[In the following review, Maruyama criticizes The Third Wave for being ethnocentric in perspective and for inaccurately applying sociological theory, but notes that the work will be of interest to social scientists.]

If his previous book Future Shock was disappointing to many, The Third Wave is a pleasant surprise to some, intriguing to others, and may appear unintelligible or irrational to a few. It brings to the surface the problems of cognitive, perceptual, and cogitative patterns of the readers as well as the author.

The book is based on extensive data gathered from the frontiers of trends in our society, many of which are outside the established categories and are therefore overlooked by most social scientists. But The Third Wave is not a mere compilation of data. Its merit lies in the identification of patterns, the interpretation of which requires an interactionist frame of mind instead of the more usual hierarchical thinking.

The book has a few theoretical flaws, ranging from ethnocentrism to conceptual and technical misinterpretations of the characteristics of pattern-generating interactive processes. But it presents many useful insights and data to be taken seriously. Different types of social scientists will find the book useful for different purposes. Those who study emerging cultural and epistemological patterns may find their theories substantiated or supplemented by Toffler's data. Others may find new angles for research. Some may even notice that Toffler himself is often trapped in the “Second Wave” mentality, and find this fact an intriguing topic of analysis.

The book is rich in concepts: old, new, familiar, novel, provocative, misinterpretable, or debatable. It moves very rapidly from concept to concept. A short summary will not do it full justice. One of the main themes is the contrast between the industrial era (the second wave) and the postindustrial era (the Third Wave). The former was characterized by the conceptual and operational principles of social, educational, and industrial standardization, specialization, synchronization, urbanization, maximization, and hierarchization. Even the educational system, work ethics, and nonextended family (nuclear or communal) were an adaptation to industrialism, both in capitalist and communist countries. On the other hand, in the Third Wave era, the new technology will enable destandardization, not only of products but also of working hours, education, life-styles and almost everything social. Another key concept is our return to “prosumption”—producing and designing for one's own consumption—by means of technology. For example, by linking the consumer directly with the factory by means of computer and measuring devices, dressmaking may become individually tailored, reflecting the consumer's choice in design, style, color, and material. Technology will make such individualization inexpensive. Furthermore, prosumption will eliminate the waste of unsold inventory inevitable in mass production as well as stock out, and the costs of market research to estimate the demand.

Theoretical flawlessness is perhaps too much to expect from a popular book. However, since Toffler addresses episternological problems, some theoretical criticisms will not be out of place.

First, his book is ethnocentric in the sense that he is unfamiliar with cultures in which what he calls the “Third Wave” way of thinking always existed with or without industrialization or postindustrialization. Because of this, he talks about some African, Asian, and Latin American countries “bypassing” the Second Wave industrial patterns and moving directly from the First Wave feudal patterns to the Third Wave patterns. Coupled with this is his insufficient understanding of the fact that many of the white and black Americans who import what they call non-Western philosophies or try to invent new cultural and philosophical movements are trapped in the same fallacies as the hierarchical way of thinking they rebel against: the consciousness movements have fallen into the dichotomy of the mental and the physical and into hierarchical rank-ordering of values; mushrooming new religions advocate universalistic homogenism (which Toffler does recognize); environmentalist and ecology movements have imposed immobility upon an otherwise dynamic nature; “do-your-own-thingism” and “small is beautiful” movements have become isolated and regional instead of heterogeneous in interaction for mutual benefit (which Toffler does not articulate sufficiently). All these and more arise from the Second Wave “hang-ups” of proponents in these movements.

Second, he repeatedly places the Third Wave way of thinking somewhere between the traditional, familiar opposites: hierarchy and individual. Thus, he speaks of the “balance” between the big and the small, centralization and decentralization, self and community, holism and reductionism, freedom and regimentation, inner drives and outer drives, objectivity and subjectivity. He fails to see that the Third Wave principles are based on the concept of pattern-gathering, mutually beneficial interactions between heterogeneous elements. This concept is shared neither by the hierarchical way of thinking nor the individualistic way of thinking. It is important to realize that the interactions are nonhierarchical; patterns are not mere statistical aggregation of independent individuals; on the contrary, individuals are intersupportive, neither subordinated nor independent; it is not necessary for some to lose in order for others to gain; heterogeneity enables mutual benefit, while homogeneity fosters competition; and, interaction between heterogeneous elements makes the patterns grow, change, and raise the level of their sophistication.

Third, he makes several errors in his theoretical chapter (chapter 21) on new causal models which are relevant to anthropological theories of the causes and processes of culture change. Toffler fails to see that it is causal loops, not causal hierarchy or randomness, that systematically generate heterogeneity and mutual benefit, reinforcement, and further amplification among the heterogeneous elements. Often his notion of heterogeneity is nothing more than that of random, independent, and isolated variations.

There are other theoretical errors in this chapter. He seems to consider nonloop causality as deterministic and loop causality as probabilistic. This is wrong. Many nonloop processes are probabilistic, while many loop models are deterministic.

He also seems to attribute sudden changes to causal loops while attributing gradual changes to nonloop causality. On the contrary, many nonloop processes can produce sudden changes. This was in fact the point of René Thom's Catastrophe Theory, which is not at all a causal loop theory. On the other hand, positive feedback loops can produce both gradual and sudden changes. This is the unique strength of the positive feedback models (which are used in archaeology). But the homeostatic, change-counteracting, negative-feedback models (which support functionalist theory in anthropology) and random process theories (in which structures tend to decay, as in the Second Law of Thermodynamics) have to resort to hypotheses of sudden changes to explain the rise of patterns. The undue emphasis by Toffler (and those whom he quotes) on “gaps” and “jumps” is due to the Second Wave mentality of “prime mover.”

He also confuses multipath evolution with gaps and jumps. He does not realize that branching usually occurs from a small change which is subsequently amplified, rather than from gaps and jumps; any point along the line of evolution is a potential branching point if it is in a positive feedback process; and, those who consider branching points to be infrequent “singular points” are trapped in the Second Wave mentality of “prime mover.”

These misinterpretations are not entirely Toffler's fault because the authors he quotes, including Ilya Prigogine, are themselves partially trapped in the Second Wave epistemology. But Toffler has gone, very faithfully, as far as those he quoted have gone. And, overall, the short-comings of the book are very minor compared to its contribution in encouraging readers to revise many of their assumptions and patterns of thinking about cultural processes.