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science is the startling idea that apparent chaos such as international relations, white water rapids, and
battlefields, are unpredictable, but are within bounds, self-organizing. A few things are effectively
linear, and at the other extreme, another few are effectively random. The remainder are the vast
unexplored, newly-conscious universe of phenomena which are "in between," and which we know little
about, and would not know at all without the computer. Uncovered in the last quarter century, the
potential of the idea of self-organization has hardly been scratched. In this vast domain may lie new
literatures, engineering, philosophies, arts and social dynamics to self-organize a better society.

Nonlinear science rejects the primacy of deterministic tendencies found in the Information Age, as well
as the nihilistic performance and legalism of Postmodernism. It calls for the elevation of intuitive
processes to deal with the variable of bounds, in an equation in which both prediction and solution are
not amenable to current conventions of planning and control. It seeks a Third Way, at the seam between
the polarities of Faith and Reason. It moves from physics toward biology.

Nonlinear economics suggests that information technology as a wealth creator, a key element of the
Information Age argument, is prone to monopolistic behavior, and promotes market forces which do not
necessarily optimize product capabilities. Further, it rests on problematic national security and military
strategies to deal with the integrity of intellectual property. Wealth creation requires synergy among all
three Waves--Agricultural, Industrial and Informational, without privileging the last.

The noted physicist Heinz Pagel had it right: "I am convinced that the nations and people who master the
new sciences of complexity [and chaos theory] will become the economic, cultural, and political
superpowers of the next century." Presidents complain that there is a "malaise" among the people, and
that the nation is in a "funk." If the nation and people are without a paradigm to give spirit, cohesion, and
force, is it any wonder they feel malaise and act as if in a funk?

Thomas J. Czerwinski is a professor at the Institute for National Strategic Studies' School of Information
Warfare and Strategy. For additional information Professor Czerwinski can be reached at (202)
685-3629, ext. 364 or FAX (202) 685-3664.

NOTE

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Strategic Forum 72

economic resource and the dominant, if not the only, source of comparative advantage."
Postmodernism

Essentially, Postmodernism represents an agenda, while its neighbors, the Information Age and the Age
of Intuition (provisional), are the product of technology and science, respectively. This agenda represents
a reaction to Modernism , so intense and successful as to do it under, as the Enlightenment once undid
Premodernism. Indeed the Postmoderists, with their introduction of critical theory, incorporating
textual deconstruction, may be the most successful pure information warriors in history because they
went for the jugular--language itself.

NDU's David Johnson cites a key argument from Telling the Truth About History (Joyce Appleby, Lynn
Hunt and Margaret Jacobs): "The primary goal of the Postmodernists has been to challenge convictions
about the objectivity of knowledge, and the stability of language. They challenge the neutrality of
science and the modern state and assert that their cognitive methods are biased by their agendas that are
gendered, ideological and politicized... They also argue against the possibility of any certain knowledge.
"Truth! derives from the construct...that human beings do not discover a truth in accordance with nature;
they invent it, so the truth is always changing."

Paradigm-building, however, has been largely dependent upon metaphoric "bridging," the result being
deemed to incorporate the essence of the truth in accordance with nature. This chasm alone can account
for the intransigence, even hostility, of Post-modernists to engage in vertical paradigm-building.

Recently, however, such events as the publication of Telling the Truth About History, and the exchange
between Stanley Fish and John Richard Neuhaus in the journal First Things, may indicate a disposition
to dialogue, after 70 years of noncooperation. There is in these events, perhaps a small harbinger of hope
that the deadlock within the Third Wave will be eventually relaxed. It also may be that the resurgence of
Premodernism, in the media's guise of the "religious Right," and the spirited debate over values in
society are also factors.

Finally, Postmodernism as a paradigm contender shares with the Information Age the Achilles' heel of
lacking a convincing wealth-creating economic theory. This discrepancy was first observed 16 years ago,
and has persisted since. In 1980, Ogilvy and Schwartz "searched very hard, in a variety of disciplines, for
indications of the emergent paradigm. They found their evidence everywhere, in such diverse fields as
physics, chemistry, brain theory, mathematics, biology, philosophy, political theory, linguistics,
consciousness research, psychology, religion, and the arts, but they did not find it in the field of
economics."

