The third wave
by Alvin Toffler · first published 1980
50% recommend44% neutral6% critical
Why HN recommends it
Sweeping big-picture account of how technology reshapes society across historical waves. It frames economic and tech change and has led some to change careers.
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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…
on “Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?” ↗PG should also read The Third Wave by Alvin Toeffler. This sounds very much like his thinking.
on “The High-Res Society” ↗The Third Wave - Alvin Toffler Listen Little Man - Wilhelm Reich Praise to Hell - Gunduz Vassaf (actully I read this book in turkish and I don't know is it translated to english but I still want to recommend this…
on “Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?” ↗…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.
on “Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it” ↗…mentioned McKenna! 'True Hallucinations' for example. Skip everything to do with I Ching and Timewave. - Illuminatus! trilogy was only mentioned once for some reason (but then horrible to read) - Toffler - Third Wave - Gibson - Neuromancer - Hesse - Demian - P K Dick - Electric Sheep - J A West - Serpent in the sky - R A Wilson - Prometheus Rising and some awesomely trippy, mindbending 'children's books': -…
on “Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?” ↗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…
on “Disney's movie dominance has a dark side, independent theatre warns” ↗…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.)
on “Alvin Toffler Investigated by FBI for Communist Activities” ↗…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.
on “Normalising Layoffs/Firing” ↗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.
on “Ask HN: Book Recommendations for understanding how AI will shape society?” ↗This same book was written half a century ago by another member of the US libertarian elite: Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave (1980). Which itself was a bad ripoff of Zbigniew Brzezinski's Between Two Ages (1970).
on “The World After Capital (2018)” ↗I read Toffler's Third Wave in high school as part of a class. A lot of what Alvin Toffler talked about was over my head at the time. Still, the material was very interesting to me and I looked forward to the new world he described.…
on “Alvin Toffler, Author of ‘Future Shock,’ Dies at 87” ↗Heh. This reminds me of Toffler's books, like "The Third Wave". He thought - in the 70s! - that the amount of information that people had to absorb was too much and people would soon be unable to adapt. This was twenty years before the web.
on “Uber Self-Driving Truck Packed with Budweiser Makes First Delivery in Colorado” ↗…not their job. What you are describing is the 90s approach to IT. These companies disappear really fast. IT is changing just like agriculture was changing long time ago. Toffler talks about this in The Third Wave. Old approach: lets do everything by hand New approach: automate most of the things you can >> In an unjust world, you end up with three silos. Programmers say their code compiles on their machine,…
on “Why doesn’t anyone weep for Docker?” ↗Alvin Toffler wrote a book about this in a much broader context, also called the Third Wave.
on “The third great wave” ↗…Dutch business owners were exclusively self-employed in 2008." You can really see that this freelance society we live in is very much like what Alvin Toffler was talking about in 1980 with his book The Third Wave: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave_(Toffler)
on “Is Jobless Growth Inevitable?” ↗