Alvin Toffler's Third Wave describes the third stage of the development of human civilization. After the first wave - the agrarian and the second - the industrial development, the human development is placed in a constantly changing environment of work, teaching, communication and entertainment, which will undoubtedly change all areas of the social and economic life of the individual. This dynamic environment, Alvin Toffler, defines the "third wave" of human civilization. It covers all processes - from politics and the economy on a global scale, through the technological revolution - to the life of the personality and the relationships in the family of the present and several succeeding generations. In his book Alvin Toffler distanced himself from the purely futuristic nature of reasoning for two reasons: 1) he did not provide reliable predictions and "recipes" for the development of society in the future, and 2) the author considered the problems he himself selected in the context of their present state and the "possible" consequences in the future, at the same time, without imposing an imperative on the specificities of the options themselves. The socio-economic processes in the book are viewed in a comprehensive and interrelated way as a unified system. Toffler does not extrapolate, ie it does not continue the existing tendencies in the future, but rather describes the trends in the present, explaining the reasons for their origin, their current state and their "possible" consequences for the 21st century people. This unconventional analysis of the past, present and future at the same time, Toffler calls "a powerful tidal wave" that "rises today over much of the world by creating a new, often strange environment in which to work, have fun, raise our children or retire from work. "

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In the beginning, Tofler gives an explanation of his understanding of the three waves of human civilization. The author views them as "the discontinuity of history", ie as independent, but parallel, events. The three waves overlap. The end of the agrarian wave and the beginning of the industrial movement along with the increased speed on the planet in the 17th century. Only isolated places in the world have remained unaffected even by the agrarian wave. Today, when the Third Wave is gaining power, many countries still industrialize. Since the end of World War 2, the boom in industrialization has been accompanied by the emergence of a poorly understood third wave of change. So many peoples today feel the movement of all three waves at the same time. The term wool has been chosen by the author because of the descriptive nature of its content - a sequential process of ascension, culmination and decay. The first wave subsides in the middle of the 17th century, the second in the middle of the 20th, when the third wave is in its early stages.

The main argument of the author here - the division of human history into three global contexts - can be criticized. The evolution of socio-economic relations - unfolded on seven continents is so complex that it is not subject to classification in three categories of any kind. History is trying to do that, but the power of history is in detail. In addition, history always examines the causes and consequences. At the same time, Toffler runs away from the detail and does not give the causal link between the three periods he speaks about. Another major argument that can be challenged in the "Leading Wave Comb" is the choice of waterlogged stones in the history of human civilization of less important concepts. Hardly in its 8,000-year-old path to this day, as the author perceives, human civilization has "roamed" around the axis primarily of three processes - agricultural development, industrialization and the era of technological change. More important and paramount in my opinion are philosophy, religion and politics. Notwithstanding the fact that in the Third Wave era, where we believe that more than one-fourth of humanity pursues the ideology of the communist regime (China, North Korea, Yemen, Jordan, Libya and many African countries) of the values ​​of industrialization, and nearly 1/8 of the world's population lives in countries where religion is turned into a law (Muslim religious states). That is, nearly one-third of human civilization not only is not affected by the Third Wave, but is still experiencing the apogee of the second wave, which the author thinks has faded. Yes, on the one hand, this confirms the theory of Toffler for the parallel flow of waves, but on the other it categorically rejects its classification of wavelengths and challenges the global nature of the processes under consideration. A problem is becoming global only when it affects the entire population of the earth or the whole planet as such. A global process, for example, is the greenhouse effect, but not the Third Wave of human civilization - at least until only some, limited parts of the globe continue to flood.

part 1