In 1994, W. Kirk McNulty attempted an explanation for the missing new economics. He suggests that
economics is so central to the Industrial Age and Modernism because it "lies on the axis of polarization,"
and therefore is "locked in place, so to speak, during the process of the paradigm shift... That is why new
ideas billed as 'new age economics' have the flavor of rehashed schemes.... We will probably not see a
really new economic theory developed until the paradigm shift is complete."

"The Age of Intuition"
Aristotelian and Thomist concepts formed the archetypes for the Age of Faith, and Cartesian/ Newtonian

concepts for the Age of Reason. Post-Newtonian nonlinear sciences, exemplified by Chaos and
Complexity theories, are now emerging to support another prescription. The hallmark of nonlinear

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A. Report Title: The Third Wave: What the Tofflers Never Told You

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Strategic Forum 72 j

NATIONAL

STRATEGIC FORUM

INSTITUTE FOR NATIONAL STRATEGIC STUDIES

BENGE UNIVERGITY

Number 72, April 1996

The Third Wave:
What the Tofflers Never Told You

by Thomas J. Czerwinski

Conclusions

Although much of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) debate centers on the notion that the
Information Age represents a Third Wave paradigm shift, the Information Age is only one of the
components of the Third Wave.

© The Third Wave is marked not by a paradigm shift, but the utter lack of a paradigm.
© Discussions about the RMA (or, as it is increasingly being called, Revolution in Security Affairs,
as some call it) should reflect the specific conditions existing in the Third Wave, in this regard, the

Tofflers' analysis is incomplete.

The Composition of Waves

It is inevitable that the future will not be determined by the singular, unimpeded triumph of information

technology. It is naive to presume that something so epochal as a struggle for a paradigm shift should
lack for pretenders and contenders. Indeed there is no shortage of formidable combinations of
contending ideas for the Third Wave crown. But what is the arrangement of a wave?

© The first level of any wave is inhabited by technology, artifacts and processes. The economy is
central and politics inherent, as are social forms. This is the plane at which Alvin and Heidi
Toffler and Peter Drucker ply their craft. Here we subscribe, as they do, to the continuum from an
Agrarian Age to an Industrial one to the emergent Information Age.

© The intermediate plane of a wave can be described in essentially cultural terms. The cultural terms
Premodernism, Modernism, and Postmodernism apply here, and we subscribe to their context. It is
in this region that art, literature, poetry, and philosophy flourish. It is also the den of ideology.

© The third and deepest level of a wave is the foundational. Paradigms originate in this region. A
paradigm is the dominant and fundamental way of thinking within a period--how phenomena are
perceived and assigned meaning. It is here that the genesis of ideas culminates in outcomes in the
other layers. Paradoxically, science, religion, and superstition share this region. Here we subscribe

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Strategic Forum 72

to the Age of Faith, the Age of Reason, and what is provisionally called the Age of Intuition, as a
working title.

Waves are parallel, but not coterminous. Nor is a paradigm continuously present within a wave. The
following table shows the general arrangement as it applies to the Western world. (This implies there are
other stories to be told, but the framework holds as a universal.)

Waves, Revolutions and Ages There is no Paradigm Shift

Layer Waves The levels normally interact vertically
First Second Third through a "Principle-Metaphor-Tool
Application | Agricultural Industrial Information bridge." The effect of Newton's

discoveries, for example, are portrayed
Interpretive |Premodernism | Modernism | Postmodernism by Gene Edward Veith, Jr., in
"bridge-terms" as follows: "With the rise
of modern science, which accompanied
the industrial revolution (Tool), nature
itself began to be seen as a machine (Metaphor). Nature was interpreted as a closed system of cause and
effect, which can be totally explained by mathematical and experimental analysis (Principle). Whereas
preindustrial human beings confronted nature as a mysterious living organism, the scientists of the
Enlightenment reduced nature to a complex but inert mechanism that could be taken apart, rationally
understood, and used like any other mechanical device."

Foundational Faith Reason Intuition*
“Provisiona

James Gleick provided another example: "The Second Law of Thermodynamics has established itself
firmly in the non-scientific culture....Any process that converts energy from one form to another must
lose some energy as heat (Principle). Perfect efficiency is impossible. The universe is a one-way street"
(Metaphor). This principle, known as entropy, has taken on its own intellectual value far removed from
science, taking the blame for disintegration of societies, economic decay, the breakdown of manners, and
many other variations on the decadence theme" (Tool).

