Alvin Toffler Quotes

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

If you don't have a strategy, you're part of someone else's strategy.

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.

A library is a hospital for the mind.” - Anonymous

Change is not merely necessary to life - it is life.

A single conversation with a wise man is better than ten years of study.” - Chinese proverb

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” - Chinese proverb

The illiterate of the 21st Century are not those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.

The future always comes too fast and in the wrong order.

Learning is like rowing upstream; not to advance is to drop back.” - Chinese proverb

You’ve got to think about the big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction. —Alvin Toffler

4. Knowledge is the most democratic source of power.

The secret message communicated to most young people today by the society around them is that they are not needed, that the society will run itself quite nicely until they - at some distant point in the future - will take over the reigns. Yet the fact is that the society is not running itself nicely... because the rest of us need all the energy, brains, imagination and talent that young people can bring to bear down on our difficulties. For society to attempt to solve its desperate problems without the full participation of even very young people is imbecile.

To survive, to avert what we have termed future shock, the individual must become infinitely more adaptable and capable than ever before. We must search out totally new ways to anchor ourselves, for all the old roots - religion, nation, community, family, or profession - are now shaking under the hurricane impact of the accelerative thrust. It is no longer resources that limit decisions, it is the decision that makes the resources.

Our moral responsibility is not to stop the future, but to shape it...to channel our destiny in humane directions and to ease the trauma of transition.

Science fiction is held in low regard as a branch of literature, and perhaps it deserves this critical contempt. But if we view it as a kind of sociology of the future, rather than as literature, science fiction has immense value as a mind-stretching force for the creation of the habit of anticipation. Our children should be studying Arthur C. Clarke, William Tenn, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury and Robert Sheckley, not because these writers can tell them about rocket ships and time machines but, more important, because they can lead young minds through an imaginative exploration of the jungle of political, social, psychological, and ethical issues that will confront these children as adults.

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.

By instructing students how to learn, unlearn and relearn, a powerful new dimension can be added to education. Psychologist Herbert Gerjuoy of the Human Resources Research Organization phrases it simply: ‘The new education must teach the individual how to classify and reclassify information, how to evaluate its veracity, how to change categories when necessary, how to move from the concrete to the abstract and back, how to look at problems from a new direction—how to teach himself. Tomorrow’s illiterate will not be the man who can’t read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn.

Mereka yang disebut buta huruf (illiterate) di abad ke-21 bukanlah orang-orang yang tidak bisa membaca dan menulis, namun mereka yang tidak bisa belajar (learn), menanggalkan pelajaran sebelumnya (un-learn), dan belajar kembali (re-learn).

The recognition that no knowledge can be complete, no metaphor entire, is itself humanizing. It counteracts fanaticism. It grants even to adversaries the possibility of partial truth, and to oneself the possibility of error.

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. – Alvin Toffler (1928–)

It does little good to forecast the future of semiconductors or energy, or the future of the family (even one's own family), if the forecast springs from the premise that everything else will remain unchanged. For nothing will remain unchanged. The future is fluid, not frozen. It is constructed by our shifting and changing daily decisions, and each event influences all others.

A library is a hospital for the mind.

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.

Individuals need life structure. A life lacking in comprehensible structure is an aimless wreck. The absence of structure breeds breakdown. Structure provides the relatively fixed points of reference we need. That is why, for many people, a job is crucial psychologically, over and above the paycheck. By making clear demands on their time and energy, it provides an element of structure around which the rest of their lives can be organized. The absolute demands imposed on a parent by an infant, the responsibility to care for an invalid, the tight discipline demanded by membership in a church or, in some countries, a political party — all these may also impose a simple structure on life.

Anyone nit-picking enough to write a letter of correction to an editor doubtless deserves the error that provoked it.

بی‌سوادانِ قرنِ ۲۱ آن‌هایی نیستند که نمی‌توانند بخوانند و بنویسند، بلکه آن‌هایی هستند که نمی‌توانند آموخته‌های قدیمی را فراموش کنند و دوباره بیاموزند.

We are moving swiftly into the era of the temporary product, made by temporary methods, to serve temporary needs.

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.

منذ ذلك اليوم الذي قذف فيه الانسان القديم حيوانا صغيرا بحجر، بدأ أستخدام العنف لصنع الثروة

If just a tiny fraction of the sums spent on scientific and technological research and innovation were devoted to labs for designing and testing new organizational and institutional structures, we might have a much broader range of options to head off the looming implosion.

