Issue: Saturday, July 15, 1995 - page 1

In a June 1996 Wired magazine article, "The War Against the Future," Pew Research Center Director Andrew Kohut told John Heilemann that "in general, people used to be hopeful about the future. They assumed things would get progressively better. Now, they worry intensely about everything related to the future. They sense a sort of ... unraveling."
   This near ubiquitous anxiety toppled the existing legislative order of the federal government in 1994 and has threatened every institution, value, ideal and I-beam within this society's architecture from home to office to neighborhood. Most people rate the future on par with a trip to the dentist. They have come to expect cavities instead of clean teeth.
   But a group of philosophers, historians, economists and generalists have been gazing into the future with unabashed optimism since the early 1980s. Just as the gaffer once looked into his glass-blown crystal ball to check for clarity, these progenitors of the Third Wave apply a radical view to the future. "The Third Wave is for those who think the human story has only just begun," writes Alvin Toffler in introduction to his book, "The Third Wave."
   The issues and optimism raised by this outlook frame the week five debate, "The Third Wave: Understanding Our Future." Toffler describes this time as a period of transition. The second and third waves of civilization are converging on this decade. Toffler's "wavefront" analysis is both understandably simple and intensely complex. For brevity's sake, he synthesizes history on a grand scale, tracking the leading edge of distinct wavefronts in human history, that of the agricultural revolution (First Wave), industrial revolution (Second Wave) and the current information revolution (Third Wave).
   Toffler's book lifts readers out of the mire of details and microfocal perspectives to a cross-disciplined, omni-present look at the movement of human history. But his large-scale insights are hotwired to massive evidence and "what may be called a semi-systematic model of civilization," Toffler writes.
   His text presents scenarios for the development of each wavefront worldwide. The uneasiness starts when the sections of the world entering the First Wave collide with those experiencing the Second Wave. Cultures clash. Countries clash. Nations rise out of the flames. For example, in the United States, Toffler recognizes the Civil War as the battle of "economic and social tensions between First Wave (Southern) and Second Wave (Northern) forces (which) grew in intensity until 1861, when they broke into armed violence."
   When Toffler theorizes about the onrushing Third Wave, he discusses the post-standardization of minds and the de-massification of groups which "send and receive large amounts of their own imagery to one another." He describes the rise of the electronic cottage, a new production system that will shift people from the office back to "where they came from originally: the home." If this were to happen, Toffler writes "every institution we know from the family to the school to the corporation, would be transformed."
   Not every futurist prognosticates from the same perspective. Economist Robert Heilbroner details a distant and more recent past in which there was no "vision of the future" concerning the betterment of the "material outlook of peoples. They were either unconcerned or could not anticipate "self-generated" changes within their lifetimes.
   In his 1995 book, "Visions of the Future," Heilbroner looks at history from the material perspectives of the cultures within these wavefronts. His text fills the second of this season's Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle selection series. Heilbroner speaks at the CLSC Roundtable, Thursday afternoon, and from the Amphitheater podium, Friday morning.

   John Naisbitt has also contributed greatly to this 'science of the future.' His book, "Megatrends," was hailed as the "field guide of the future" by the Washington Post in 1982.
   Much different from Heilbroner or Toffler, Naisbitt utilizes statistics and other data to bolster his claims. In one passage, he cites findings from a 1967 U.S. Department of Commerce study which indicated that 46 percent of the GNP was related to primary or secondary information-sector work.
   Almost 30 years later, Americans are beginning to notice some of the anticipated surf of the Third Wave. The rise of the Internet (World Wide Web), the self-help and do-it-yourself movements each appeared on the pages of Third Wave authors more than 15 years ago.
   In "Megatrends," Naisbitt writes about a shift toward states' rights, which Americans have only recently begun to experience. "My neighbors in Washington, D.C., don't believe it. But the reality remains: State and local governments are the most important political entities in America," Naisbitt writes.
   Unlike the other trend visionaries, author Jeremy Rifkin guards any optimism he has about the future. He seems more grounded in actively sculptung the 'better world' described by futurists.
   In a recent lecture televised by C-SPAN, he posed the question: Should people serve technology or should technology serve people? Carrying this message throughout his address, Rifkin cited two examples of putting technology to work: shorter work weeks of 25-30 hours and the adoption by corporations of 'flextime' schedules to better suit employees' needs.
   For Rifkin, the advantages of a more hospitable use of technology are evident: Dual wage-earner parents would have more time to spend with their children and communities, possibly rewiring the circuits of American values. A greater number of people would be able to enter the work force, thereby spreading wealth and providing more people with a stake in this country's future.
   But he cautioned that these scenarios raise tough questions about the status of institutions like health care, public education and government that demand America's attention.
Rifkin's question of technology's application might be a good start, but it will take what Toffler calls "some intelligent help from us," if America has a chance to "turn out to be the first truly humane civilization in recorded history."
   No simple task for one week—for Chautauqua or for America—but one that must nevertheless be obliged.