Editing Alvin Toffler (section)

== Career==
Seeking experiences to write about, Alvin and Heidi Toffler spent the next five years as [[blue collar]] workers on [[assembly line]]s while studying industrial [[mass production]] in their daily work.<ref name=nytobit/> He compared his own desire for experience to other writers, such as [[Jack London]], who in his quest for subjects to write about sailed the seas, and [[John Steinbeck]], who went to pick grapes with migrant workers.<ref>video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCXCDYj6U4E&t=10m18s Interview with Alvin Toffler]</ref> In their first factory jobs, Heidi became a [[trade union|union]] [[shop steward]] in the aluminum foundry where she worked. Alvin became a millwright and welder.<ref name=nytobit/><ref name="ATWPARTNERSHIP">{{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20100917045828/http://alvintoffler.net/?fa=biospartnership "Alvin and Heidi Toffler: Partnership"]}} – Toffler Web site</ref> In the evenings Alvin would write poetry and fiction, but discovered he was proficient at neither.<ref name=nytobit/>

His hands-on practical labor experience helped Alvin Toffler land a position at a union-backed newspaper, a transfer to its Washington bureau in 1957, then three years as a [[White House correspondent]], covering Congress and the White House for a Pennsylvania daily newspaper.<ref name=nytobit/><ref>[http://www.legacy.com/news/celebrity-deaths/notable-deaths/article/alvin-toffler-1928-2016 "Alvin Toffler (1928–2016)"], ''Legacy.com'', June 30, 2016</ref>

They returned to New York City in 1959 when ''Fortune'' magazine invited Alvin to become its labor columnist, later having him write about business and management.<ref name=nytobit/> After leaving ''Fortune'' magazine in 1962, Toffler began a freelance career, writing long form articles for scholarly journals and magazines.<ref name=nytobit/> His 1964 ''Playboy interviews'' with Russian novelist [[Vladimir Nabokov]] and [[Ayn Rand]] were considered among the magazine's best.<ref name=nytobit/> His interview with Rand was the first time the magazine had given such a platform to a female intellectual, which as one commentator said, "the real bird of paradise Toffler captured for Playboy in 1964 was Ayn Rand."<ref>[http://atlassociety.org/commentary/commentary-blog/3901-the-lost-parts-of-ayn-rand-s-playboy-interview "The "Lost" Parts of Ayn Rand's Playboy Interview"], ''The Atlas Society'', March 1, 2004</ref>

Toffler was hired by [[IBM]] to conduct research and write a paper on the social and organizational impact of computers, leading to his contact with the earliest computer "gurus" and artificial intelligence researchers and proponents. [[Xerox]] invited him to write about its research laboratory and [[AT&T Corporation|AT&T]] consulted him for strategic advice. This AT&T work led to a study of telecommunications, which advised the company's top management to break up the company more than a decade before the government forced AT&T to break up.<ref>Galambos, Louis, and Abrahamson, Eric. ''Anytime, Anywhere: Entrepreneurship and the Creation of a Wireless World'', Cambridge Univ. Press (2002)  p. 266</ref>

In the mid-1960s, the Tofflers began five years of research on what would become ''[[Future Shock]]'', published in 1970.<ref name=nytobit/><ref name="ATWPARTNERSHIP"/> It has sold over 6 million copies worldwide, according to the ''New York Times,'' or over 15&nbsp;million copies according to the Tofflers' Web site.<ref name=nytobit/><ref name=Denver/> Toffler coined the term "future shock" to refer to what happens to a society when change happens too fast, which results in social confusion and normal decision-making processes breaking down.<ref name=Hindle>Hindle, Tim. ''Guide to Management Ideas and Gurus'', John Wiley & Sons (2008) p. 311</ref> The book has never been out of print and has been translated into dozens of languages.<ref name=nytobit/>

He continued the theme in ''The Third Wave'' in 1980. While he describes the first and second waves as the agricultural and industrial revolutions, the "third wave," a phrase he coined, represents the current information, computer-based revolution. He forecast the spread of the Internet and email, interactive media, cable television, cloning, and other digital advancements.<ref>{{cite news | url = https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36670572 |title = Alvin Toffler, futurologist guru, dies at 87| work=BBC News|date=June 30, 2016}}</ref> He claimed that one of the side effects of the digital age has been "information overload," another term he coined.<ref name=USNews>[https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2016-06-29/alvin-toffler-author-of-future-shock-dead-at-87 "Alvin Toffler, author of 'Future Shock,' dead at 87"], ''U.S. News & World Report'', June 29, 2016</ref> In 1990, he wrote ''Powershift'', also with the help of his wife, Heidi.<ref name=nytobit/>