Rooting about in themselves for the source of their discomfort, they undergo agonies of unnecessary guilt. They seem blankly unaware that what they are feeling inside themselves is the subjective reflection of a much larger objective crisis: they are acting out an unwitting drama within a drama.

The great growling engine of change – technology.

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” —Alvin Toffler I

You’ve got to think about the big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction. —Alvin Toffler This

One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we’ll need a new definition. ALVIN TOFFLER

In education, we need to begin paying attention to matters routinely ignored. We spend long hours trying to teach a variety of courses on, say, the structure of government or the structure of the amoeba. But how much effort goes into studying the structure of everyday life — the way time is allocated, the personal uses of money, the places to go for help in a society exploding with complexity? We take for granted that young people already know their way around our social structure. In fact, most have only the dimmest image of the way the world of work or business is organized. Most students have no conception of the architecture of their own city's economy, or the way the local bureaucracy operates, or the place to go to lodge a complaint against a merchant. Most do not even understand how their own schools — even universities — are structured, let alone how much structures are changing under the impact of the Third Wave.

I helped lift a sixty-five-year-old woman out of the bloody machine that had just torn four fingers off her hand, and I still hear her cries—"Jesus and Mary, I won't be able to work again!" The factory. Long live the factory! Today, even as new factories are being built, the civilization that made the factory into a cathedral is dying. And somewhere, right now, other young men and women are driving through the night into the heart of the emergent Third Wave civilization. Our task from here on will be to join, as it were, their quest for tomorrow.

To survive, to avert what we have termed future shock, the individual must become infinitely more adaptable and capable than ever before. He must search out totally new ways to anchor himself, for all the old roots—religion, nation, community, family, or profession— are now shaking under the hurricane impact of the accelerative thrust. Before he can do so, however, he must understand in greater detail how the effects of acceleration penetrate his personal life, creep into his behavior and alter the quality of existence. He must, in other words, understand transience.

Alvin Toffler, writing in the book Future Shock in 1970, predicted some of the consequences of what he called “information overload.” He thought our defense mechanism would be to simplify the world in ways that confirmed our biases, even as the world itself was growing more diverse and more complex.42

Alvin Toffler explained in Future Shock, “The illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write. The illiterate will be those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” His message applies to teachers as well. If we can’t unlearn and relearn, education is headed for irrelevance. Quickly.

narrowly focused specialists may be good at incremental innovation. But breakthrough innovation is often the product of temporary teams whose members cross disciplinary boundaries—at a time when breakthroughs in every field are, in fact, blurring those very boundaries. And this is not just a matter for scientists and researchers.

The truly big intellectual—and financial—payoffs occur when two or more breakthroughs converge or are plugged together.

Any useful statement about the future should at first seem ridiculous’ by Jim Dator. Also, ‘When it comes to the future, it’s far more important to be imaginative than to be right’ by Alvin Toffler. Both are famous futurists. These quotes remind me that world-changing ideas will seem absurd to most people, and that the most useful work I can be doing is to push the envelope of what is considered possible.

What most business, political and civil leaders have not yet clearly understood is a simple fact: An advanced economy needs an advanced society, for every economy is a product of the society in which it is embedded and is dependent on its key institutions.

no wealth system exists in isolation. A wealth system is only one component, although a very powerful one, of a still larger macrosystem whose other components—social, cultural, religious, political—are in constant feedback with it and with one another. Together they form a civilization or way of life roughly compatible with the wealth system.

Like the human heart, societies and economies, too, are subject to premature beats, local tachycardias, fibrillations and flutters, as well as “chaotic” irregularities and paroxysms. While this has long been true, the uneven, ever-accelerating pace of change and the continual de-synchronization that comes with it may now be pushing us toward temporal incoherence—without a defibrillator on board. What happens to us as individuals when our institutions, companies, industries and economy are out of sync with one another?

In their book Future Shock, the futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler wrote that “change is the only constant,” and “to survive, to avert what we have termed future shock, the individual must become infinitely more adaptable and capable than ever before.” Those words were originally published in 1970. The pace of change has only accelerated since then.

Cuando se trata del futuro, es mucho más importante tener imaginación que tener razón”, de Alvin Toffler.»

