Technology as a Way of Revealing

Waves of Technology
ALVIN TOFFLER-American writer , futurist and businessman known
for his works discussing modern technologies
Before Agriculture
The First Wave:Agricultural Revolution
• Domestication – process of taming, cultivating of
controlling plants or animals that were originally wild,
Farming and irrigation – more productive than hunting!
• Use of living batteries and renewable sources
• Land – basis of economy, culture, politics
• Decentralized Economy (with exceptions)
• - Artisans guilds
• - Stratification
• Work = labor, animal
The Second Wave: The Industrial Revolution

18th to 19th centuries

 Convergence of factors…

• - Discovery of “new worlds”

• - Population growth, movement into towns
• - Pressure on timber forests – prompted
more use of coal.
• - Invention of the engine
Industrial Revolution change production and consumption by

• Differentiation
• Mass production
• Gap between owners of technology &
laborers:
 Industrial Revolution change families:

• Factors needed workers, especially those

willing to move place to place as needed.
• Thus, key functions of the family were
delegated to institutions:
a. Education – to schools
b. Care of the elderly – to nursing home
• Hence: the “streamlined” nuclear family!
 Beliefs of the Second Wave:

Nature as a resource to be exploited; man in

opposition with nature and dominating it.
Humans as pinnacle of evolution; industrialized
societies as superior
The Progress Principle: history flows irreversibly
towards a better life.
 The Third Wave: The
Information/Knowledge Age
Transitions in the Third Wave (Post industrial
Society)
• Integration of more functions into fewer parts
• Massification, standardization (2nd wave) vs.
differentiation, customization (3rd wave)
• For products as well as means of work (e.g.
flexibility in terms of work arrangement)
• Value placed on multiple intelligences and
competencies (and higher educational attainment
• “Prosumers” (producers are consumers and vice-
versa). “Do-it-Yourselfers”
Agricultural Revolution Industrial Revolution Information Revolution

Focuses primarily in food Differentiation of jobs Total automation

production

Need for labor workforce is Use of coal for engine fuels
at it’s greatest responsible for easier and
more efficient
transportation
Gap between owners of
technology & laborers
Differentiation of jobs
Least work force needed
Emergence of prosumers
Integration of more
functions into fewer parts
flexibility in terms of work
arrangement

With different distinguishing characteristics of the 3 waves of

revolution,they also have simmilarities in which the all brought
contributions to human flourishing, all are sunbmitted to
continous unending progress and improvements, mass
reproduction and standarization
 Technology as an Indicator of Development
• Technological autonomy is the capacity to decide
which technology to import & develop
• Technology Autonomy =Well-established tech
infrastructure (universities, R&D laboratories) and
trained manpower
• What about less developed countries?