Talk:Alvin Toffler

message: I've been in a presentation of Alvin Toffler here in Campinas, Brazil, and he spoke about why the terms left-wing and right-wing are obsolete in the Third Wave, and the politics will be very different in Third Wave societies. It was very insighful. --200.228.158.130 15:45, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Presentation

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thread_title:  [[User:LinkBot/suggestions/Alvin_Toffler|Link suggestions]] 

message: The assertion made in this revision  has been reverted since it could not be confirmed by Google News search.  Please provide a source for the claim. CQJ 17:44, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: September 14

message: Expertise is a form of power; that is, experts have the ability to influence others. Alvin Toffler's Powershift argues that the three main kinds of social power are violence, wealth, and knowledge and, further, that these three kinds of power interact.
:geoWIZard-Passports 00:34, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expertise - Powershift (thinkLet) 

message: According to ALVIN TOFFLER NAMED AMONG CHINA'S MOST INFLUENTIAL FOREIGNERS at their own site, he has been very influential in China.
If someone can track the People's Daily article, it would be a meaningful addition. --84.20.17.84 11:51, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Big in China 

message: There should be a skeptical analysis of such a significant book as this.  Being a bestseller indicates nothing about its validity.  Futures studies is an intriguing idea but its ancestral origin, futurology, is a sort of philosophical proposal of a new science, which is always at risk of turning out to be hoaxery/pseudoscience.  In his introduction/prologue to the book, Toffler points out many disclaimers that may be a means of allowing him to talk scientifically without being scientific.  That is a tactic commonly used, such as in fallacious arguments for intelligent design.  He was a popular editor of Forbes or something, but does he have grounds in the scientific community?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.100.4.178 (talk) 17:41, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd also like to see this as I've just learned about him a few moments ago after reading about Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico. Also, do any other "business authors" have a sub-cat for Mentors or Influences? If not, that may be an interesting addition. Maltiti2005 13:45, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism 

message: This article does not seem to be a biography at all. Rather it presents (and, yes, boosts) Tofflers work, theories, ideas, etc. I would like to see a real biography with a short main body about the man's life and works and ideas presented in sections.
This article is currently full of boosterism, and sounds like it was written by either the subject himself, or devoted fans. -- Beland 08:51, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV 

message: Ummm... Science fiction as an article category?  Does WP usually classify work like this as science fiction?  Somehow I doubt other writers in the science fiction genre would consider Toffler an SF writer.
Etbnc 16:23, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categories 

message: Did Toffler write the page himself? It certainly sounds like a fanboy piece or an ad. I read Future Shock years ago, and it was nothing but vague, popularized, forgettable fluff, the kind of thing that's written to be a best seller. I'm finding it hard to believe that serious people -- economists, scholars, whomever -- could possibly take this lightweight author as seriously as the page makes it sound. Or maybe all "futurism" is just a pile of crap.
  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.22.240.9 (talk) 23:49, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Self-Congratulatory or Accurate Reflection of Past Stature? 

message: I read Future Shock when it was new and recently re-read it.
It is not profound except to someone poised precisely at a crisis point in their belief that the past predicts the future. Anyone convinced beyond argument that the future is a linear, or other simple, projection from the present will remain unswayed. Likewise, it is unimpressive to anyone convinced that only 20-20 hindsight shows the actual connection of the future to the past.
I honestly don't remember whether I was unswayed or unimpressed when I first read it. I do remember that I dismissed it as buzz-think. Now, I am deeply in the camp of those who expect the long-term future to be different from, yet resonant with, the past. I still don't like it, but I have more respect for it. (Getting old does that in some cases, but not many.)
If, as Toffler proposes, the future relates to the past in a manner which cannot yet be known, any, possibly all, of his predictions should, in retrospect, turn out to be alarmist, overly optimistic, or even both. Like swinging a pencil at a breeze, you may hit some but you will miss most. Unlike that example, the ones that are hit will have, after the fact, perfectly obvious explanations, so that hitting any proves nothing.
Everything in the book other than the generalizations, the fluff, actually contradicts Toffler's premise. On the other hand, without some examples of what might be, it is difficult to convey the concept that the future won't be a carbon copy of, or a linear extrapolation from, or have some other pre-manageable relationship to, the past. But the reader has to be exactly at the state of crisis to be helped, or harmed depending on your viewpoint, by that understanding.
Kdlneal (talk) 23:20, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  The future is not the past, never was and never will be. 

