Alvin and Heidi Toffler enunciated the concept of waves of civilization. The first wave was the agricultural
revolution of 10,000 or so years ago. It took society from a wandering hunter-gatherer culture to a culture that
pretty much stayed in one place planting crops. These first civilizations organized around the multi-generational
family instead of the loose clan structure of the hunter-gatherers. With civilization came cities and politics
larger than the clan. Feudalism became the dominant form of political organization. The hunter-gatherers were
conquered, such as Egypt or Babylon taking the Jewish people. Slavery was common, because it worked economically.
Land was the basis of power, as was force of arms.
The second wave was the industrial revolution, which really started in Renaissance Italy about five hundred
years ago. People started working differently. New ideas for political organization came up and were experimented
with. More people worked off the farm and outside the home. Eventually, the trends continued until we had the
early twentieth century in Europe and the US as the ultimate result. Two major political forms emerged: capitalism
and totalitarianism. The family became nuclear. Jobs went outside the home, usually with women inside the home
raising children, preparing meals, cleaning, etc. New values were developed. Instead of ma¤ana, it was come to
work on time, punch the clock. Mandatory formal education was developed to help new generations conform to what
they would find in the workplace. Money was power.
There was a lot of tension in the transition between first and second wave civilizations, just as there was as
the first wave rolled over the world. The War Between the States was an expression of that tension as the agrarian
Confederacy fought for independence from the more industrialized North. They were fighting to preserve their
older way of life. In about 1919, the US finally had more jobs in manufacturing than farming.
The third wave came much faster, not waiting 10,000 years. It really started in the early 1900’s with more
professionals, writers, researchers, engineers, etc. Knowledge became power. By 1950, blue-collar jobs were down
to less than half the jobs in this country. The percentage of agricultural jobs was still dropping. We were
experiencing the Informational Revolution. Service sector jobs were taking over. The economy was becoming more
global. Again, there were skirmishes between the older civilizations and the new. Iraq is one example of that.
Al Qaeda is currently another. I’m not sure whether it’s the third wave against the second, first, or the old
hunter-gatherer mentality in those wars and skirmishes, but the tension continues to be deadly.
Nowadays, we hear all the time about how many jobs are lost in manufacturing. What they don’t mention is that
the US still produces a lot of material and goods. We just use a lot less people to do it. The same holds true
for agriculture. While we have only about 4% of the workforce involved in agriculture, we produce more food than
ever. It’s called higher productivity. Each person employed in these sectors produces thousands of times as much
as someone would have in 1800. Think about the difference between a blacksmith and modern steel product processes.
A black smith did one thing at a time. A farrier might be all day working on the shoes for one horse. Now? We
have factories that can pour out horseshoes by the thousands every hour. And we are all richer for it. So what’s
the latest war cry? We’re losing service sector jobs. Yes, a few are going to countries like India, but most are
just being eliminated. We’re getting more productive. We don’t need that many jobs to produce more and better
results in those professions. But it’s okay.
Why is it okay? Because new services and jobs are cropping up. Our current unemployment is historically low,
despite population growth. Jimmy Carter would have loved 5.6% unemployment. In my hometown, unemployment reached
25% as a result of Carter’s policies and an oil shock in the 70’s. So, if unemployment is relatively low, where is
everyone working? Well, a lot of them are working for themselves. And people working for themselves don’t get
counted in the same way in the government statistics. But maybe that’s only half the story.
I’ve been wondering if there might be a fourth wave. I’ve been looking for it. After all, the time between
waves has been compressing. There are whole sectors of the world jumping straight from first wave agricultural to
third wave informational economies. It took 10,000 years, and the agricultural wave hasn’t spread all over yet.
It’s been a maximum of five hundred years since the infancy of the industrial revolution, and a mere 200 years
since it really got going. It’s been fifty since the dawn of the informational age, and at least twenty years
since it took off. We’re still in the throws of adjusting to the third wave, but.what if?
I’ve been looking for the fourth wave. I thought for a while that it might be journalism. After all, I’ve
heard journalists interview journalists about what happened to a journalist in Iraq. It could only be a matter of
weeks, if not days, until our society was over 50% employed in interviewing each other about events that happened
to someone else. But that’s really about information. It is still the knowledge is power framework. So, what’s
emerging?
This is just a wild bit of speculation, but maybe the fourth wave will be a cultural revolution. Not like the
Chinese version, either. Rather, there may be another sector of the economy for the arts. Is this a manufactured
product? In some cases. For instance, the art ceramics that my wife regularly brings home from a pottery fair is
something physical. Musicians produce recordings that can be bought. But some arts are also services, like the
art forms used in marketing. Every business needs to market, and many need Websites and literature created. Now
one could call this information-based, but there is more, a creative component. As we have more and more
discretionary income, our society can afford more and more art in all forms. I don’t have the statistics to back
this up, but I am speculating that there are relatively more professional artists per capita than there were fifty
or a thousand years ago.
As we get richer, we can afford to support more of those things that are higher up on the hierarchy of needs.
First there is food and water, the agricultural revolution. Then there is clothing and shelter, manufactured
goods. After a few more levels that involve belonging and self-esteem, which tie into the second and third waves,
we come to self-actualization. Artists and the people who buy art are about self-actualization. My wife buys
fancy, artsy mugs because that’s what she’s about. It’s part of her expression of herself. I write for
self-actualization. It’s me being me. So, I may be full of masculine bovine excrement, but my thought is that art
will be power within a few generations.
F. B. Knight is Curmudgeon-in-Residence at the Attila the Hun School of Management. He can be reached for questions
at
fbk@attilathehunschool.net.
