Toffler biography. Alvin Toffler

Federal State Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education.

Kuban State Agrarian University.

Department of Sociology and Culturology.

Abstract on cultural studies on the topic: “E. Toffler about the civilization of the future”

Made by student UV-1009

Bublik Natalya Vladimirovna

Checked by Sabirova A.M.

Krasnodar 2010

1. Introduction

2.Main directions in the scientific concepts of E. Toffler

3. "Shock of the future"

4. "Third wave"

5. The problem of power and its transformation.

7. Conclusion

8. List of used literature

Introduction:

Toffler (born October 3, 1928) is an American sociologist and futurist, one of the authors of the concept of "super-industrial civilization". In his main works, the thesis is carried out that humanity is moving towards a new technological revolution. That is, the first wave (agrarian civilization) and the second (industrial civilization) are replaced by a new one, leading to the creation of a super-industrial civilization. Toffler warns of new complexities, social conflicts and global problems that humanity will face at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Alvin Toffler is one of the famous and influential futurists of the world. He predicted many technological advances, such as the advent of the Internet and digital technology, animal cloning, as well as the impact of these advances on the economy and culture. The most famous books created by E. Toffler in collaboration with his wife Heidi Toffler are "The Shock of the Future", "Metamorphoses of the Future", "The Third Wave".

According to Toffler, the accuracy of his forecasts is due not to some gift of foresight, but to a careful analysis of the available information.

So to what extent did Toffler's predictions come true? What has changed over the past decade in the minds of mankind? What are other cultural-civilizational projects of people?

The main directions in the scientific concepts of E. Toffler

The scientific concept of Alvin Toffler is based on the idea of successive waves-types of society. The first wave is the result of the agrarian revolution, which changed the culture of hunters and gatherers. The second wave is the result of the industrial revolution, which is characterized by a nuclear family type, an assembly line education system, and corporatism. The third wave is the result of the intellectual revolution, that is, a post-industrial society in which there is a huge variety of subcultures and lifestyles. Information can replace a huge amount of material resources and becomes the main material for workers who are freely associated in associations. Mass consumption offers the opportunity to purchase cheap, targeted products distributed to small niches. The boundaries between the seller (producer of goods and (or) services) and the buyer (consumer) are erased - the consumer can satisfy all his needs himself.

Considering history as a continuous wave movement, Toffler analyzes the features of the coming world, the economic backbone of which, in his opinion, will be electronics and computers, space production, the use of the depths of the ocean and the bioindustry. This is the Third Wave, which completes the agricultural (First Wave) and industrial (Second Wave) revolutions.

"Future Shock"

In the first book of the Future Shock trilogy (1970), Toffler warned humanity of the danger associated with rapid changes in people's lives. Not all researchers have accepted this view. Thus, the outstanding American sociologist D. Bell considered this idea deceptive. In his opinion, in the daily life of earthlings, more changes occurred between 1850 and 1940, when railroads, steamboats, telegraph, electricity, telephone, automobile, cinema, radio and airplanes came into use, than in the subsequent period, supposedly characterized by acceleration. Bell believed that in practice, apart from the innovations he listed, nothing new appeared in the daily life of people, except for television.

However, Toffler's idea of the difficulties of psychological adaptation of people to the acceleration of social change is rooted in the futurological literature. Toffler writes about the new complexities, social conflicts and global problems that humanity will face at the turn of the century. Toffler's main books are "Future Shock", "Clash with the Future" (1972); Ecospasm Report (1975); "The Third Wave" (1980); "Metamorphoses of power" (1990), etc.

The idea of a new civilization retained its value. The American sociologist Z. Brzezinski wrote about the "technotronic era", the French researcher J. Ellul called the society he represented "technological", D. Bell used the concept of "post-industrial society", while Toffler, after reflecting on the terms "trans-industrial" and "post-economic", stopped on the concept of "superindustrial society". It means, as he writes in Future Shock, "a complex, rapidly evolving society based on the most advanced technology and a post-materialist value system." D. Bell was ironic: on the definitions of E. Toffler, it would seem that all the permutations and combinational ideas associated with the word "post-" have been exhausted.

Large-scale and intensive transformations now concern not only the spheres of economy, economy, politics and culture. The fundamental foundations of human reproduction as a biological and anthropological type are also changing. The practice of education and thinking is becoming different. Indeed, a new era begins. The current socio-cultural institutions and management technologies must be radically reconstructed. This is the general meaning of E. Toffler's latest work.

