{"product_id":"revolutionary-wealth-isbn-9780385522076","title":"Revolutionary Wealth","description":"Since the mid-1960s, Alvin and Heidi Toffler have predicted the far-reaching impact of emerging technological, economic, and social developments on our businesses, governments, families, and daily lives. In REVOLUTIONARY WEALTH, they once again demonstrate their unparalleled ability to illuminate current trends and anticipate what they mean for the future. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eREVOLUTIONARY WEALTH focuses on how wealth will be created—and who will get it—in the twenty-first century. As the knowledge-based economy (a reality  the Tofflers predicted forty years ago) continues to replace the industrial-based economy, they argue, money is no longer the sole determinate of wealth. The Tofflers explain that we are becoming a nation of “prosumers,”  consuming what we ourselves produce, and argue that we have all taken on “third jobs”—work we unwittingly do without pay for some of the biggest corporations in the country. Using fascinating examples from our daily lives, they illustrate how our everyday activities—from parenting and volunteering to blogging, painting our houses, and improving our diets—contribute to a non-monetary economy that is largely hidden from economists. Writing with the same insight and clarity that made their earlier books bestsellers, the Tofflers present fresh, groundbreaking new ways of thinking about wealth.“In \u003ci\u003eFuture Shock\u003c\/i\u003e, the Tofflers warned that many people ‘will find it increasingly painful to keep up with the incessant demand for change that characterizes our time.…These days, from Baghdad to Bangalore to Boston, it seems more likely that people worry that the future will arrive too late. That’s no small change, and it’s one on which the Tofflers have been shining a light for years.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Alvin and Heidi Toffler…show no signs of losing touch with the bleeding edge or slowing down. Their book is loaded with bits of intelligence.” —\u003ci\u003eUSA TODAY\u003c\/i\u003eALVIN TOFFLER and HEIDI TOFFLER advise companies and governments worldwide on advances in economics, technology, and social change. They are the authors of such classics as \u003ci\u003eFuture Shock\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Third Wave\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003ePowershift\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eWar and Anti-War\u003c\/i\u003e. They write and lecture widely and their monthly column appears in major newspapers around the world. They live in Los Angeles, California.CHAPTER 1SPEARHEADING WEALTH    This book is about the future of wealth, visible and invisible--a   revolutionary form of wealth that will redesign our lives, our   companies and the world in the years now speeding toward us.    To explain what that means, the pages ahead will deal with everything   from family life and jobs to time pressures and the mounting   complexity of everyday life. They will grapple with truth, lies,   markets and money. They will cast surprising light on the collision   of change and anti-change in the world around us--and inside   ourselves.    Today's wealth revolution will unlock countless opportunities and new   life trajectories, not only for creative business entrepreneurs but   for social, cultural and educational entrepreneurs as well. It will   open fresh possibilities for slashing poverty both at home and around   the globe. But it will accompany this invitation to a glowing future   with a warning: Risks are not merely multiplying but escalating. The   future is not for the fainthearted.    Today e-mails and blogs bombard us. EBay makes marketers of us all.   Corporate megascandals burst into the headlines. Drugs are launched   to help cure breast cancer, multiple sclerosis and dozens of   different diseases. Other drugs are belatedly pronounced too   dangerous and yanked off the market. Robots go to Mars and land with   exquisite precision. But computers, software, cell phones and   networks constantly fail. Warming warms. Fuel cells beckon. Genes and   stem cells trigger bitter controversy. Nano is the new techno-grail.    Simultaneously, criminal street gangs from Los Angeles roam across   Central America and build a quasi-army, and thirteen-year-old   aspiring terrorists depart France for the Middle East. In London,   Prince Harry dresses as a Nazi even as anti-Semitism re-rears its   disgusting head. AIDS wipes out a generation in Africa, while strange   new diseases in Asia threaten to sweep across the world.    To escape--or at least forget--what appears like chaos, millions turn   to television, where \"reality TV\" fakes reality. Thousands form   \"flash mobs\" and gather to beat one another with pillows. Elsewhere,   players of online games pay thousands of dollars in real money for   virtual swords that their virtual selves can use to win virtual   castles or maidens. Irreality spreads.    More important, institutions that once lent coherence, order and   stability to society--schools, hospitals, families, courts,   regulatory agencies, trade unions--flail about in crisis.    And it is against this background that America's trade deficit soars   to unprecedented levels. The national budget staggers drunkenly. The   world's finance ministers wonder out loud if they should risk   triggering a global depression by recalling the billions they have   lent to Washington. Europe celebrates itself for expanding the   European Union--but German unemployment hits a fifty-year high and   the French and Dutch overwhelmingly reject the proposed E.U.   constitution. Meanwhile, China, we're told--again and again--is   certain to become the next superpower.    