The third wave

What Hacker News says

1. thensomeJun 2023
   Hmm not necessarily just ai, but Futureshock, The Third Wave, and other related stuff by Alvin Toffler has really influenced my thinking. There are some things that don't hold up in any book about tech, but i like his writing in general.
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2. atemerevOct 2022
   Because the entire economic structure that supported “jobs” has deteriorated and became unsustainable. It was only working in industrial society with tangible outputs. “Jobs” were a temporary development only suitable for a particular social structure: industrial capitalism. Now we still have capitalism, but no more industrial society.

   See Alvin Toffler’s “Third Wave” for more detailed treatment.

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3. mwattsunAug 2022
   The accident at Three Mile Island and the film "China Syndrome" turned the public against it in America. The prejudice still lingers. I was working as a reactor tech on a nuclear submarine shortly after and decide before I got out that there was no future in nuclear. I became a computer programmer instead. Alvin Toffler's book "The Third Wave" convinced me to do this.
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4. okareamanAug 2021
   I came of age before blogs and frankly, don't see any blog posts that could be life changing for an older person, so I'll add a life changing book and song.

   The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler, the sequel to Future Shock. I was a nuclear trained engineer in the Navy. This book convinced me not to pursue a career in nuclear power after the Navy, which was the standard career path for guys like me, because it was "Second Wave." The Third Wave was information technology, which I pursued despite having no training in it.

   At the height of my success, "The Arrangement" by Joni Mitchell made me realize that money hadn't made me happy and pursuing more was not something I wanted to do.

       You could have been more
       Than a name on the door
       On the thirty-third floor in the air
       More than a credit card
       Swimming pool in the backyard
       
       While you still have the time
       You could get away and find
       A better life, you know the grind is so ungrateful
       Racing cars, whiskey bars
       No one cares who you really are

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5. atemerevAug 2018
   OK, but it is no secret that Toffler indeed was a Communist and later a committed Marxist. It is also known that the Soviets ran numerous spy rings and infiltrated unions and worker organizations throughout the US; the Red Scare was perhaps an overreaction, but it was not completely unfounded. So it is no surprise that he was heavily watched by FBI and others.

   (I am Russian, libertarian, and keep some interest in Cold War history. By the way, Toffler authored amazing books; if you haven’t read “Third Wave” yet, you totally should. It was finished in 1980 and it completely describes the future of today: from societal anxiety from Silicon Valley automation to the rise of Trumpism. I was really impressed.)

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6. JakeAlJul 2018
   I just want to recommend people read the Alvin Toffler quadrilogy as he described decades ago the changes that would take place due to technology.

   In The Third Wave he provides a historical context and background for the evolution of technology and it's impact on society; In Future Shock he talks about the growing pains as technology enables the individual to do things the group (government, education, business) could only do before; In Powershift he discusses the shift in power from those at the top to the individual; In Revolutionary Wealth he discusses the new producer-consumer business models.

   If you look at social media and businesses such as YouTube, Kickstarter and Patreon they are the future, and traditional businesses can only survive by embracing and capitalizing on their value to these new models, or by clinging to the old models as they die off which means Disney buying up as much content as possible as distribution costs drop and channels approach infinity. They are trying to lock up as much popular content as they can for the built in audience and brand because they are a goliath that can't compete with an army of Davids.

   This has all happened before, all you have to do is look at the history of print, live performances, radio, television, cable, even web portals. It's a predictable cycle of growth and consolidation with an existing system as it spawns new systems independent of but predicated upon the systems that came before it. Marshall McLuhan spoke a lot about such things as well as Neil Postman.

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