We realize today that world development is uneven. That is why thinking about the future should be systemic, because various mismatches between the processes of world consumption and infrastructures of management, between the productive elements of the world economy and trans-regional flows of resources, goods and services are becoming more and more significant. Toffler thinks about intensive forms of development as opposed to the extensive models of social dynamics characteristic of the former social thinking.

The scope of our lives is changing. An era of global competition is being born before our very eyes. A new round of interethnic and geopolitical clashes is indicated. E. Toffler is convinced that it is important to adapt to rapid changes as quickly as possible. This primarily concerns the "golden billion" of people, that is, those who live in the developed economic world. But how to achieve sustainable development?

"Third Wave"

The current "Third Wave", according to Toffler, is the "information society". It is caused by the ubiquity of computers, turbojet aviation, and flexible technologies. In the information society, new types of families, styles of work, life, new forms of politics, economics and consciousness are emerging. The world ceases to seem like a machine, it is filled with innovations, the perception of which requires the constant development of cognitive abilities. The symbols of the "Third Wave" are integrity, individuality, and pure, human technology. The leading role in such a society is acquired by the service sector, science and education. Corporations must give way to universities, and businessmen to scientists...

In pre-industrial society, according to Bell, life was a game between man and nature, in which people interacted with the natural environment - land, water, forests - working in small groups. In an industrial society, work is a game between man and the built environment, where people are overshadowed by machines that produce goods. In the "information society" work becomes primarily a game of man with man (between an official and a visitor, a doctor and a patient, a teacher and a student). Thus, nature is removed from the framework of working and everyday life. People learn to live with each other. In the history of society, this, according to Bell, is a new and unparalleled state of affairs.

The computer revolution is a deep and versatile turn in the development of mankind, which is associated with the growth of productive forces, the widespread use of technology and science in production. The world is on the verge of an unprecedented technological revolution. Today it is difficult to imagine its full social consequences. A new civilization is being born, where communication links create all the conditions for the complete life support of a person...

Modern media have yet to play their transformative role in the next century. Suffice it to say that new information technologies have already managed to change the traditionally dominant concepts of ownership. Information in the transition from the seller to the buyer does not cease to belong to the seller. And this is not just some other variant of the behavior of the product on the market. It's something more.

For centuries and millennia, the main resources of the peoples were space and gold. Supermodern times have brought to life a new resource - information. In the coming century, this resource will become decisive. Over the three decades of its existence, the information system has actually become a factor in evolution. At the end of the past century, the concept of "network" has become a universal metaphor. We started talking about network economics, network logic, neural network, network intelligence, network graphics...

Today, a society that seeks to preserve itself as an independent state cannot but be totally computerized. The American, Western European and Asian economies such as Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong clearly confirm this truth. However, this process develops in different ways. Despite impressive achievements in electronic computing and telecommunications, the Japanese are falling further and further behind in this competitive race. They lag behind not only the United States, but also Western Europe.

The concept of "work" is an anachronism, a product of the industrial revolution. Begin preparing transition plans now for all endangered Second Wave industries. Focusing on human problems: old age, health, loneliness, parenting. Constant learning. Even with all these measures, a large number of people will not find a new job - so a guaranteed income is needed. Such trends of the beginning of the 21st century were described in 1986 by the great futurist Alvin Toffler.

In 1986, Alvin Toffler presented an interesting paper on the work of the near future. It was published in the Soviet scientific collection "The New Technocratic Wave in the West" (collection of texts, Progress Publishing House, 1986). Online Interpreter part of Toffler's work was published.

“We may be on the verge of an even greater economic disaster. I've been saying this since at least 1975, when I published Ecospasm. But today's crisis is not like all previous depressions. This is not a new all-encompassing crisis of 1933. It comes from completely different causes, and if we want to fight it, we must identify its distinctive features.

What is distinctive about this crisis is that it is a radical reorganization, not a collapse. This is a restructuring crisis. We need new ideas. We're talking about unemployment, but we don't even know what "work" will be in the new society. Neither jobs nor unemployment are today what they were in the past.

Consuming - a new form of economic activity

I have always mentally made a distinction between paid work in an exchange economy and unpaid non-exchange work, an activity I call Presuming. This is what women or men do when they raise children; when they build an extension to the house; when they grow their own vegetables, sew their own clothes, or volunteer to work in a hospital. They produce goods and services. They work. But not for a fee. Consumption is a key factor in the new economy. But for our purposes, let's now stick to the issue of paid work, which is what most people have in mind when they talk about work.

