Word: toffler
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SOMETHING INSIDE Alvin Toffler rebels at the convention of mealtime. During the technological age, he notes on page 135 of his very thick book The Third Wave, "eating became technologized with the diffusion of forks and other specialized table implements." And every fall and spring, Toffler frets mightily at the ritual of standard time. "Periodically, in unison, as though motivated by a single will, millions of people set their clocks back or forward an hour, and whatever our inner, subjective sense of things may tell us when time is dragging, or conversely when it seems to be whizzing...
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...Toffler deals in what he might call meta-cepts. He divides history into three waves: the agricultural, the industrial and a rising Third Wave, driven by computer technology that threatens to transform the way most of the world lives and thinks. It is a world of "info-spheres," "techno-spheres," "biospheres" and "psycho-spheres." A Third Wave society would be "de-massified" by computer-controlled factories that retool easily and make standardization obsolete. The traditional financial ties between producers and consumers would be altered to create "prosumers" who could make and maintain goods for their...
...Toffler's postindustrial preview also contains "electronic cottages," homes equipped with computer terminals, two-way TV and assorted hot lines. Citizens may not have to leave the house to conduct business, shop or even vote. In such an age of bread and circuitry there is no telling how powerful one might become. Says Toffler solemnly: "One can imagine a stage at which even ordinary television becomes interactive, so that instead of merely watching some Archie Bunker or Mary Tyler Moore of the future, we are actually able to talk to them and influence their behavior in the show...
...Toffler is a man of many styles and voices. Much of his book reads as if it were hastily dictated in airline terminals and then punched into a word processor. Exclamations like "versatility is 'in' " could have been inspired by a Paris fashion show. He can sound as grim as Charlton Heston in a disaster film or as upbeat as a born-again Christian, or, as diversified Third Wavers might prefer, a Zen Baptist. There are also some hot-tub exhortations: "As Third Wave civilization matures, we shall create not a Utopian man or woman who towers over...