PREVIEWS & PREMISES
By Alvin Toffler
An interview with the author
of The Third Wave and
Future Shock about
jobs, identity, sex roles, the new politics of the
information age and the hidden forces driving the
economy.
“Previews
& Premises takes you on a
fascinating guided tour through Alvin Toffler’s mind
as it cuts through layer after layer of conventional
thinking about the crises- economic, social and personal-
of our times and masters arguments and facts in support
of an optimistic outlook toward a brighter future.”
--Wassily Leontief, Nobel Laureate, Institute for
Economic Analysis, New York University.
“The present
demographic explosion, and the scientific revolution in
fields such as energy, biology and information require
not only changed relationships between human beings and
nature, but new social relationships as well. We need a
pluralistic approach that emphasizes diversity and copes
with fluctuation, if we want to avoid being engulfed in a
mass-oriented repressive society.
“Alvin Toffler presents
a penetrating analysis of this challenge. He argues
convincingly that the subdivisions introduced by
classical economics and sociology have become obsolete.
New ways of understanding the roots of change have to be
formulated.
“This book is an optimistic one. It will be of great
interest for all readers who share a feeling of
responsibility in the construction of the world of
tomorrow. Its message is clear: in spite of all
incertitudes, we are able to master the new complexity in
which we are bound to live.”
--Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Laureate, International Institute
for Physics and Chemistry, University of Brussels.
Table of Contents
The Why and How
PART ONE: PREVIEWS
Chapter One: The
Economic Upheaval; The Smokestack as Relic; The
Invisible Producers; Cutting-Edge Industries; Regions
versus Nations; The Impact of Information; The
Back-to-the-Home Movement
Chapter Two: The Future
of Work; Creative Work-Styles; The New Worker; On
Rewards and Welfare; The Seven Streams of
Unemployment; Re-tooling the Mind; Euthanasia for
Dying Industries; Robots to the Rescue?; The Job as
Anachronism
Chapter Three: The
Japanese (and Other) Myths; The Mom-and-Pop Culture;
Nostalgia- The English Disease;n The French
Disconnection; Technophobia in Germany; The American
Edge; Behind the Shoji; The Push to Rearm; Déjà vu
in the Pacific
Chapter Four: Beyond
Capitalism and Socialism; Forces in Conflict; The
Nostalgiacs; Can Socialism Survive Central Planning?;
Property: A Left-Wing Obsession
Chapter Five:
Info-Politics; Who Will Run the Information Society?;
The Decisional Environment; Spreading the Decision
Load; The Computer in Politics
Chapter Six: The
Revolution in Roles; The Origins of Sexism; Feminism
on the Agenda; Women and the End of Industrialism; A
Diversity of Roles
Chapter Seven: Race,
Power and Culture; The White Interlude; The
Technicolor Problem; Layers of Identity; The Primacy
of Culture
PART TWO: PREMISES
Chapter Eight:
Premissory Notes; Welder at the White House; Radios
in the Jungle; The Television Medium
Chapter Nine: A Far Cry
from Delphi; The Founders of Futurism; Straight-Line
Thinkers
Chapter Ten: On
Intellectual Tools; Fluctuations and Revolutions; The
Uni-dimensional Marx; The Third Wave Model; A Theory
of Conflict
Chapter Eleven: The
Roots of Change; Chance and Change; The Individual in
History (Again); An Appetite for Surrealism
Index
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