message: If you must, please put criticisms of the book or futures studies here, so they can more easily be moved to the appropriate articles.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikip rhyre (talk • contribs) 17:57, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticisms of specific books or futures studies methodology 

message: "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” Thought often cited as a quote from Toffler, it seems not to appear in any of his works. See: http://deangroom.wordpress.com/2009/12/21/to-quote-unquote-and-requote-21st-century-illiteracy/  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Silas10961 (talk • contribs) 02:12, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quote on 21st century illiteracy misattributed 

message: "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."— Alvin Toffler  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.160.184.26 (talk) 01:54, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  quote 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The Mark Knopfler reference to Toffler(s) in the album Privateering song Bluebird is a striking one. It is done using the Alvin and the Chipmunks. The words "Weevils" is one space away "We evils". The word "hay" with capitol H refers to Armenian people. This raises the question: if Toffler's parents were Polish Jews, how about his grandparents? Part of the explanation for the Knopfler lines, especially with "Yes, I got", seems to be that Mark Knopfler information tells that his father was Hungarian Jew.
The connection Mark Knopfler has made between him and Toffler(s) is related to Knopfler's Sailing to Philadelpia album. This album carries information about September 11, 2001 attacks and it is published prior the event in 2000. The song Sailing to Philadelphia has a line with "make my mark upon the earth" and a line with "Geordie and the baker's boy". This refers to Bush and Baker families and continues "In the forests of the Iroquois...". James A. Baker was a leading figures of George H. W. Bush administration and the Gulf War. The words "make my mark upon the earth" are striking since the word "upon" is one space away from 'up on' leading to 'make my mark up on the earth'. The lines seem to refer to two George Bush administrations, H. W. and W. and two James Bakers, III and IV. The information about James Baker IV tells that his daughter drowned. This leads to the other song in this Mark Knopfler album, Silvertown Blues.
This song, Silvertown Blues, has lines "A big silver dome rising up into the dawn" and "A silver dawn steals over the docks". Since the first of these lines joins words "dome" and "dawn", replacing the word "dawn" in in the latter in these lines produces 'A silver dome steals over the docks'. Now the Naomi Klein book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism deals with New Orleans flood 2005 containing the claim that some people related to this catastrophe are evil. This seems to reflected in the Mark Knopfler's song Bluebird which was released after Klein's book. Thus the song Silvertown Blues carries information about an event five years before it happened. Now, the "silver dome" refers to the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/db/NOLA_Header.jpg/350px-NOLA_Header.jpg.
Here is a picture showing how the higher portions of the roads look like docks.
The "silver dome" and "silver dawn" refer to Toffler's work The Futurists as well, since the cover picture of the book is a picture of a face with a silver dome on front of the left eye:
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/413bv0h0fkL._SX330_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
Tofflers' book Revolutionary Wealth deals with the time socialization of the civilization they and Friedrich von Hayek (among others) write of, which is different than the time socialization in modern civilizations where time is thought being linear. Herbert A. Simon has actually written articles about reversing the causality using expectations about future as the cause of current behavior. There is also an interesting connection to Armen Alchian.
The time socialization of Toffler(s) writings is based on the needs of the capitalism they write of. So this connection Mark Knopler has made is a strong one. Notice that the song Silvertown Blues refers to the WTC complex and it's ownership, Silverstein Properties. The song Bluebird where this link to Toffler(s) is made has also a connection to Iran since there is information that Hay is a place there.
The Sailing to Philadelpia album cover is a picture of an airplane mixed with zeppelin, and this mixing refers to the Hindenburg disaster.
The book "War and Anti-War" is dedicated to Betty and Karen. If Karen was Tofflers' only child, who is Betty?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dancing Mickey Mouse (talk • contribs) 20:42, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: All of those personal observations, conclusions and opinions would be great in a blog, but not in WP. Either find reliable sources to support statements or leave them off. --Light show (talk) 21:42, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: It might be a great blog in a time cube sort of way. Here it's gibberish. Jonathunder (talk) 21:46, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mark Knopfler's striking reference to Toffler 

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message: I've added the POV template to this page, as per several comments on this Talk page in the past. Ideally, someone should go through and make the tone less congratulatory, and perhaps add some dissenting views to the "Critical assessment" section (for instance, David Graeber wrote in The Utopia of Rules "The fact that Toffler turned out to be wrong about almost everything had no deleterious effects on his own career. Charismatic prophets rarely suffer much when their prophecies fail to materialize." I don't know if that's the best bit of criticism to include, but it seems worth finding views of his work that aren't exclusively breathlessly positive for that section).
Wesleyac (talk) 09:39, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV Label