Great Enrichment did not come from
> piling brick on brick, or bachelor 's degree on bachelor's degree, or bank
> balance on bank balance, but from piling idea on idea._

"brick on brick, or bachelor's degree on bachelor's degree, or bank balance on
bank balance" does not have anything to do with neither Marx's nor Adam
Smith's definition of capital. And both already knew the importance of
ideas...