Unlike many people who write about it, I worked for many years in the dirtiest factory jobs. Worker's labor. Manual labor. Work on the conveyor. In addition, I have visited factories all over the world. I have studied labor in some of the most modern factories and offices. All this convinces me that our general ideas about work are outdated. They go back to Adam Smith and Karl Marx and are associated with ideas about the division of labor and alienation. A closer source to them is Wright Mills' concept of clerical work.

We all know how miserable part-time work in factories has been and still is in the traditional manufacturing industry. And this factory style of work was transferred to the office, where each worker does very small, endlessly repetitive work, without any understanding of its relation to the whole, without any hope of originality or creativity. But it is these types of labor, these forms of dehumanized labor that cease to exist. What constantly amazes me is the nostalgia that drives me to keep this kind of work, which is usually among people who have never done it.

New professions

Millions of workers, even in the most technologically advanced countries, are still forced into miserable jobs that involve just this type of work. But the key to the future of work lies in understanding that routine, repetitive, part-time work is not more efficient. It has already become obsolete in technologically advanced countries. Therefore, such work will become obsolete, regardless of what various companies, unions and governments do about it. We should not weep and groan over this. And there is already something in this direction. This is part of a restructuring economy.

The expansion of the Third Wave realm involves a very different type of work. There are or will soon be new occupations ranging from PET scanner maintenance technicians in hospitals, resource recovery specialists, people capable of repairing voice recognition equipment, organizing and coordinating home production, ocean mining, materials designers, installers of photovoltaic panels, underwater archaeologists, fiber optics specialists, space laboratory architects to direct broadcast satellite programmers, video-training theorists and teleconferencing consultants. Few, if any, of these new types of professions may be suitable for routinization and Taylorization, as was possible with most professions in the past.

New smart worker

In Second Wave industries we have production shutdowns and lower wages, lower profits, more and more pressure on the worker. In Third Wave industries, it is predominantly about the participation of workers in decision-making; about increasing production and enrichment instead of increasing fractionality; about a temporally flexible work schedule instead of a rigid one; about such collateral benefits, when the worker is given a choice, and not presented with a fait accompli; about how to encourage creativity rather than requiring blind obedience.

The Third Wave worker is more independent, more resourceful, and no longer an appendage of the machine. Typical is a worker with a specialty or professional knowledge. Like the pre-industrial artisan with a set of hand tools, the new intellectual workers have the skill and information that make up their set of spiritual tools. The new workers are much more like independent artisans than like interchangeable assembly line workers. They are younger, better educated. They hate routine. They prefer to work unsupervised in order to do their job the way they see fit. They want to have the right to speak. They are accustomed to change, ambiguity of the situation, flexible organization. They are a new sludge, and their number is growing.

As the economy transitions from the Second Wave to the Third Wave, we are getting a new set of values along with new jobs, and this has significant implications for employers in government policy, in Marxist political economy, in labor unions.

Non-profit associations

We are likely to see an explosion of new and diverse organizational forms. Instead of economies formed by private and state enterprises, or even a mixture of them, we can see "electronic cooperations", religious and family production associations, non-profit workers' associations - many more forms than we can now imagine. Among them, without any doubt, there will also be self-managed enterprises.

In the near future, however, depending on the country, we will still be talking about either public or private companies. They will increasingly be under pressure to reorganize on a less bureaucratic and less hierarchical basis. The more the economy and society enter the Third Wave period, the less effective traditional forms of organization will become.

Guaranteed income

Industrial civilization, or Second Wave civilization, paid for various professions. Third Wave civilization will also pay more for certain traits and abilities than others. In all periods, those in poorly paid professions had to assume a less significant role in society or had to fight to change the reward system. I suspect that this situation will continue in the future. And this brings me back to the idea of a guaranteed minimum income for all those who contribute to production. Whether this is done through the negative income tax proposed by Milton Friedman, or as proposed by an economist like Robert Theobald, all technological societies will have to move in this direction. Such payment systems should not be standardized or centralized. They may also cover the private sector. We can be very creative with the method, but if high-tech countries do not address this problem, they will face explosive social conflicts.

Alvin Toffler's Eight Rules for the Beginning of the 21st Century

1. The concept of "work" is an anachronism, a product of the industrial revolution. As the industrial age ends, the concept of work must either disappear in time, or it must be realistically reinterpreted to include many activities that are productive but unremunerated. It is necessary to rethink such terms as "workplace", "employment", "unemployment".

2. Start preparing transition plans now for all endangered Second Wave industries. "Basic" industries will never be basic again.

3. Promoting the growth of new basic industries: telecommunications, biotechnology, ocean engineering, programming, computer science, electronics, etc.

