Revolutionary Wealth

Revolutionary Wealth
By
Alvin and Heidi Toffler
Knopf,
2006
★★★★☆

Review by Bernie Thompson,
July 2006

I'm a huge fan of Toffler's books, having read Future Shock (1970), The Third Wave (1984), and Powershift (1991) before. These books, along with those by Naisbitt affected me -- helping create a future-looking attitude towards life. It's a tribute to the earlier books that, even 15 years after Powershift, the new book does not add much to Toffler's brilliant forsight. Toffler predicted and extrapolated so many effects of the Knowledge Economy in those earlier volumes.

Revolutionary Wealth provides a meandering introduction to these same ideas, a very effective ongoing update based on current events, a good (if overly-negative) description of challenges in embracing these inevitable changes. I was hoping for more analysis and ideas for tackling the unsolved problems and unexploited ideas of the third wave.

The book is worth reading for Toffler's worldly insights into todays events and trends, reflected against the transformation from a second-wave industrial economy to today's knowledge economy. Toffler also has great interest in the increasingly important role of the prosumer in the economy. If you only read one Toffler book (and you should), this is the best, imperfect choice. If you have the time, start with with the earlier books and marvel at the surprisingly insightful view of the future these volumes represent.

(This posting is a test of the hReview Microformat)