Alvin Toffler

Pre-reading

Alvin Toffler (1928-2016) is an American writer and futurist. Born in New York City and educated at New York University, Alvin Toffler is one of the most influential contemporary social thinkers.

Starting with their ground-breaking global bestselling classics Future Shock (1970) and The Third Wave (1980), Alvin and his wife Heidi Toffler have helped multi-millions of readers around the world anticipate the overwhelming sweeping changes of tomorrow.

In these and other books, the Tofflers decades ago anticipated cloning, virtual reality, niche markets, information overload, work-at-home, product customization, the “de-massification”of the mass media, the threat of terrorism and many other features of contemporary life. But in the Tofflers’ works, these disparate forecasts are all mere details of a far larger canvas. Some of them have missed the mark — we are still waiting for the “paperless office”. But few today challenge the central, sweeping thesis of their work since the mid-1960s — that a knowledge-based new economy was arising to replace the industrial age. This concept is now accepted currency among governments, economists and thinkers around the world. Toffler’s latest work, Revolutionary Wealth (2006), is a book on the dynamic new economy of tomorrow —how we work, run companies, raise families, invest and think about both money and nonmoney. It attacks key features of conventional economics as it paints the emerging global“wealth system” of the decades ahead. Each of their books has been hailed for originality, clarity and unusual insight into the dangers and promises as well as challenges and opportunities racing toward us.

Alvin and Heidi Toffler are known around the world for their work that has influenced presidents and prime ministers, top leaders in fields ranging from business to non-profit organizations, as well as educators, psychologists and social scientists. As Time magazine puts it, they “set the standard by which all subsequent would-be futurists have been measured.”

The following essay is taken from Chapter 13 of The Third Wave.

Prompts for Your Reading

1.The word “de-massify” is a coined word by the author. How is it formed and how would you infer its meaning?

2.In what way are images significant to our life and action?

3.What does the author mean by “a warehouse of images” (Paragraph 2)?

4.Judging from the context, what do you think are meant by the First Wave and the Second Wave respectively?

5.What characterizes the First Wave images and how do the images define or affect people’s behavior and cognition?

6.What characterizes the Second Wave images and how do the images define or affect people’s behavior and cognition?

7.How do newspapers and magazine change in the Third Wave?

8.Does the same change happen to radio and TV?

9.Why is the cable system of particular significance in the Third Wave communication?

10.In the Third Wave, newspapers, magazines, radio and TV all undergo different changes. But these changes all seem to point to one same outcome. What is it?

11.The Third Wave was written before the year 1980. What prophetic opinions and visions are presented in this part?

[1] An information bomb is exploding in our midst1, showering us with a shrapnel of images and drastically changing the way each of us perceives and acts upon our private world. In shifting from a Second Wave to a Third Wave info-sphere, we are transforming our own psyches.

[2] Each of us creates in his skull a mind-model of reality — a warehouse of images. Some of these are visual, others auditory, even tactile. Some are only “percepts” — traces of information about our environment, like a glimpse of blue sky seen from the corner of the eye. Others are “linkages” that define relationships, like the two words “mother” and “child”. Some are simple, others complex and conceptual, like the idea that “inflation is caused by rising wages.” Together such images add up to our picture of the world — locating us in time, space, and the network of personal relationships around us.

[3] These images do not spring from nowhere. They are formed, in ways we do not understand, out of the signals or information reaching us from the environment. And as our environment convulses with change — as our jobs, homes, churches, schools, and political arrangements feel the impact of the Third Wave — the sea of information around us also changes.

[4] Before the advent of mass media, a First Wave child growing up in a slowly changing village built his or her model of reality out of images received from a tiny handful of sources — the teacher, the priest, the chief or official and, above all, the family. As psychologist-futurist Herbert Gerjuoy2 has noted: “There was no television or radio in the home to give the child a chance to meet many different kinds of strangers from many different walks of life and even from different countries... Very few people ever saw a foreign city... The result [was that] people had only a small number of different people to imitate or model themselves after... Their choices were even more limited by the fact that the people they could model themselves after were themselves all of limited experience with other people.” The images of the world built up by the village child, therefore, were extremely narrow in range. The messages he or she received, moreover, were highly redundant in at least two senses: they came, usually, in the form of casual speech, which is normally filled with pauses and repetitions, and they came in the form of connected “strings”of ideas reinforced by various information givers. The child heard the same “thou shalt nots”in church and in school. Both reinforced the messages sent out by the family and the state. Consensus in the community, and strong pressures for conformity, acted on the child from birth to narrow still further the range of acceptable imagery and behavior.