The combination of economic high-wire acts and institutional failures   leaves individuals back home face-to-face with potentially   devastating personal problems. They question if they will ever   receive the pensions for which they have worked, or whether they can   afford the rocketing costs of gasoline and health care. They agonize   about appalling schools. They worry about whether crime, drugs and an   anything-goes morality will destroy civil life. How, everyone wants   to know, will this seeming chaos affect our wallets? Will we even   have a wallet?FAD OF THE MONTH    Not only do ordinary mortals find it hard to answer these questions,   so do the experts. Corporate CEOs succeed one another like passengers   pushing through a rush-hour turnstile: merging, divesting, kowtowing   to the stock market; pursuing core competence one month, synergy the   next, the latest management fad a month later. They study the most   recent economic forecasts, but many economists themselves are   befuddled as they wander around in a cemetery of dead ideas.    To decode this new world we need to cut through the chatter of   rear-window economists and business pundits who prattle about   \"business fundamentals.\" We need to probe below the obsolete obvious.   In these pages, therefore, we will focus on the unexplored \"deep   fundamentals\" on which the so-called fundamentals themselves depend.    Once we do, things look different, less crazy, and previously   unnoticed opportunities pop out of the shadows. Chaos, it turns out,   is only part of the story. And chaos itself generates new ideas.    Tomorrow's economy, for example, will present significant business   opportunities in fields like hyper-agriculture, neurostimulation,   customized health care, nanoceuticals, bizarre new energy sources,   streaming payment systems, smart transportation, flash markets, new   forms of education, non-lethal weapons, desktop manufacturing,   programmable money, risk management, privacy-invasion sensors that   tell us when we're being observed--indeed, sensors of all kinds--plus   a bewildering myriad of other goods, services and experiences.    We can't be sure when these will or will not turn profitable or how   they will converge. But understanding the deep fundamentals will   reveal the existence, even now, of new needs and previously   unidentified industries and sectors--a huge \"synchronization   industry,\" for example, and a \"loneliness industry.\"    To forecast the future of wealth, we also need to look not just at   the work we do for money but at the unpaid work all of us also do as   \"prosumers.\" (We'll explain later, but it might shock most people to   learn just how much unpaid output we all produce every day.) We'll   look, as well, at the invisible \"third job\" that many of us hold   without even knowing it.    Because prosuming is set to explode, the future of the money economy   can no longer be understood, let alone forecast, apart from that of   the prosumer economy. The two, in fact, are inseparable. Together   they form a wealth system. And once we understand this--and the   channels by which the two feed each other--we gain piercing insights   into our private lives now and into the future.LOOSENED CONSTRAINTS    New wealth systems don't come often, and they don't travel alone.   Each carries with it a new way of life, a civilization. Not just new   business structures but new family formats; new kinds of music and   art; new foods, fashions and standards of physical beauty; new   values; and new attitudes toward religion and personal freedom--all   of which interact with and shape the emerging new wealth system.    America today is spearheading just such a new civilization built   around a revolutionary way of creating wealth. For better and worse,   billions of lives around the world are already being changed by this   revolution. Nations and whole regions of the globe are rising or   declining as they feel its impact.    Today millions of people around the world dislike or even hate   America. Some fanatics wish to incinerate the United States and   everyone in it. The reasons they give range from its Middle East   policies and its refusal to sign various international treaties to   what they regard as its imperial ambitions.    Yet even if peace reigned in the Middle East, even if all the world's   terrorists turned pacifist and democracies flowered like dandelions,   the rest of the world would still view the United States with   trepidation at best.    This is because the new wealth system the United States is   developing, by its very nature, threatens old, embedded financial and   political interests around the world. Moreover, in the United States   the rise of the new wealth system has been accompanied by   controversial changes in the roles of women, racial and ethnic   minorities, gays and other groups.    Because America's emergent culture promotes greater individuality, it   is seen as a threat to community. Worse yet, because it has loosened   some of the traditional sexual, moral, political, religious and   lifestyle constraints placed on the individual during earlier   economic eras, it is seen as dangerously seducing the young into   nihilism, license and decadence.    In short, the combination of revolutionary wealth and the social and   cultural changes so far associated with it may have more to do with   global anti-Americanism than the usual litany of reasons cited by the   media.    The revolutionary wealth system, however, as we'll see, is no longer   an American monopoly. Other nations are racing to catch up. And it is   not clear how long the United States will retain its lead.GUITARS AND ANTI-HEROES    The roots of revolutionary wealth can be traced to 1956--the year   when, for the first time, white-collar and service workers   outnumbered blue-collar workers in the United States. This sea change   in the composition of the labor force was arguably the kickoff point   for the transition from an industrial economy based on manual labor   to one based on knowledge or mind work.    The knowledge-based wealth system is still called the \"new   economy\"--and for convenience we will at times continue to call it   that here--but the first computers, still huge and expensive,   actually were migrating from government offices into the business   world by the mid-1950s. And Princeton economist Fritz Machlup, as   early as 1962, showed that in the 1950s knowledge production in the   United States was already growing faster than the gross national   product.    