In 1996, with American business consultant Tom Johnson, they co-founded Toffler Associates, an advisory firm designed to implement many of the ideas the Tofflers had written on. The firm worked with businesses, NGOs, and governments in the United States, South Korea, Mexico, Brazil, Singapore, Australia, and other countries. During this period in his career, Toffler lectured worldwide, taught at several schools and met world leaders, such as [[Mikhail Gorbachev]], along with key executives and military officials.<ref name=CBC/>

===Ideas and opinions===
{{quote box|quote="A new civilization is emerging in our lives, and blind men everywhere are trying to suppress it. This new civilization brings with it new family styles; changed ways of working, loving, and living; a new economy; new political conflicts; and beyond all this an altered consciousness as well...The dawn of this new civilization is the single most explosive fact of our lifetimes."|source=Alvin Toffler, from ''The Third Wave'' (1980)<ref>Gilbert, Montserrat Gines. ''The Meaning of Technology'', Univ. Politèc. de Catalunya (2003) p. 157</ref>|align=right|width=25em|bgcolor = Cornsilk}}

Toffler stated many of his ideas during an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 1998.<ref name=Australia/> "Society needs people who take care of the elderly and who know how to be compassionate and honest," he said. "Society needs people who work in hospitals. Society needs all kinds of skills that are not just cognitive; they're emotional, they're affectional. You can't run the society on data and computers alone."<ref name=Australia>{{cite interview| url= http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/lm/stories/s10440.htm |first= Alvin |last= Toffler |interviewer= Norman Swann |publisher= Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio National| title=Life Matters| date= March 5, 1998| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20001020092245/http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/lm/stories/s10440.htm| url-status= dead| archive-date= October 20, 2000| access-date= May 4, 2016}}</ref>

His opinions about the future of education, many of which were in ''[[Future Shock]]'', have often been quoted. An often misattributed quote, however, is that of psychologist Herbert Gerjuoy: "Tomorrow's illiterate will not be the man who can't read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn."<ref>{{cite book|last=Toffler|first=Alvin|title=Future Shock|url=https://archive.org/details/futureshoc00toff|url-access=registration|year=1970|publisher=Random House|location=New York|page=[https://archive.org/details/futureshoc00toff/page/367 367]}}</ref>

Early in his career, after traveling to other countries, he became aware of the new and myriad inputs that visitors received from these other cultures. He explained during an interview that some visitors would become "truly disoriented and upset" by the strange environment, which he described as a reaction to [[culture shock]].<ref name=interview>video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCXCDYj6U4E&t=1m48s Interview with Alvin Toffler]</ref> From that issue, he foresaw another problem for the future, when a culturally "new environment comes to you&nbsp;... and comes to you rapidly." That kind of sudden cultural change within one's own country, which he felt many would not understand, would lead to a similar reaction, one of "future shock", which he wrote about in his book by that title.<ref name=interview/> Toffler writes:
{{blockquote|We must search out totally new ways to anchor ourselves, for all the old roots—religion, nation, community, family, or profession—are now shaking under the hurricane impact of the accelerative thrust.<ref name=CBC/><ref name=AP>{{cite news|url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/alvin-toffler-author-obit-1.3659263|title=Alvin Toffler, Future Shock and Third Wave author, dead at 87|date=June 29, 2016|publisher=[[CBC News]]|agency=[[Associated Press]]|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160813081640/https://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/alvin-toffler-author-obit-1.3659263|archive-date=August 13, 2016}}</ref>}}

In ''[[The Third Wave (Toffler 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.<ref>video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgwVlsHxdWY&t=7m24s Alvin and Heidi Toffler interview with Brian Lamb], 1996</ref> He describes the "First Wave" as the society after [[Neolithic Revolution|agrarian revolution]] and replaced the first [[hunter-gatherer]] cultures. The "Second Wave," he labels society during the [[Industrial Revolution]] (ca. late 17th century through the mid-20th century). That period saw the increase of urban industrial populations which had undermined the traditional [[nuclear family]], and initiated a factory-like education system, and the growth of the corporation. Toffler said:

{{blockquote|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 with [[standardization]], [[centralization]], concentration, and synchronization, and you wind up with a style of organization we call [[bureaucracy]].<ref name=Australia/>}}

The "Third Wave" was a term he coined to describe the [[post-industrial society]], which began in the late 1950s. His description of this period dovetails with other futurist writers, who also wrote about the [[Information Age]], [[Space Age]], [[Electronic computer|Electronic]] Era, [[Global village (term)|Global Village]], terms which highlighted a scientific-technological revolution.<ref name=Denver>[https://www.denverpost.com/2016/06/29/author-alvin-toffler-dies/ "Future Shock" author Alvin Toffler has died at age 87], ''Denver Post'', June 29, 2016</ref> The Tofflers claimed to have predicted a number of geopolitical events, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the future economic growth in the Asia-Pacific region.<ref name=Denver/>