Os analfabetos do futuro não serão os que não sabem ler ou escrever, mas os que não sabem aprender, desaprender e reaprender.

Hay que pensar en grandes cosas mientras se hacen pequeñas cosas, para que todas las pequeñas cosas vayan en la dirección correcta. ALVIN TOFFLER

It is always easier to talk about change than to make it.

Alimentan sueños de revolución extraídos de las amarillentas páginas de panfletos políticos del pasado. ALVIN TOFFLER

Alvin Toffler (en sus obras “La Tercera Ola” o “The Third Wave” y “Cambio de Poder” o “Powershift”, publicadas en 1980 y 1990 respectivamente) habla de las “Olas” o “Eras” de la humanidad, comenzando por la 1ra Ola, donde el poder descansa en quien tiene la fuerza (o grandes ejércitos). Con el advenimiento de la Revolución Industrial llega la 2da Ola, donde quien tiene dinero tiene el poder. En los tiempos modernos, en la llamada 3ra Ola, se dice que quien posee la información tiene el poder.

Alvin Toffler (Toffler & Toffler, 1999) says the definition of literacy in the 21st century will not center on whether a person can read and write, but rather on whether a person can learn, unlearn, and relearn.

According toAlvin Toffler, The illiterate ofthe 21 st century willnot bethose who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn [77]

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. —Alvin Toffler

Ve své knize Šok z budoucnosti z roku 1970 předpovídá Alvin Toffler některé důsledky jevu, který označuje jako „zahlcení informacemi“. Podle jeho názoru bude naším obranným mechanismem zjednodušování světa tak, aby vyhovoval našim předsudkům, ačkoli on sám se stává různorodější a složitější.

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”               -Alvin Toffler, American Writer and Futurist

We need to understand that the “command and control” model has become obsolete in the wake of the information revolution, as Alvin Toffler wrote convincingly in his widely discussed 1980 book, The Third Wave.2 The industrial culture of Standardization, Specialization, Centralization, Concentration, and Maximization, Toffler said, has exhausted itself. Therefore, in every area of our lives we now have the opportunity and necessity to create new decentralized institutions based on the possibilities opened up by the information revolution, for smaller work units, closer ties between producers and consumers, and greater participation in community life. These conditions of postindustrial

To a certain point, fragmentation and freedom go together.

Masyarakat yang stabil adalah masyarakat yang berubah

Virtually every fact used in business, political life and every day human relations is derived from other 'facts' or assumptions that have been shaped, deliberately or not, by the preexisting power structure. Every fact thus has a power history and what may be called a power future.

Los analfabetos del siglo XXI no serán aquellos que no sepan leer y escribir, sino quienes no sepan aprender, desaprender y reaprender. ALVIN TOFFLER 37. WINTER IS COMING

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, Author of Future Shock

Future shock will not be found in Index Medicus or in any listing of psychological abnormalities. Yet, unless intelligent steps are taken to combat it, millions of human beings will find themselves increasingly disoriented, progressively incompetent to deal rationally with their environments. The malaise, mass neurosis, irrationality, and free-floating violence already apparent in contemporary life are merely a foretaste of what may lie ahead unless we come to understand and treat this disease. Future shock is a time phenomenon, a product of the greatly accelerated rate of change in society. It arises from the superimposition of a new culture on an old one. It is culture shock in one’s own society. But its impact is far worse. For most Peace Corps men, in fact most travelers, have the comforting knowledge that the culture they left behind will be there to return to. The victim of future shock does not. Take an individual out of his own culture and set him down suddenly in an environment sharply different from his own, with a different set of cues to react to—different conceptions of time, space, work, love, religion, sex, and everything else—then cut him off from any hope of retreat to a more familiar social landscape, and the dislocation he suffers is doubly severe. Moreover, if this new culture is itself in constant turmoil, and if—worse yet—its values are incessantly changing, the sense of disorientation will be still further intensified. Given few clues as to what kind of behavior is rational under the radically new circumstances, the victim may well become a hazard to himself and others. Now imagine not merely an individual but an entire society, an entire generation—including its weakest, least intelligent, and most irrational members—suddenly transported into this new world. The result is mass disorientation, future shock on a grand scale. This is the prospect that man now faces. Change is avalanching upon our heads and most people are grotesquely unprepared to cope with it.

Indeed, not only do contemporary events radiate instantaneously—now we can be said to be feeling the impact of all past events in a new way. For the past is doubling back on us. We are caught in what might be called a “time skip.

