RIDING A BRAVE NEW WAVE

Press, 6 September 1980, Page 17

RIDING A BRAVE NEW WAVE

The Third Wave. ' By- Ahriri Tofffer. Collins, 1980. 544 pp. $17.95. _ .Goulter) Things happen' awfully' quickly these dayshrid. already .- Alvin Toffler’s “Future’Shock” is’aithing of the past. It seems" that in the decade which has gone by Toffler has decided that the news; is,'not -all bad, and if we can only- cope with the traumas of the immediate -years“ ahead, we could just make? it? into the bright -ealms of a future better than anything we had dared, imagine. To., show us how, he now, presents "The Third Wave.” ■■ It .is in -no sense a modest effort The title alludes -to . the three movements into which Toffler divides the known history of mankind. The First Wave was agriculture which rescued man from a precarious nomadic existence. The agricultural civilisation lasted for thousands of years until, just a few hundred years ago, a Second Wave surged across the face of the globe: ■ the industrial revolution. This revolution brought many benefits — such as the refrigerator, the DC-3, and a lengthened life-span — but essentially’ it is the villain in Toffler’s scheme. It is industrialisation which is resp6ns i bl e for regimentation, standardisation, centralisation, and a variety of other nasty, words in Toffler’s vocabulary.

But -all this is changing. We live in an age of post-industrialisation and there.are “powerful.reasons for longrange optimism.” • The. saviour is electronic technology;, it -is the Third Wave.which will.return us, in fact, to a new pastoral age. It is as if Toffler has been there in some sense .— looked long and hard into the ineffable mysteries of’the silicon/chip — and ' found that ity Repeatedly-he. reminds us that we are surrounded by chaos, but notrto worry; social decay, according to one of hris coy-metaphors, is the compost . heap .of a new civilisation, a ; ’ • -- -

Much' of - the - .book, is ~ spent in 'describing that decay, and the evidence is impressive, ; as 7 Three, Mile Island, the Iranian crisis, and, yes, the South Island movement (evidence of the “crack-up of the nation”) flash through the pages as elements in a dazzling choreography of data. One imagines c. phalanx of researchers labouring frantically behirJ Mr Toffler seated at his word processor, cooly juggling their evidence into a pattern which -means something., For that is the impulse behind the book. Toffler claims that the transition period we live'in has produced a mass identity crisis' and sense of anarchy, and he seems only too glad to help us out. No doubt-his market researchers were correct to suggest that the time

is right to proclaim that the contemporary' crises add up - to soiriething, and, with the help of the new technology, something worth while. It is a message we want and need to hear, and we should be grateful to Toffler for proclaiming it. But'his diagnosis of contemporary civilisation is tired and largely superfluous, having- been said 'many times -before. We simply~do. not need to be; told, for instance,-that there is a pressing -need to find new, renewable energy resources, but Toffler devotes considerable rhetoric- to the issue, as if it. were-inew..And his.prognosis for the technological future rests; tyn the end, dri, little ' more than brave words, overloaded, metaphors, and 1 jangling psycho-babble. ■

We are told we will live in an “intelligent environment,” our homes will be “electronic cottages” (note the nostalgia), bur community a global “telecommunity.” We will,- in fact, inhabit a new “psycho-sphere.” In the ultimate sophistry we learn that the integrated circuitry of the new technology, where a single microprocessor replaces a hundred moving parts, is the herald of a new post-Cartesian integrated man. The chip will make you whole again. The future deserves a more substantial, a less fanciful apologist than Alvin Toffler.