4. The invention and dissemination of services that are the new basis and key to future employment. Focusing on human problems: old age, health, loneliness, parenting. This sector can be removed from the state bureaucracy and transferred to a decentralized entrepreneurial sector based on small associations serving micro-markets and consisting of small enterprises, charities, cooperative communities and public agencies.

5. Continuous learning. Education itself can be a major employer as well as a giant consumer of video equipment, computers, games, movies and other products that also provide employment.

6. Cardinally change the system of mass education. Modern schools are turning out too many factory-style workers for jobs that will no longer exist. Diversify. Individualize. Decentralize. Fewer local schools. More education at home. Great involvement of parents. More creativity, less cramming. It is routine work that will disappear the fastest.

7. Even with all these measures, a large number of people will not find new work. But they can be producers if we help them to produce the necessary valuable goods and services outside the labor market. This means designing new products, materials, tools, even new crops, which they can produce for themselves with instructions and support services. Consumers, or the self-service sector, can lighten the burden on the exchange sector, while at the same time making decent living possible for millions.

8. And finally, the minimum guaranteed income. Even consumers need some cash income. Payouts cannot be transferred through normal channels. They must be organized as negative income taxes, or they can be distributed in a decentralized, privatized way through families, churches, schools, businesses, local governments, and hundreds of other channels, so as to reduce the role of centralized bureaucracy and the concentration of power. Only if we combine more traditional modes of action in a successful way into one joint effort can we begin to overcome the unemployment crisis. Once we abandon the old, narrow concept of production and understand that millions are participating in this overcoming to make it possible - even if they themselves do not have a formal job - we will lay the moral foundation for a completely new, humane reward system that is in line with the new prospects for a new Third Wave economy.

Illustrations: "Hello, I'm a robot!", Eric Benjaminson, 1989

And each civilization has its own super-ideology - a culturally determined system of views that structures the attitude to reality and legitimizes a certain way of existence of civilization. As it becomes clear, the Third Wave brings about revolutionary and mutually reinforcing changes at all these discernible levels. The consequence of this is not only the disintegration of the old society, but also the creation of the basis of a new one.

When public institutions crumble before our eyes, when crime rises, when the family falls apart, when the once-reliable bureaucracy fails, the health care system fails, and the economy bursts at the seams, we see only decline and destruction in this. Yet a decaying society is the soil in which a new civilization grows. In the processes taking place in the economy, technology, culture, family and many other areas of human activity, the foundations are being laid that will determine the main features of the new civilization.

In fact, even now we can see these main features and in some cases even their interconnection. It is encouraging that the still nascent Third Wave civilization is not only economically and ecologically viable, but it can be - if we put in the effort - more human-friendly and democratic than our own. By no means is this inevitable. The transition period will be marked by the greatest social upheavals, powerful economic shifts, technological failures and catastrophes, political instability, violence, wars and the threat of wars.

In an atmosphere of destruction of public institutions and value systems, authoritarian demagogues and movements will try to seize power, and perhaps these attempts will be successful. No reasonable person can predict with certainty the outcome of these processes. The clash of two civilizations carries a grandiose danger. At the same time, we are counting on survival. Therefore, it is important to know where the path of these changes is leading us."

At the center of Toffler's futurological concept is the problem of the correlation between the rate of change in social and cultural life and the degree of human adaptation to them. The discrepancy between the scale of social change and the ability of a person to adapt to them entails a "future shock", or a shock from meeting the future. Anxiety, confusion, the destruction of habitual forms of behavior, a misinterpretation of reality and, as a result, the loss of the ability to adapt - all these problems on a societal scale acquire the scale of general disorientation and fear of the future.

For a new stage of civilization, technology is the main means of change. Three stages of technology development are known: the birth of an idea, implementation in the form of an experiment, distribution. Today, the time between the first and third stages of the cycle has been radically reduced. Accelerating the introduction of innovations has a significant impact on the psychological state of a person.

Toffler introduces the concept transcendence(or transience) to measure the speed of the flow of change. Relations in society become extremely unstable, a type of "society of disposable glasses" is being formed, where the idea of a single and short-term use of objects triumphs, and the strategy of "throwing away", parting with cultural patterns replaces the former memory mechanisms that firmly connected the spirit of the era with its material artifacts.

Indirectly, this causes ease to change places and social roles. Toffler talks about "new nomads" with weakened socio-cultural ties, with a more superficial attitude towards the world and others. An increase in the turnover of relationships within society contributes to the development of stress, depression, and feelings of loneliness. The novelty factor can reach an extreme level, causing psychological fatigue. One of the options for responding to an excess of change is the denial of everything new, nostalgia for the past. It is also dangerous to go into the world of illusions: drug addiction, alcoholism, mysticism.

