Very, very interesting. As always, Toffler makes people think in a different way. We are all "futurists" , in our own way, and make projections on all sort of things all the time. One thing I have learned living in many countries and systems over a long time --- from feudal, communist, socialist-self-managing, government-led capitalism, corporation-led capitalism --- is that whatever we as humans need or want has to be paid for. Somebody has to pay. At times, a nation gets lucky with technological advance or resource riches. These "accidental" riches are welcome, nonetheless, as they add cushions to the societal ambitions. Toffler's theory of the society of knowledge makes sense when one thinks of the concept of value. It is not that the industries will disappear, or agricultural life fade into oblivion. All of them will be around, because we will always need food, roofs over our heads, infrastructure. And that will always require chemicals, and steel, and rubber, and other definely "second wave" living. But when one thinks in the terms of value, the knowledge workers of the future have an edge. With the increasing complexity of modern society, every aspect of human endeavor requires complex interactions of people and technologies. No matter how bad the economy is, nobody is firing computer network engineers, or other high-tech functions that are directly related to the functioning of an enterprise or a government. Yes, many of research jobs in high tech are on the back burner, and companies that went under, released some of those valuable people on the market. These are folks that in Washington area can find a job within a week, and start usually within two to three weeks. This is exactly why I doubt that we really grasp what is going on with our institutions. After all, the knowledge is valuable only as it serves a sustainable economy. Without it, it has no value. So, back to basics.

Is he a professor? You waste your time listening to some of them. They mix banalities with neologisms and create big impressive theories {his case}, or they create high level theories, high up in the skies and completely cut out from reality {others}. Extrapolating a phenomenon in order to foresee, to anticipate will always be a voluble method, and he admits it, but more and more suitable for short term predictions. For ex: The consumption of oil in the future may not be linear…. may take the form of a bouncing curve, you need an enormous amount of information. The reason why it is becoming harder to foresee, is the increase of complexity that increases the need for information. At the same time availability of information is increased which results in the need to authorize more and more people to take decisions in all levels of hierarchy. This also results in higher unpredictability. This tells us that in the future we will need more and more flexibility in all factors and parameters of production: personnel, range of products... Today we produce cars, tomorrow airplanes, so we need provisions for all eventualities. We don’t need the neologisms “first wave”…. We have the first sector {agriculture}, the second {industry} and third {services}.Automation and especially computerization diminishes the need for personnel, and simultaneously helps the development of the third sector {services}. The postindustrial era is the era of services. We used to call US citizens “overgrowing babies” and most of them were too much uniform, naïve and malicious at the same time. Good news: because of the explosive growth of information, communications possibilities, media and exposure to the “outside world” they will become more various in the behavior and opinion.