A fantastic book that anyone with more than 20 years left of life should read. It is about the tectonic fundamental changes taking place. Those who take too long to learn the inevitable, will find difficult making sense of their surroundings.
I specially liked their take on why our present school system has failed us.

Written by the owner of the company I used to work for. May be a bit boring to people who are not interested in economics, but will definitely appeal to those who are passionate about the subject matter.

Interesting collection of ideas. Development of a central theme was so-so since so many topics were covered.

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.

I read 'Future Shock' and it was very fascinating and accurate.
Hence I chose to read this one, but this one doesn't measure up to the quality of 'Future Shock' in my opinion.

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

Toffler seems to have a lot of knowledge and insight about a broad ranges of topics covered in this book. I enjoyed the book, and each section seems to provide several topics for long discussion/research. My only complaint is that the book seemed to lack some focus. Many of the topics seemed to be discussed only at a shallow level, leaving me kind of wanting a more thorough analysis.

I tried an experiment to open the book to a random page and read a single chapter sub-section and then discuss this topic. Most of these little sections could probably be discussed at length.

Some specific topics I found interesting is the various discussions about "prosuming" which is the vast hidden economy of goods that are created and consumed directly without ever entering the commonly measured global economy. This includes things like digital photo creation and editing, self-checkout at the grocery, and in the future even creating our own physical products with 3D printers.

The deep fundamentals of time, space, and knowledge was also interesting.

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.

i like the deep fundamentals that the Tofflers talk about (1) space (2) time and (3) knowledge and how together they will change the way our economy functions

A must read!

Honestly, I can't remember what it was about any more. I did not find it bad, but also did not find it memorable.

Mientras leí este libro sucedió el deceso de su autor. Leí los seis libros más importantes de Toffler, la trilogía y otros tres que intentaron completarla. En buena medida la trilogía me abrió a un nuevo tiempo de lectura, donde la "no ficción" se me volvió sumamente interesante. Me abrió la cabeza. Hoy al terminar este libro no me deja tanto la misma sensación. Creo que es "de los otros tres" el que mejor merece el título del que completa la trilogía (algo así como el quinto beatle, o la cuarta parte de la trilogía del ataque de los tomates asesinos).

El libro no trae demasiadas cosas nuevas. Más aceleración, más tecnología, más aplanamiento. Lo que dice está muy bien, el tema está más bien en lo que no dice. Lo sentí en ese sentido más cercano a  Fukuyama y Friedman que la trilogía. Pero creo que no es tanto porque él haya cambiado sino porque yo cambié. Cuando leí la trilogía no sabía quienes eran esos dos autores. ¡Pero  El Shock del Futuro es un libro de 1970! Si el tipo sigue diciendo más o menos lo mismo en 2006, aprendió poco, la tenía muy clara entonces, o las dos cosas. Creo que la mirada que el presenta (anterior a  Bauman, anterior a  Georgescu-Roegen) es sumamente interesante. Es decir, es interesante y además es (si yo no entiendo mal) el inventor de la metodología, o uno de sus primeros grandes impulsores.

La gran macana de la trilogía es que hoy por hoy son libros muy viejos. Sería genial poder leerlos el día que salieron. Aún así creo que valen la pena. Más todavía este que no es tan viejo, y además se convierte ahora de alguna manera en su legado.

Una cosa que me llamó la atención de este y no recuerdo de los anteriores (además del gran centro en el prosumo y el conocimiento como primer fuente de riqueza) es la cuestión del origen del criterio de verdad.

Cuatro estrellas porque no fue tan innovador, deja discusiones burdamente afuera, carece un poco de rigor científico, etc... pero con mucho respecto y agradecimiento a Sr. y Sra. Toffler.