Author Alvin Toffler once wrote, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”36

It is better to err on the side of daring than the side of caution. —Alvin Toffler, American writer and futurist

U.S. Senate, Connie Mack, once complained to us: We never have more than two and a half uninterrupted minutes for anything on Capitol Hill. There’s no time to stop and think or to have anything approaching an intellectual conversation.… We have to spend two thirds of our time doing public relations, campaigning or raising campaign funds. I’m on this committee, that task force, the other working group, and who knows what else. Do you think I can possibly know enough to make intelligent decisions about all the different things I’m supposed to know about? It’s impossible. There’s no time. So my staff makes more and more decisions.

The current political system was never designed to deal with the high complexity and frenetic pace of a knowledge-based economy. Parties and elections may come and go. New methods for fund-raising and campaigning are emerging, but in the United States, where the knowledge economy is most advanced and the Internet allows new political constituencies to form almost instantly, significant change in political structure comes so slowly as to be almost imperceptible. One hardly needs to defend the economic and social importance of political stability. But immobility is another matter. The U.S. political system, two centuries old, changed fundamentally after the Civil War of 1861–1865 and again in the 1930s after the Great Depression, when it adapted itself more fully to the industrial era. Since then the government has certainly grown. But as far as basic, institutional reform is involved, the U.S. political structure will continue crawling along at three miles per hour, with frequent rest stops at the side of the road, until a constitutional crisis strikes.

Researchers today suggest that the spread of cell phones has been accompanied by a more relaxed attitude toward punctuality inasmuch as people can call ahead and apologize in advance for lateness. But the deeper reason is the decline of the assembly line. Assembly lines require synchronized work, so that if one worker is late it slows down all the others on the line. It requires a level of punctuality little known in agrarian societies. Today, with more free agents, more individuals working on all different schedules, time is more important, but exact punctuality matters less.

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” ~Alvin Toffler

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

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.

Until recently, a mindless cult of acceleration led by numerous business “gurus” in the United States urged companies to “Be first! Be agile! Shoot now, aim later!” This simplistic advice led to the launch of many low-quality, poorly tested products; angry customers; unhappy investors; a loss of strategic focus; and a high turnover of CEOs. It ignored the problems of synchronization and de-synchronization. It was a superficial way of dealing with the deep fundamental of time.

—Alvin Toffler

The world of today is as different from the world in which i was born as that world was from julius ceasar's . I was born in the middle of human history , to date roughly . Almost as much as happened since i was born as happened before.

This quote from futurist Alvin Toffler mirrors what rich dad told me two decades ago: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

Why do the motorcyclists wear black jackets ?why not brown or blue ?

If we do not learn from history we shall be compelled to relive it. True. But if we do not change the future, we shall be compelled to endure it. And that would be worse. Alvin Toffler

The borderless economy in which money, technology, industry and goods move without hindrance throughout the world promises a future in which every home, in the words of Alvin Toffler, will become an ‘electronic cottage’. But globalization also has its losers, its economic have-nots, destined to be tranquillized by digitized trivial entertainment or to nourish hatreds that threaten to break out in violence.

Surfing is the first lifestyle sport. X Game staples like skateboarding and snowboarding were inspired directly by surfing. Being a surfer involves a different level of commitment from being a golfer or basketball player. Surfing is more than an athletic pursuit that you do a couple days a week at a course or in a gym. Even when surfers are out of the water, they are watching the weather, tides, and wind, monitoring distant swell patterns, and mentally tuning in the ocean. Surfing defines your life, in the same way that work—being a farmer or a carpenter or a blacksmith—used to define people’s lives. Forty years ago Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock called surfers “a signpost pointing to the future” for their embrace of a leisure-time “lifestyle,” and in this case Toffler was right.

The so-called Washington Consensus held that globalization plus liberalization in the form of privatization, deregulation and free trade would alleviate poverty and create democracy and a better world for all. Both pro- and anti-globalist ideologues typically lump globalization with liberalization, as though they were inseparable. Yet countries can integrate economies without liberalizing. Liberalizing countries, by contrast, can sell off their state enterprises, deregulate and privatize their economies, without necessarily globalizing. None of this guarantees that long-term benefits will flow from the macroeconomy to the microeconomy in which people actually live. And none of it guarantees democracy.