Alvin Toffler
Alvin Toffler
Alvin Tofflerwas an American writer and futurist, known for his works discussing modern technologies, including the digital revolution and the communication revolution, with emphasis on their effects on cultures worldwide...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth4 October 1928
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
future men data
Rational behavior ... depends upon a ceaseless flow of data from the environment. It depends upon the power of the individual to predict, with at least a fair success, the outcome of his own actions. To do this, he must be able to predict how the environment will respond to his acts. Sanity, itself, thus hinges on man's ability to predict his immediate, personal future on the basis of information fed him by the environment.
country civilization appreciate
Many countries today have begun the transition from an industrial wealth system and civilization to a knowledge-based system - without appreciating that a new wealth system is impossible without a corresponding new way of life.
fiction sovereign shock
Science fiction is the sovereign prophylactic against future shock.
thinking average add
Interruptions: The average worker gets interrupted five times each hour. It takes an average of 5 minutes to handle each interruption and 1 minute to get back to what you were doing. This adds up to 30 minutes each hour or 50% of your time!! You've got to think about "big things" while you're doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.
jobs play people
Designer's derive their rewards from 'inner standards of excellence, from the intrinsic satisfaction of their tasks. They are committed to the task, not the job. To their standards, not their boss.' So whereas most people divide their lives between time spent earning money and time spent spending it, designers generally lead a seamless existence in which work and play are synonymous. As Milanese designer Richard Sapper put it: "I never work-all the time."
mother daughter loss
The biggest tragedy I had was the loss of my daughter from neuromuscular disease in 2000, at age 46.
communication media fire
In describing today's accelerating changes, the media fire blips of unrelated information at us. Experts bury us under mountains of narrowly specialized monographs. Popular forecasters present lists of unrelated trends, without any model to show us their interconnections or the forces likely to reverse them. As a result, change itself comes to be seen as anarchic, even lunatic.
loneliness being-alone giving
Any decent society must generate a feeling of community. Community offsets loneliness. It gives people a vitally necessary sense of belonging. Yet today the institutions on which community depends are crumbling in all the techno-societies. The result is a spreading plague of loneliness.
waking hours
I work virtually every waking hour.
expression political economic
Freedom of expression is no longer a political nicety, but a precondition for economic competitiveness.
civilization challenges criticism
By challenging anthropocentricism and temporal provincialism, science fiction throws open the whole of civilization and its premises to constructive criticism.
kings cutting knights
Human beings were held accountable long before there were corporate bureaucracies. If the knight didn't deliver, the king cut off his head.
individual shock avert
To survive, to avert what we have termed future shock, the individual must become infinitely more adaptable and capable than ever before.
mistake educational goal
It would be a mistake to assume that the present day educational system is unchanging. On the contrary, it is undergoing rapid change. But much of this change is no more than an attempt to refine the existent machinery, making it ever more efficient in pursuit of obsolete goals.