The 1950s are often pictured as a deadly dull decade. But on October   4, 1957, Russia launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to   orbit the earth, triggering a great space race with the United States   that radically accelerated the development of systems theory,   information science, software programming and training in   project-management skills. It also promoted an emphasis on science   and mathematics in U.S. schools. All this began pumping new,   wealth-relevant knowledge into the economy.    Culture and politics began to change as well. Just as the industrial   revolution centuries ago brought new ideas, art forms, values and   political movements, along with new technology, so did the knowledge   economy in the United States.    Thus the 1950s saw the universalization of television and the   introduction of Elvis Presley, the Fender Stratocaster electric   guitar, and rock 'n' roll. Hollywood shifted from heroes and happy   endings to surly anti-heroes played by actors like James Dean and   Marlon Brando. The literary Beats and their hippie followers   glorified \"doing your own thing\"--a precision attack on the   conformity valued in industrial mass societies.    The 1960s were marked by Vietnam War protests and the rise of   movements for civil rights, gay rights and equality for women. By   1966 the National Organization for Women was pointing out that   \"today's technology has . . . virtually eliminated the quality of   muscular strength as a criterion for filling most jobs, while   intensifying American industry's need for creative intelligence.\" NOW   demanded the right of women to participate on fair terms in the   \"revolution created by automation\" and the economy generally.    While the world's media focused on these dramatic events, almost no   attention was paid to the work of top scientists, funded by the   Pentagon, on an obscure new technology called ARPANET--a forerunner   of what became the world-changing Internet.    Given this history, the common belief that the \"new\" economy was the   product of a 1990s stock-market bubble, and that it is going to go   away, is ridiculous.GIGGLE NEWS    History records endless examples of \"revolutions\" that replaced old   technologies and even governments without significantly altering   society itself and the people in it. By contrast, real revolutions   replace institutions as well as technologies. And they do more: They   break down and reorganize what social psychologists call the role   structure of society.    Today traditional roles are changing at high speed in many countries   transitioning to knowledge economies. The roles of husbands and wives   . . . parents and children . . . professors and students . . . bosses   and workers . . . in-laws and activists, executives and team leaders   all have psychological as well as economic implications. At issue are   not merely a person's tasks or functions but the social expectations   that come with them.    On and off the job, the result is rising ambiguity, high uncertainty,   complexity and conflict as tasks and titles are continuously   renegotiated. We see stress and burnout as the roles of doctors and   nurse practitioners, lawyers and paralegals, police and community   workers are challenged and redefined to a degree not seen since the   advent of the industrial revolution.    Revolutions also smash boundaries. Industrial society set a clear   border between life at home and life on the job. Today, for the   growing millions who work from home, the line is blurred. Even who   works for whom is becoming unclear. Robert Reich, former U.S.   secretary of labor, points out that a significant part of the labor   force consists of independent contractors, free agents and others who   work in company A but are actually employees of company B. \"In a few   years,\" says Reich, \"a company may be best defined by who has access   to what data and who gets what portion of a particular stream of   revenues over what period of time. There may be no 'employees' at   all, strictly speaking.\"    Academic boundaries are eroding, too. Against enormous resistance,   more and more work on the campus is becoming transdisciplinary.    In pop music, borderlines between grime, garage, rock, Eastern,   hip-hop, techno, retro, disco, big band, Tejano and a variety of   other genres disappear in \"fusion\" and \"hybridization.\" Consumers   turn into producers by remixing or \"sampling\" sounds from different   bands, different instruments and different vocals into   \"mash-ups\"--the musical equivalent of collages.    On TV in the United States, the once-clear line between news and   entertainment is being erased as \"giggle anchors\" joke between   headlines and studio audiences applaud. Advertisers insert their   messages and products into the story lines of dramas or sitcoms, thus   vaporizing the border between entertainment and marketing.    Even sexual boundaries are no longer fixed, as homosexuality and   bisexuality blast out of the closet and the small population of   transsexuals grows. Just ask Riki Anne Wilchins, a Wall Street   computer expert who also happens to be what The New York Times   described as a \"post-operative male-to-female transsexual.\" Wilchin   heads GenderPAC, a group that lobbies Washington on issues pertaining   to gender rights and argues that categorizing people as \"he\" or \"she\"   is itself oppressive, force-fitting into one of those two roles all   those who more accurately fit into neither.    Not all the new roles and rights will survive, as still more   economic, technological and social changes bombard us. But anyone who   underestimates the revolutionary character of today's changes is   living an illusion.    The world is being transformed, dramatically and irrevocably.Includes a new preface by the authors International bestseller","brand":"Crown Currency","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303396004069,"sku":"NP9780385522076","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780385522076.jpg?v=1767735720","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/revolutionary-wealth-isbn-9780385522076","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}