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''The Third Wave'' is a book published in 1980 by Alvin Toffler. It is the sequel to ''Future Shock'', published in 1970, and the second in what was originally likely meant to be a trilogy that was continued with ''Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century'' in 1990. A new addition, ''Revolutionary Wealth'', was published, however, in 2006 and may be considered as a major expansion of ''The Third Wave''. Toffler's book describes the transition in developed countries from Industrial Age society, which he calls the "Second Wave", to Information Age "Third Wave" society. ==Toffler's Wave Theory== In the book Toffler describes three types of societies, based on the concept of 'waves'—each wave pushes the older societies and cultures aside. * The First Wave is the settled agricultural society which prevailed in much of the world after the Neolithic Revolution, which replaced hunter-gatherer cultures. * The Second Wave is Industrial Age society. The Second Wave began in Western Europe with the Industrial Revolution, and subsequently spread across the world. Key aspects of Second Wave society are the nuclear family, a factory-type education system and the corporation. Toffler writes: '' "The Second Wave Society is industrial and based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass recreation, mass entertainment, and weapons of mass destruction. You combine those things with standardization, centralization, concentration, and synchronization, and you wind up with a style of organization we call bureaucracy."'' * The Third Wave is the post-industrial society. Toffler says that since the late 1950s most countries have been transitioning from a Second Wave society into a Third Wave society. He coined many words to describe it and mentions names invented by others, such as the Information Age. ==Anthropological Interpretation== The transition from the earlier hunter-gatherer societies to the agrarian and agricultural societies is also known as the Neolithic Revolution. This coincides with the transition from the Mesolithic era to the Neolithic era (respectively, the Middle and Late Stone Age). The transition from the Paleolithic to the Mesolithic (Early to Middle Stone Age), in turn, largely coincides with the emergence of the modern Homo sapiens from earlier, related archaic human species. Nearly extinct in the present-day world, hunter-gatherer societies (which one might term the "Zero Wave" societies) are not recognized in Toffler's scheme. Similarly, in the classical Three-age system, distinctions are recognized between the Stone Age era Bronze Age, Iron Age, the boundary between the latter two c. 1300-1200 BC being as dramatic as that demarcating Toffler's waves. None of these phases are clearly recognized in the Toffler scheme, in part due to the prevalence of the latter phase amongst present-day pre-industrial societies. The transition from Toffler's First Wave and Second Wave is sometimes also recognized as a transition from the Iron Age to the Steel Age. At present, there is no clear delineation of the latest transition, though sometimes the term Post-industrial society, originating from Daniel Bell, is used, in addition to Toffler's "Third Wave society". The important point is that the nature of society (relationships between people and political and economic structures) are significantly altered by the impact of new technology. That to some degree peoples lives are modified to serve the technology. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Third Wave (Toffler book)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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