The philosopher insists on the need to develop a new social strategy aimed at restoring the natural environment, social protection of people, development of education and spirituality. A special topic is the personal life of the individual. Pessimists believe that the family as a social institution is doomed to disappear, while optimists see it as a guarantee of protection from the upheavals associated with progress. Already today we see a number of innovations that have invaded the "technology of birth": the establishment of the sex of the child, in vitro fertilization, cloning.

All this changes the mentality of society in relation to the family, the institution of motherhood, deforms the value background of the development of culture. Toffler predicts the introduction of new forms of family: the nuclear family (mother, father, child) can be replaced by a corporate type, where several married couples are united based on social, economic, religious and other considerations. Communes as a principle of organizing sociality on subcultural grounds are seen by Toffler as a real way for the joint survival of individuals.

A person may fall victim to a new dilemma - over-choice. In all spheres of life, he is offered a wide range of things, activities, services. Toffler predicts the growth of alternative directions in art and education. Against this background, many life strategies, subcultural formations will arise, the field for the manifestation of individuality will expand. In general, the researcher predicts the collapse of a single system of values, its permanent variability.

In connection with the perspectives described above, Toffler notes that culture should create such mechanisms that will help a person not to lose a sense of novelty and aspiration for renewal, and at the same time not to lose their own identity and individuality. If tendencies towards self-renewal of society are inevitable, then the task of adapting a person to them while maintaining his intellectual and moral potential arises. The last chapter of "Futuroshok" "Strategy of Survival" is devoted to finding a way out of the predicted situation. In its most general form, the problem can be formulated as the creation "new personnel and new social regulators".

It is necessary to develop new principles for planning one's own life, strategies for using innovations, technologies for increasing adaptive capacity, creating new social institutions that act as shock absorbers. One of the ways to solve the problem is a radical restructuring of the education system. Until now, it is oriented towards the past and reproduces the model of the industrial era. Strict regulation of life, standard training programs, neglect of individuality, mass character - all this is an anachronism.

Since knowledge quickly becomes obsolete, the education system itself should become mobile and virtually continuous, and the goal should be to prepare a person for the future, develop skills for independent thinking and operating with advanced information. However, the general outlines of education that shape the value world of the younger generation must be preserved.

The entry of society into a new round of civilization requires the development of a strategy of social futurism, focused on humanistic principles and values. It is necessary to master the tools of foresight, preventing manifestations of civilization hostile to man. Mankind has enormous potential to overcome the crisis, and this should become the central direction of cultural activity.

Alvin Toffler/ Alvin Toffler

Alvin Toffler is one of the famous and influential futurists of the world. He predicted many technological advances, such as the advent of the Internet and digital technology, animal cloning, as well as the impact of these advances on the economy and culture. The most famous books created by E. Toffler in collaboration with his wife Heidi Toffler are "Futuroshock", "Metamorphoses of the Future", "The Third Wave".

According to Toffler, the accuracy of his forecasts is due not to some gift of foresight, but to a careful analysis of the available information.

The new economy requires changes in many areas. Toffler criticizes the American education system, aimed at training specialists for mass production, an inertial bureaucracy that does not correspond to rapid changes. All this can lead other countries, not America, to become world leaders using the American value system. However, the general vector of humanity, according to Toffler, is constant development: “We are experiencing an interesting period in the history of mankind and are rushing forward at a fantastic speed towards new changes. It will create a new way of life, a new society. And we need to understand where we are going.”

Alvin Toffler on the "wave of change"

Alvin Toffler was born in 1928 in New York on the eve of the Great Depression, and his experience of economic stagnation and the resulting inequalities had a profound effect on him. Therefore, during the student years, Alvin was one of the activists of the left movement.

After graduating from university in 1949, Alvin and his wife Heidi worked in a factory on a production line. Apparently, their interest in trade union activities was stimulated not only by left-wing beliefs, but also by a desire to get acquainted with industrial technologies and their impact on people's daily lives.

