My favorite author of all time!

A terrific explanation of the forces driving change throughout the world. One two three four five six seven eight nine......dear lord, really nine more words required. Smells like second wave thinking to me!

A must read!

Top 5 books I've read in my life.

Este es uno de esos libros que te abre el panorama y te ayuda a entender por qué estamos como estamos. Ampliamente recomendable.

Awesome book. The narrator's voice is strange

I think it's a good Book

Very thought provoking about the rate of change around the world and how we have to reframe our thinking.

All I can say it read it. Knowledge is wealth.

Revolutionary Wealth; Alvin Toffler and Heidi Toffler


It is May 2020 and across the globe 2.5 billion people are in various stages of finding their feet after a brutal Coronavirus induced lockdown that all but closed entire economies.
Everywhere the talk is of a ‘New Normal’. Economists, sociologists and media are all debating what the nature of post Covid-19 world will be like – the first global pandemic since the Spanish flu to impact the entire world and leave words like ‘Social distancing’ on the tongues of people in over 215 countries and territories.

Which is why I wanted to pull out ‘Revolutionary Wealth’ by that master of global macro and future trends, Alvin Toffler.

I was 14 years old and in school when he wrote Future Shock- so of course I never heard of it until 10 years later, in 1980, when he published ‘The Third Wave’. At 24, I was part of a young ambitious and energetic generation at work and when I read that I felt I was going to be part of what he wrote: The Knowledge driven wealth economy. It fired me. It helped me understand what the future was going to be. Toffler was not a historian nor was he a science fiction writer or an anthropologist. His gift was to be able to study global trends across centuries and build links to show what drove change and why. He and his wife travelled the world and took on all kinds of jobs including on factory floors, they met global leaders and wrote columns, consulted for computer giant IBM. The Third Wave is an important book- based on that many global leaders invited him to present his ideas- making an impact on policy directions for countries.

‘Revolutionary Wealth’ was published in 2006. The last book- Alvin Toffler died in 2016.
In the book, he traces the change in the meaning and form of wealth from the First Wave- Agrarian age to the Second Wave- mass industrialization and dwells upon the theme he developed in the book The Third Wave – knowledge as wealth.

He questions traditional economic arguments of ‘economy fundamentals’ and presents once again his view of what the ‘Deep Fundamentals’ – the future of the ‘Job’ and three factors that impact the globe: Time -the Clash of Speeds, the Synchronization industry and the Arrhythmic Industry. In presenting the different speeds at which various sectors change he presents a simple if effective analogy (this is for America):
Sitting astride a stationary motorcycle is a cop with a radar speed gun tracking speeding vehicles. This is what he tracks:
· At 100 mph, the fastest car representing fastest changing institution in America: business.
· At 90mph: civil society charging fast behind business
· At 60 mph, the American family trying to catch up.
· At 30 mph trailing far behind: Labour unions.
· At 25 mph sputtering along: government bureaucracies and regulations.
· At 10 mph, almost choking and shuddering: the American school system ( can a 10mph school system prepare people for a 100mph business asks Toffler)
· At 5 mph: Intergovernmental organisations such as IMF and WTO
· At 3 mph almost at standstill: US Political institutions, Congress, White house and Political parties.
· At 1mph, barely moving: The Law- the body of laws.
The analogy can be aptly applied to India and we can ask ourselves the same question here. The answer is likely to be similar!
This difference between inertia and hyperspeed is creating a huge demand for change.

He reviews the need for synchronization across sectors: the seasonal factor in agrarian economies to assembly line work of industries. He questions the phrase economists use’ balanced growth’. The chapter on Arrhythmic Economy shows up the vast difference in speeds demanded by changes in each sector.

Knowledge wealth is presented to show how unlike it is to traditional wealth of the agrarian age and the mass industrialization age. It is intangible, non-linear, is relational, mates with other knowledge, portable, can be stored in smaller and smaller spaces and cannot be bottled up. It also changes so rapidly he cautions us to watch out for the ‘Obsoledge Trap’. We can immediately relate to his presentation of ‘The Prosumer Economy’ and how rapidly that is changing the world. Prosumer was a word he invented in the book ‘The Third Wave’ and he goes back to it to show how it has grown so big that it is now almost impossible to estimate the true size of it and therefore definitions of GDP no longer remain relevant- he calls it the Grossly Distorted Product!! Simple examples such as replacing clerks in banks (which has a cost) with self-serviced ATMs (where the same actions done by you are not costed) to tests that diabetic patients conduct on themselves as against going to a lab change the impact on the GDP but hides the cost of our doing the action. He calls the coming explosion of Prosumers a defining change that will amplify as we go forwards. He analyses the costs absorbed by volunteers doing a plethora of activity – he calls ‘Free lunch’.

The growing complexity of activity and its impact on us is very interesting. The uses the analogy of the Sepulveda Boulevard in Los Angeles – which parallels the freeway to coin the phrase ‘The Sepulveda Solution’ to explain how we are witnessing the breakdown of every major institution and how we are forced to find alternative solutions. Are our notions of ‘Capitalism’ outdated? Is traditional Capitalism reaching an End Game? The ownership of Capital is changing rapidly- the way capital is collected, allocated and transferred from pocket to pocket is undergoing unprecedented change- and the nature of capital itself is changed- creating a knowledge based wealth system.

He reviews the great changes in Europe and the re-ascendance of Asia as both markets and drivers of change.
This is an absorbing book. To be sure the book builds on what he has presented in The Future Shock and The Third Wave but it brings a current generation perspective.

To the Generation Z that is just coming into the economy, this is a great read to understand what the forces that are driving them are. To everyone else I recommend this book as it helps to link up mega trends and allows us to see the current world in an interesting perspective.

Astonishing. Can anyone tell you about the future? Maybe Alvin Toffler, the author, can do. we have begun the knowledge-based era as versus to industrial era which, the later, was based entirely on materials. the new era has different terms when it speaks of wealth. how the [NEW] wealth is created and distributed and how it will affect our life is what you will find in this amazing book.
Highly Recommended.

Very good future Mind bender book

It is one of the best book i have read from Alvin Toffler