A Conservation with Alvin Toffler
Panelist:
Alvin Toffler, Author, Futurist, Principal, Toffler & Associates
Moderator
Michael Intrilligator, Professor of Economics, Political Science and Public Policy, University of California, Los Angeles, Director, UCLA Center for International Relations, Senior Fellow, Milken Institute

Alvin Toffler has been a predictor of the future for decades. His book Future Shock accurately predicted many of the situations of today over twenty years ago. He has written a new book called Revolutionary Wealth.  He sees what is happening today as a revolution, a massive global shift along the lines of the Industrial Revolution. He believes that a revolution of massive proportions will take place over the next few decades. Wealth will change not just in quantity but also in whether or not it is tangible or intangible.

Toffler sees two separate economies. The traditional money-based economy and the none-money economy. These two economies run parallel to each other. The none-money includes activities that take place without money being involved. The none-money economy is powered by prosumers (productive consumers).Toffler sees a coming consumer revolt against surplus complexity  and a growing externalization of labor.  Unbeknowst to most of us, we actually now have three jobs, our work, our home life and externalized labor. Externalized labor is basically things that companies used to do but are now done by the consumer. Examples of this phenomenon includes tracking our own packages through FedEx, looking up canceled checks online and the big one, ATM transactions.

Prosumers often turn the none-money economy into the money economy. Examples include Famous Amos cookies which started off as a hobby for Wally Amos and  Linus Torvald and Linux.  Examples of the trend in reverse include Napster which turned a money-economy item (copyrighted songs) into a none-money economy item (music for free). Another example is Skype which challenges existing telecom systems by offering phone service for free.

Volunteers are also part of the none-money economy as are people who volunteer their unused space on their computers for research purposes.  Prosumers add to the value of their properties by working on their homes for free (none-money economy) and also buy tools (money economy). Also, most people taught themselves how to use a computer with the help of friends (none-money economy). Toffler says that "to ignore the prosumer economy is like a pulmonary doctor looking at the right lung and ignoring the left."
 
The moderator mentions global risk and references the previous globalization trend which began in the late 1800s and ended right before WWI. There were specific factors that ended it including  World War I,  the 1918 flu pandemic, the Great Depression and World War II. Toffler adds communism to this list and says there is no guarantee that we will continue in linear fashion and that our current globalization trend could be subject to a similar set of factors such as war, economic problems and pandemics.

Questions from the crowd include whether or not we should be afraid of science and technology. Toffler feels that "science is under attack these days from a variety of quarters"  and that this is dangerous. He says that science gets pressured from religious sources and animal rights groups. "The future of economic development on the planet, especially in impoverished countries, relies on science. He also mentions Michael Crichton's State of Fear,  the novel about global warming (Crichton portrays global warming as a scare tactic used by rabid environmentalists) which has footnotes. In light of so much confusing and conflicting information Toffler says that it is important to look at not just what we believe but why we believe it. He cites consensus (everyone believes it), consistency (it's proved to be true in the past) and authority (someone important believes it) as the main factors that effect our belief systems.

The next question ponders what the fourth wave will be. We are in the third wave, the information age. The first two waves were the agrarian society and the industrial age. The fourth wave may be space. He predicts that the information age will probably last another generation. Other factors to consider in the future include increased longevity and the fact that we are moving away from  a society based on mass production and into a society with much more variety (which he calls a demassification process).

Toffler ends with some final words on education. He says that we are currently educating our children to be factory workers in an industrial age, which, given what I learned about the future of education in a previous panel, is pretty scary.