After completing his factory adventures, E. Toffler decided to take up journalism. In the late 1950s he was the Washington correspondent for several newspapers, and from 1959 to 1961 served as associate editor of Fortune magazine. During this period of intensive journalistic activity, E. and X. Toffler wrote articles for a variety of publications - from Fortune to Playboy, as well as for the Annals of the American Academy of Science. After studying journalism, E. Toffler decided to devote himself to science and from 1965 to 1970 worked as a teacher at various universities.
E. Toffler's ideas about the relationship between technology and socio-economic changes were formed in the 1960s, when IBM commissioned him to write an article on the long-term social and organizational consequences of the introduction of computers. It was during this period that some of the fundamental ideas of the subsequent works of the scientist were born. For the first time, some topics of his research were outlined in the article "The future as a way of life" ("The future as a way of life"). The main thing in it was the thoughts of E. Toffler that in the future the rate of change, apparently, should increase and that the result of this process will be a deep disorientation of people who are not prepared for the onset of future events. In order to describe the feeling of fear that societies “stuck” in the past will experience, E and X. Toffler introduced the special concept of “future shock”. Alvin Toffler's book Future Shock became an instant international bestseller and has continued to arouse the interest of many readers ever since. In it, E. Toffler proved himself not only one of the outstanding futurologists of our time, but also a brilliant popularizer of ideas about the information society. His scientific merits have been recognized throughout the world, and his writings have received numerous awards in countries such as China, France, Italy and the United States.
The main scientific contribution of E. Toffler is that he clearly demonstrated to a wide range of readers the results of the process of technological change. Perhaps more than anyone else, he succeeded in informing the business community about the deep hidden meaning of what was happening in the last third of the 20th century. continuous change. It was his intuitive understanding of the transformative influence of the knowledge-producing industry that made it possible at a relatively early stage to identify what would later become one of the most significant developments of our era. Back in the mid-1960s, E. Toffler argued that information technology would play a leading role in the economy of the future. Based on his guesses, he concluded that from now on technological changes will occur at a qualitatively higher rate than in the past.
The concept expressed by E. Toffler in "Future Shock" expressed his vision of a society that was more and more torn apart by the premature future. His thesis that the pace of change was too fast for society to absorb reflected the 1960s. moods. After all, it was a time when the number of taken for granted concepts was constantly decreasing. E. Toffler argued that the institutions and value systems associated with industrial civilization became the objects of influence of irresistible forces of change due to an increase in the volume of knowledge. The information explosion has created an external environment in which the future becomes almost indistinguishable from the present. Transience has become the main sign of our life and has led to a radical change in all its spheres - from economic to purely personal. According to E. Toffler, governments and business representatives had to be ready for anything and not expect anything in the future similar to what happened in the past. Today, this view has a significant impact on management theory, but in the early 1970s. E. Toffler's idea of the irreversibility of changes was seen as strange and eccentric.
In the book "The Third Wave" ("The Third Wave") E. Toffler tried to develop a comprehensive scheme of awareness aimed at creating what he called a new post-industrial civilization of change. According to E. Toffler, the first wave of change coincided with the agricultural revolution that began ten thousand years ago. But before it subsided, the Industrial Revolution began in Europe, giving rise to the Second Wave, which quickly overwhelmed most of the world (although agricultural and industrial production continue to coexist and compete with each other in many parts of the world). The second wave of change has transformed the world and modernized economic and social institutions. Its effects are still being felt throughout the world. The "third wave" creates a real threat to industrial civilization, threatens to destroy its institutions, methods and values. E. Toffler argues that it is precisely the analysis of the dynamics generated by the counteraction of the driving forces of the Second and Third waves that will help explain the most important trends in the development of modern society.

As one of the world's leading authorities on change, Alvin Toffler has carefully avoided words such as "trend" or "prediction" in his published writings and insists that no one in the world can say even relatively accurately what the future holds.

His special gift lies in the ability to understand the consequences of the changes that have already occurred and are currently taking place. This is achieved through a comprehensive knowledge of the sciences, technologies and arts, as well as the ability to determine what can happen when complex technological and social changes begin to affect the entrenched attitudes and vested interests of people.

Biography. Alvin Toffler was born in 1928. He traveled a lot around the world, but studied and gained working experience only in the USA. He was a visiting professor at Cornell University and a member of the New School for Social Research, worked as a White House correspondent and business consultant.

Alvin Toffler was an Honorary Doctorate of Literature, Law, Science and Management, a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He and his wife were Distinguished Associate Professors at the National Defense University in Washington.

Heidi's wife took the most active part in the life of Alvin Toffler and helped him in everything that the scientist did not tire of declaring everywhere. It's a long-term partnership: they both studied English and Literature at New York University, then stepped into the reckless bohemian world of New York's post-war Greenwich Village together. In those distant times, they were both fond of poetry and dreamed of becoming writers.

And although Alvin Toffler never had a particular inclination for the exact sciences, he understood at an early age what an important role science and technology play in the modern world and took a course in the history of technology.