[5] The Second Wave multiplied the number of channels from which the individual drew his or her picture of reality. The child no longer received imagery from nature or people alone but from newspapers, mass magazines, radio and, later on, from television. For the most part, church, state, home, and school continued to speak in unison, reinforcing one another. But now the mass media themselves became a giant loudspeaker. And their power was used across regional, ethnic, tribal, and linguistic lines to standardize the images flowing in society’s mind-stream. Certain visual images, for example, were so widely massdistributed and were implanted in so many millions of private memories that they were transformed, in effect, into icons. The image of Lenin, jaw thrust out in triumph under a swirling red flag, thus became as iconic for millions of people as the image of Jesus on the cross. The image of Charlie Chaplin3 with derby and cane, or Hitler raging at Nuremberg, the image of bodies stacked like cords of wood at Buchenwald4, of Churchill making the V sign or Roosevelt wearing a black cape, of Marilyn Monroe’s skirt blown by the wind, of hundreds of media stars and thousands of different, universally recognizable commercial products — the bar of Ivory soap in the united States, the Morinaga5 chocolate in Japan, the bottle of Perrier6 in France — all became standard parts of a universal image-file.

[6] This centrally produced imagery, injected into the “mass mind” by the mass media, helped produce the standardization of behavior required by the Industrial production system.

[7] Today the Third Wave is drastically altering all this. As change accelerates in society, it forces a parallel acceleration within us. New information reaches us and we are forced to revise our image-file continuously at a faster and faster rate. Older images based on past reality must be replaced, for, unless we update them, our actions become divorced from reality and we become progressively less competent. We find it impossible to cope.

[8] This speedup of image processing inside us means that images grow more and more temporary; one-shot sitcoms, Polaroid snapshots, Xerox copies, and disposable graphics pop up and vanish. Ideas, beliefs, and attitudes skyrocket into consciousness, are challenged, defied, and suddenly fade into nowhere-ness; scientific and psychological theories are overthrown and superseded daily. Ideologies crack. Celebrities pirouette7 fleetingly across our awareness. Contradictory political and moral slogans assail us. It is difficult to make sense of this swirling phantasmagoria8, to understand exactly how the image-manufacturing process is changing. For the Third Wave does more than simply accelerate our information flows; it transforms the deep structure of information on which our daily actions depend.

[9] As the Third Wave thunders in, the mass media, far from expanding their influence, are suddenly being forced to share it. They are being beaten back on many fronts at once by what I call the “de-massified media”.

[10] Newspapers provide the first example. The oldest of the Second Wave’s mass media, newspapers are losing their readers. By 1973 U.S. newspapers had reached a combined aggregate circulation of 63million copies daily. Since 1973, however, instead of adding circulation, they have begun to lose it. By 1978 the total had declined to 62 million and worse was in store. The percentage of Americans who read a paper every day also fell, from 69 percent in 1972 to 62 percent in 1977, and some of the nation’s most important papers were the hardest hit. While numerous smaller papers cropped up in many parts of the country, major U.S. dailies like the Cleveland News, the Hartford Times, the Detroit Times, Chicago Today, or the Long Island Press all fell by the wayside. A similar pattern appeared in Britain where, between 1965 and 1975, the national dailies lost fully 8 percent of their circulation.

[11] Nor were such losses due merely to the rise of television. Each of today’s mass-circulation dailies now faces increasing competition from a burgeoning flock of minicirculation weeklies, biweeklies, and so-called “shoppers9” that serve not the metropolitan mass market but specific neighborhoods and communities within it, providing far more localized advertising and news. Having reached saturation, the big-city mass-circulation daily is in deep trouble. De-massified media are snapping at its heels.

[12] Mass magazines offer a second example. From the mid-1950s on, hardly a year has passed without the death in the united States of a major magazine. Life, Look, the Saturday Evening Post —each went to its grave, later to undergo resurrection as a smallcirculation ghost of its former self. Between 1970 and 1977, despite a 14 million rise in U.S. population, the combined aggregate circulation of the remaining top twenty-five magazines dropped by 4 million. Simultaneously, the united States experienced a population explosion of mini-magazines — thousands of brand new magazines aimed at small, special-interest, regional, or even local markets. Pilots and aviation buffs today can choose among literally scores of periodicals edited just for them. Teen-agers, scuba divers, retired people, women athletes, collectors of antique cameras, tennis nuts, skiers, and skateboarders each have their own press.

[13] With new, fast, cheap short-run printing presses, every organization, community group, or religious cult today can afford to print its own publication. Even smaller groups churn periodicals on the copying machines that have become ubiquitous in American offices. The mass magazine has lost its once powerful influence in national life. The de-massified magazine — the minimagazine — is rapidly taking its place.

