Alvin Toffler

In his book ”The Third Wave
“ Toffler describes three types of societies, based on the concept of “waves”—each wave pushes the older societies and cultures aside.
* *First Wave* is the society after agrarian revolution
 and replaced the first hunter-gatherer
 cultures.
* *Second Wave* is the society during theIndustrial Revolution
 (ca. late 17th century through the mid-20th century). The main components of the Second Wave society arenuclear family
, 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 withstandardization
, centralization
, concentration, and synchronization, and you wind up with a style of organization
 we call bureaucracy
.”
* *Third Wave* is the post-industrial society
. According to Toffler, since the late 1950s most nations have been moving away from a Second Wave Society into what he would call a Third Wave Society, one based on actionable knowledge as a primary resource. His description of this (super-industrial society
) dovetails into other writers’ concepts (like the Information Age
,Space Age
, Electronic
 Era, Global Village
,technetronic age, scientific-technological revolution), which to various degrees predicted demassification, diversity, knowledge-based production, and the acceleration of change (one of Toffler’s key maxims is “change is non-linear and can go backwards, forwards and sideways”).