For several years the Tofflers worked as journalists; they wrote articles for a variety of publications, from Fortune to Playboy; their reports were published in the economic, scientific and political periodicals of that time.

In 1960, they received an offer from IBM to write a book on the impact of the computer on society, and in particular on the organization. This provided the couple with a great opportunity to learn first hand about high technology, and this experience eventually developed into an all-consuming interest in the topic of change - a topic that would later make the Tofflers famous all over the world.

Future Shock, the first of Toffler's famous trilogy of change, Alvin began writing shortly after completing his research for IBM.

Alvin Toffler is one of the most famous futurists

Basic ideas. Alvin Toffler has written and published several books and countless articles. His philosophy and most of the key ideas for change are summarized in three bestsellers: Future Shock (1970), The Third Wave (1980), and Metamorphoses of Power (1990).

Each of these editions is a stand-alone, dedicated study, but together they form a trilogy that brings together Alvin Toffler's ideas about change and provides an ongoing dialogue with the reader.

Alvin Toffler argues that the first two volumes are a preface to the third, Metamorphoses of Power: “... the central theme of the trilogy is change - what happens to people when the whole society suddenly transforms dramatically into something completely new and unexpected for them. Future Shock looks at the process of change itself - how change affects people and organizations. The "Third Wave" is about the direction of change - where the changes we are witnessing today are taking us. Finally, Metamorphoses of Power deals with the topic of control over future changes - who will determine them and how.

Despite the careful, detailed analysis of changes, various problems and tasks that usually accompany them, the Toffler trilogy is a work full of optimism and hope.

It proves quite convincingly that the rapid changes taking place around us are not at all as chaotic and arbitrary as it seems at first glance; that fairly clear patterns can be discerned in these events and the forces behind them can be identified.

By learning to understand and distinguish between them, we will learn to deal with the problems associated with change on a “strategic” level, and therefore avoid the unpleasant consequences of certain events.

Trilogy: Future Shock. The term “future shock” proposed by Alvin Toffler describes the impact of too frequent and rapid changes on a person so accurately that it quickly and firmly entered the vocabulary of many languages of the world.

Today, the term is widely used to describe the feelings of disorientation, confusion, and impaired decision making that occur when individuals, groups, and societies as a whole are faced with abrupt and prolonged change.

In the preface to The Metamorphoses of Power, Alvin Toffler argues that “... the acceleration of the course of history itself has consequences, regardless of the direction of change. Simply accelerating the pace of events and reaction time to them causes certain consequences, regardless of whether the changes are perceived as bad or good.

Future Shock was written over 30 years ago; it is the true fruit of its author's foresight. Today we are witnessing that he really managed to predict a lot: the collapse of the "family" of countries - owners of nuclear weapons, a revolution in genetics, a return to increased attention to education, the growing role of knowledge in modern society, and much, much more.

"Third Wave". This book describes, perhaps, the most elegant theory of Alvin Toffler, according to which, in addition to the two great and universally recognized bursts in the history of the development of human civilization, a third one is added.

The first wave arose in connection with the advent of agriculture and the revolutionary transition of mankind from the stage of gathering and hunting to the stage of settled farming. It was the result of the constant struggle of people for survival, since it provided them with the stability and protection necessary for the development of arts and technologies, which subsequently served as the basis for the development of civilization in the form in which we see and know it now.

The second wave was the industrial revolution - a sharp leap forward in society in terms of methods of production and organization of work, which eventually led to the development of industrialization. The extraction and use of raw materials, mass production and the increasing use of complex technologies have significantly increased the level of well-being and comfort of the peoples of those countries who were then able to understand the importance and seriousness of such changes.

The third wave, according to Alvin Toffler, is a post-industrial, information-based revolution that began in the 1950s with a series of major changes in both technology and society.

In The Third Wave, Toffler predicts with surprising insight both the powerful impact of information technology and biotechnology on the further economic development of society, and the coming changes in production methods, marketing and work patterns that we are witnessing today.

His foresight was especially evident in how accurately he predicted the emergence and development of niche marketing and the rise of consumer power. He even introduced the term "prosumer" (prosumer = producer + consumer) - one who consumes goods produced by himself.

In the preface to this book, Alvin Toffler recalls the seemingly chaotic changes of the 1960s that led to the emergence of a culture of "... antagonists at war with each other, immersed in fragmented data and careful, never-missing analysis" and climate. , in which "... synthesis is not just useful - in fact, it plays a decisive role."

The "Third Wave" is dedicated to this very topic - the need for synthesis. According to the author, the book itself is “a product of a large-scale synthesis. It describes the old civilization in which many of us grew up and gives an accurate and comprehensive picture of the new civilization that is being born. And this new civilization is so profoundly revolutionary that it defies all our old assumptions.”