[14] But the impact of the Third Wave in communications is not confined to the print media. Between 1900 and 1910 the number of radio stations in the united States climbed from 2,336, to 5,359. In a period when population rose only 35 percent, radio stations increased by 129 percent. This means that instead of one station for every 65,000Americans, there is now one for every 38,000, and it means the average listener has more programs to choose from. The mass audience is cut up among more stations. The diversity of offerings, has also sharply increased, with different stations appealing to specialized audience segments instead of to the hitherto undifferentiated mass audience. Relentlessly, newer forms of audio communication chip away at what remains of the mass audience.

[15] Not until 1977, however, did the Second Wave media suffer their most startling and significant defeat. For a generation the most powerful and the most “massifying” of the media has, of course, been television. In 1977 the picture tube began to flicker. Wrote Time magazine, “All fall, broadcast and ad executives nervously peeked at the figures... they could not believe what they were seeing... For the first time in history, television viewing declined.”“Nobody,” mumbled one astonished ad man, “ever assumed that viewership would go down.”

[16] Even now explanations abound. We are told the shows are even more miserable than in the past. That there is too much of this and not enough of that... But the deeper truth is only beginning to emerge that the day of the all-powerful centralized network that controls image production is waning. The Third Wave communications media are subverting the dominance of the Second Wave media lords on a broad front.

[17] Cable television today already reaches into 14.5 million American homes and is likely to spread with hurricane force in the early 1980s.Things will move even faster once the shift is made from copper wires to cheap fiber optic systems that send light pulsing through hair-thin fibers. And like short-run printing presses or Xerox copiers, cable demassifies the audience, carving it into multiple mini-publics. Moreover, cable systems can be designed for two-way communication so that subscribers may not merely watch programs but actively call various services. In Japan, by the early 1980s entire towns will be linked to light-wave cable, enabling users to dial requests not only for programs but for still photographs, data, theater reservations, or displays of newspaper and magazine material. Burglar and fire alarms will work through the same system.

[18] Cable, however, is not the only worry facing the networks. Video games have become a “hot item” in the stores. Millions of Americans have discovered a passion for gadgets that convert a TV screen into a Ping-Pong table, hockey rink, or tennis court. This development may seem trivial or irrelevant to orthodox political or social analysts. Yet it represents a wave of social learning, a premonitory training, as it were, for life in the electronic environment of tomorrow. Not only do videogames further de-massify the audience and cut into the numbers who are watching the programs broadcast at any given moment, but through such seemingly innocent devices millions of people are learning to play with the television set, to talk back to it, and to interact with it. In the process they are changing from passive receivers to message senders as well. They are manipulating the set rather than merely letting the set manipulate them.

[19] Video cassette players and recorders are spreading rapidly as well. These not only allow viewers to tape Monday’s football match for replay on, say, Saturday (thus demolishing the synchronization10 of imagery that the networks promote), but lay the basis for the sale of films and sports events on tape. Video recorders and players also make possible the sale of highly specialized cartridges containing, for example, medical instructional material for hospital staff, or tapes that show consumers how to assemble knockdown furniture or rewire a toaster. More fundamentally, video recorders make it possible for any consumer to become, in addition, a producer of his or her own imagery. Once again the audience is de-massified.

[20] All these different developments have one thing in common: they slice the mass television public into segments, and each slice not only increases our cultural diversity; it cuts deeply into the power of the networks that have until now so completely dominated our imagery. John O’Connor, the perceptive critic of The New York Times, sums it up simply.“One thing is certain,” he writes. “Commercial television will no longer be able to dictate either what is watched or when it is watched.”

[21] The mass-media are under attack. New, de-massified media are proliferating, challenging — and sometimes even replacing — the mass media that were so dominant in all Second Wave societies. The Third Wave thus begins a truly new era — the age of the demassified media. A new info-sphere is emerging alongside the new techno-sphere. And this will have a far-reaching impact on the most important sphere of all, the one inside our skulls. For taken together, these changes revolutionize our images of the world and our ability to make some sense of it.

Notes

1.in our midst: between and among us 在我们中间

2.Herbert Gerjuoy: American psychologist specializing in the study of learning abilities and human resources.

3.Charlie Chaplin: Sir Charlie Chaplin (April 1889-December 1977) was an English comic actor and filmmaker who portrayed a downtrodden little man in baggy pants and bowler hat — the Tramp. The screen persona of the Tramp has been Charlie Chaplin’s most memorable character and a worldwide icon in cinema. Chaplin is considered one of the most important figures of the film industry.

4.Buchenwald: The Buchenwald concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp established near Weimar, Germany in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest concentration camps on German soil, where prisoners from all over Europe and the Soviet Union — Jews, Poles and other slaves — worked as forced labor in local armaments factories. Today the remains of Buchenwald serve as a memorial and permanent exhibition and museum.