These "secondary, metaphysical incarnations" of scientific thought are metaphors forming bridges or
clover leafs linking the levels, transferring ideas formulated as principles at the foundational level to the
application layer to become tools, principally through the creative powers of writers, philosophers, and
artists. A successful cycle forms a paradigm.

There is a striking difference between the nature of the First and Second Waves, and that of the 3rd. The
first two achieved paradigms that were effectively three layers deep. The First and Second Waves had
periods of integrity. This is not necessarily a claim for their morality, or their outcomes. Rather, integrity
simply means that both developed to the point where their paradigms held--that their plumbing worked
for significant periods of time. The Third Wave so far does no such thing. It leaks like a sieve and
remains a "work-in-process," despite the superficial projection of the Information Age as a paradigm in
contemporary fashion. There is no paradigm shift, but a shift from paradigm to non-paradigm.

A Paradigm Lost
Of utmost importance is whether a paradigm is any longer achievable. The Second Wave paradigm is
irretrievably lost. Can the layers of the Third Wave be consistently, supportively aligned to render an

effective consensus as to how phenomena shall be perceived in order to give it meaning? Is the basic,
acculturated pattern of thought which constitutes a paradigm, giving cohesion and force to an age and to

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Strategic Forum 72

its inhabitants, a thing of the past? Upon this condition, all higher order divisions and cooperation have
depended. Until re-cently the United States, during its entire history, has never been without a paradigm.
This accounts for much of its success, and also for much of the current confusion in its affairs. The
possibility that life will have to proceed, without the foundational--that being unable to achieve a
paradigm we must go on without any broad agreement as to the meaning of meaning--is individually
frightening, and collectively debilitating.

This crisis in the Third Wave is caused by proponents at each layer attempting to triumph independently
as a paradigm contender horizontally, rather than following the convention of vertical synthesis through
"bridging." The abdication of the cultural layer in fulfilling its middleman paradigm-building role, is
traced back to the 1930's in C. P. Snow's The Two Cultures, published in 1959. John Brockman in his
The Third Culture (1995), provides this update and concurrence: "Literary intellectuals are not
communicating with scientists. Scientists are communicating directly with the general public....Today,
thinkers tend to avoid the middleman and endeavor to express their deepest thoughts in a manner
accessible to the intelligent reading public."

What each layer is independently promoting as a paradigm pretender is inadequate. None of them can
provide a paradigm shift alone. A paradigm needs the full force of the total energy, spirit, and creativity
of a society, represented by all three levels. In order to do this, the levels must talk to each other. As we
shall find, in the Third Wave they have ceased to do so.

The Disconnected Third Wave

The Information Age

George Stein of Air University has succinctly summarized the heart of the Tofflers' universal thesis in
their War and Anti-War. It involves "the transformation of the chief forms of American society's mode of
wealth generation from land, through natural resources and industrial infrastructure, to knowledge/data/
information as the new creators of wealth. First-Wave wars were fought over land, second-wave wars
over physical productive capacity; the emerging third-wave wars will be for the access and control of
knowledge. As the ‘combat form’ in any society follows the 'wealth creation form' of that society, the
wars of the future will be predominantly, but not solely, ‘Information Wars."

This thesis prompts an examination of the wealth creating powers of the Information Age, which forms
the underlying basis for the assertion. The Tofflers describe 10 features of the "new economy." However,
these lack the profound surface effects which would indicate the presence of a powerful underlying
paradigm representing a new wealth-creating form worthy of supporting a new age for mankind to
embrace enthusiastically, or resign oneself to as inevitable. The Information Age is, if anything,
unrelenting in its surrender to the deterministic forces of history through the triumph of technologically
driven futures, immune to human intervention. There is, therefore, no need to engage in dialogue with
the other levels of the Third Wave.

The fact is that the Information Age has an economy as does every period. But what the Information Age
does not have are wealth-creating concepts incorporated in a coherent and persuasive economic theory. It
depends on Second Wave economics. In fact, we find in the Wall Street Journal that Bill Gates "believes
in ‘capitalism’ the same way Adam Smith did more than 200 years ago." Therefore, some economists
view the Information Age as merely an extension of the Second Wave (often referred to as the "3rd
Industrial Revolution.") In November 1994, Peter Drucker admits in the Atlantic Monthly to the "need to
develop an economic theory appropriate to a world economy in which knowledge has become the key

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