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Review:
Revolutionary Wealth
Ever
since Future Shock made waves in 1970 with its vision
of a future moving faster than our ability to cope with it,
the husband and wife team of Alvin & Heidi Toffler have become
the go-to futurists for people trying to understand the world
from a macro perspective. Their new tome, Revolutionary Wealth,
is another birds-eye view of the world as it is and an educated
guess as to where it's going.
The Tofflers take the position that knowledge is the key to
creating a richer (literally and figuratively) world. The good
news is that knowledge is not finite and can be shared and expanded
upon to create greater wealth for everyone. The bad news is
that knowledge becomes obsolete so quickly and is so quickly
replaced by new knowledge that our slow-moving institutions
can?t keep up. In addition, those who lack access to knowledge
may be left behind.
This can lead to what the Tofflers call ?desynchronization,?
which can give rise to everything from the ethics violations
of many major corporations (thanks to their greater knowledge
of the market than the slow-moving government regulators who
are supposed to be watching them), to schools that no longer
work, to terrorism. In addition, those who don?t feel comfortable
with the pace of change, or feel that changing times threaten
their livelihood, will drag their feet and attempt to hold change
back. (An interesting example that the Tofflers offer is the
attack on scientific advances by religious, environmental, and
other groups who feel their turf is threatened.)
The Tofflers spend a good deal of space in the book discussing
?prosumers?, or consumers who also produce. This generally refers
to all the things people do that keep the world running even
though they don?t get paid, from taking care of a sick relative
to raising kids. More interesting to the wealth discussion,
perhaps, is that thanks to the Internet and other technologies,
amateur prosumer scientists and techies have a greater ability
to create valuable products and knowledge than ever before.
( An example is the Linux operating system--free, open-source
Web server software that has been constantly improved by thousands
of volunteer programmers and is now used by major corporations
and governments.)
Revolutionary
Wealth clearly believes that China has the capacity to shift
tremendous amounts of wealth its way (this has already begun,
actually). China?s ?twin track? strategy of using cheap labor
for manufacturing while aggressively building its knowledge
sector has been extremely successful. But China is not alone.
India is also on a similar path, as are countries such as South
Korea.
The
Tofflers are excited about the ability of the knowledge economy
to lift people out of poverty. To a certain extent, it?s a trickle-down
effect?as the world?s wealth increases and more workers are
needed to feed the machine, the poorest countries get invested
in and more people are put to work. But they are also talking
about programs such as microloans in small communities, and
using Internet access in remote areas to help people compete
in the knowledge arena.
As in all the Toffler books, there are interesting tidbits that
make you entertain possibilities you never thought of before.
Revolutionary Wealth discusses the potential for a ?personal
fabricator??people already download and edit music at home,
eventually they could download patterns and have a desktop fabricator
actually create toys or other items right in front of them.
Money technologies are discussed, such as the potential for
?boycott? credit cards that restrict purchases from stores that
a movement deems to be on the wrong side of the ideological
divide. And what about the rights of clones? The Tofflers see
a future in which the next group fighting discrimination could
be the people cloned from your very own DNA.
Revolutionary
Wealth paints a picture of a world in overdrive, with vast
potential for creating a higher standard of living across the
globe. But it?s a messy path, and the unpredictable actions
of those who don?t feel the benefits or who are inevitably left
behind could cause it all to crumble. No doubt the future will
not be as glorious as it might be or as difficult as it could
be. Where things go right and where they go wrong can?t easily
be predicted, but Revolutionary Wealth puts you smack
dab at the fork in the road, fascinatingly describing all the
possible paths.
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