Further, the author writes: “The world, which is rapidly emerging as a result of the collision of new values and technologies, new geopolitical relations, new lifestyles and ways of communication, requires completely new ideas and analogies, classifications and concepts. We cannot fit this nascent, still embryonic world of tomorrow into the categories accepted yesterday. Orthodox social attitudes or sentiments are not suitable for this new world either.”

"Metamorphoses of power". In the final book of the trilogy, Toffler takes his analysis to a whole new level - the level of exploring how individuals, organizations and entire nations will be affected by inevitable changes in the perception and use of power. He writes of "a new system of power that is coming to replace the one that existed in our industrial past."

The term “power metamorphoses” in the title of the book describes something completely different from what we are accustomed to the phrase “shift of power”. Alvin Toffler writes that if the shift of power implies its transfer, transfer to other hands, then the "metamorphoses of power" are profound changes in its very nature. It is not only about its transfer, but also about transformation.

In The Metamorphoses of Power, we are reminded of the three basic sources of power: violence, wealth, and knowledge. All companies operate, as Toffler calls it, in the "field of power" where the three mentioned instruments of power are in constant operation.

And, as is convincingly described throughout Alvin Toffler's trilogy, the rise in the importance of knowledge, among other things, has led to a dramatic shift in the balance of these three forces. The author of Metamorphoses of Power does not offer us a quick solution to the problems associated with the changes that have taken place in the world and society.

Toffler writes that as individuals, organizations, and national economies move further away from traditional sources of power and become more dependent on knowledge, the situation will only get worse. In his opinion, these problems will not be solved even when the conflicts of power can be resolved.

Moreover, he foresees great difficulties ahead, due to the increasingly noticeable stratification of the world into "fast" and "slow" economies.

Another interesting idea, presented in the first two books of the trilogy, but most fully developed in The Metamorphoses of Power, is the phenomenon that Toffler called "demassification." In it, the author sees the end of the trend of "mass" decisions that prevailed at the end of the 20th century.

He writes that mass marketing is giving way to "niche" and micromarketing; that mass production is being replaced by individualized production of products; that large corporations are broken up into small autonomous divisions.

According to Alvin Toffler, even politics and the concept of statehood will be affected by "demassification" - an influence caused by the increased awareness of well-informed individuals and set in motion by the steady development of information technology.

Alvin Toffler's Ideas: A Modern Perspective. As compelling, interesting, and influential as Toffler's trilogy is, it's worth remembering that even the last of its three books was written in 1990.

It should also not be considered that the activity of this futurist researcher and author began with this remarkable work or ended with it. There was also, for example, the book Adaptive Corporation, published in 1985, which was based on data collected by Toffler in 1969 and 1970, when he was a consultant at AT&T.

The company's management ignored it, but over time, when the time came for the high-profile revelations of Bell, the value of this work increased dramatically. It uses the example of AT&T to discuss organizational change and adaptation.

After the publication of the trilogy, Alvin Toffler wrote a number of other books and articles, and after the publication of The Metamorphoses of Power, the role of Toffler's wife Heidi was officially recognized at the official level. Although many observers consider the Tofflers' contribution to world politics to be insignificant, these authors, deeply respected by political leaders in many countries, played an important role in improving relations between East and West.

One of their admirers is Mikhail Gorbachev, whom the couple met on several occasions and who was greatly influenced by their ideas.

Before the tragic events in Tiananmen Square, the Tofflers had traveled to China many times; they met with the leaders of this country and positively influenced its policy. Today, their books are banned in China, although, of course, as everyone knows, banned literature often has a much greater effect on people than permitted literature.

Of the major Toffler publications that have come out in the past ten years, War and Anti-War is considered the most significant. It talks about war and weaponry, suggesting that changes in the rules of doing business are accompanied by serious changes in the way people approach war.

The authors write that in many respects these changes, as well as in trade and production, are caused by the rapid progress of information technology. And, it should be noted, their theories have already been confirmed during the US military operations in the Persian Gulf.

However, the most accurate and, unfortunately, correct prediction to date, Alvin Toffler, made in his interview with New Science magazine, when he spoke about the inability of the armed forces in our usual form to provide sufficient control over the actions of terrorists.

To illustrate his point, he then quoted a former high-ranking US military intelligence officer who said that if he had 20 men and a million dollars at his disposal, he could shake the whole of America. Just seven years later, the events of September 11, 2001 were a terrible confirmation of the truth of these words.

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