5.Morinaga: A Japanese brand of candy and other confectioneries森永，日本糖果品牌

6.Perrier: A French brand of bottled mineral water made from a naturally carbonated spring

7.pirouette: a rapid spin of the body (especially on the toes as in ballet)（芭蕾）皮鲁埃特旋转（竖趾旋转）

8.phantasmagoria: a constantly changing medley of real or imagined images

9.shopper: local newspapers containing mostly merchandize catalogues and advertisements服务当地消费者的采购周刊之类的报纸，内容以商品介绍和广告为主

10.synchronization: an adjustment that causes something to occur or recur at the same time or in unison同时性，同步Alvin Toffler believes synchronization is one basic principle of the Second Wave industrial civilization.

Questions for Further Thinking

1.As the saying goes, a picture is worth a million words. Echoing it is the Chinese catch phrase“No picture, no truth”. To what degree do you believe images influence our view of the world and our ability to make some sense of it?

2.The author predicts that a new info-sphere is emerging alongside the new technosphere (Paragraph 21). What technologies have contributed to the present era of explosion of visual information — images?

3.As a generation brought up in the Third Wave, what knowledge or memory do you have concerning the centralized, standardized and synchronized production of imagery of the Second Wave? You can talk to your parents or teachers about it.

4.Surrounded by overwhelming audio-visual information, how would you assess your own ability of interpreting and utilizing pictures and images?

5.What are the 21st century digital counterparts of the mini-newspapers and minimagazines?

6.If our mind and behavior are significantly influenced by the media, and the Second Wave of standardized imagery pumped out by the mass media created a so-called“mass-mind”, the de-massification of the media could be expected to de-massify our minds as well. Do you think our mind and thoughts are de-massified, or fragmentized by our exchange with the de-massified media?

7.Does the overflow of information in the Third Wave satisfy mankind’s need for it, or does it make man crave more information? Why or why not?

8.There has already been a book, published in 1993, titled The Fourth Wave: Business in the 21st Century by Herman Bryant Maynard and Susan E. Mehrtens, which forecasts and advocates the rise of a form of eco-globalism in the 21st century. What would you expect the fourth wave to be?

After-reading Assignment

Oral Work

1.Toffler predicts that video technology “make it possible for any consumer to become a producer of his or her own imagery”, which means every individual can create his or her own media, using smart phones and laptops for breaking news and exchanging opinions. Find out more about the term “self media” and report your finding to your class in a 3-minute presentation.

2.Visual literacy (the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in images读图能力，视觉素养) and media literacy (a combination of competencies that enable people to analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres, and formats媒体识读能力，媒体素养) are considered basic life skills in the Third Wave era. Cooperate with your partner(s) and prepare a 5-minute presentation on these two terms, focusing on the development of these abilities.

3.De-centralization and de-massification happen not only in the sphere of media and information. Investigate the trend of de-centralization in other sectors such as manufacture, business, sale, energy, etc., and report to your class what you have found with the support of examples and figures.

4.Have there ever been any pictures or images that have profoundly influenced your conception of the world? Show the pictures or images to your class and tell them how they have brought meaning to your life.

Written Work

1.Concerning the de-massification of readers, audience and consumers, conduct a series of interviews with your family members to find out their varied needs for media content provided by newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, online content providers, etc. Then write a short report categorizing your findings.

2.Work with your partner(s) and create a mini-newspaper or mini-magazine of your own. Your newspaper or magazine should have its clear target readers, and you should create timely, localized content that caters to the needs of your readers. Make sure that your newspaper or magazine has its own warehouse of images.

3.Create your own metaphor: A metaphor is an imaginative way of describing something by identifying it as being the same as some unrelated other thing, so as to highlight some particular similarities between the two.A metaphor directly equates the two items and does not apply words of comparison such as like or as. Instead, a metaphor uses be, become, or of to indicate the similarities, or simply omits the tenor (本体) leaves the reader to figure out the similarities between the tenor and the vehicle (喻体). For example,

... the mass media themselves became a giant loudspeaker. (Paragraph 5)

All the world is a stage, and all the men and women are merely players.(Shakespeare)

a shrapnel of images (Paragraph 1)

the sea of information (Paragraph 3)

Ideas, beliefs, and attitudes skyrocket into consciousness... (Paragraph 8)

... the Third Wave thunders in... (Paragraph 9)

... the picture tube began to flicker. (Paragraph 15)

... highly specialized cartridges containing...(Paragraph 18)

Study these metaphors and make clear the similarities with the help of the context. Then follow these examples and create 6 metaphors on your own. Share your metaphors with your partner(s) and choose the one you think most creative and effective.