May be we got adopted to Future Shock. We understood the Third Wave logic to avoid linear questions and expect linear answers.

This is a part of trilogy beginning with Future Shock and Third Wave. It addresses some very specific trends at micro level; at the personal level; of Power shifting towards us and slipping away from us; in ways we can only hope to understand. How the composition of power changes and what are the implications for us?

Future Shock addresses the dilemma of an individual caught in a vortex of rapid and accelerating change. Third Wave places the individual in a historical perspective. This book addresses questions of survival in an era where third wave is no longer a distant future.

THREE IMPLICATIONS 1.Application of knowledge will be a critical success factor for the 21st century knowledge worker. 2.Public and private educational institutions will not be able to meet the needs of the 21st century knowledge worker. 3.Reducing the digital divide will become necessary to avoid class warfare in the 21st century.

Jones' critical premise is that "earning a living in post-industrial, knowledge age society will require lifelong learning, training, and retraining at every level. For the vast majority, interrupting work life to study in a traditional university setting is out of the question" (p. 45). Virtual classrooms and libraries of the twenty-first century are described with visions of learning in cyberspace from around the world. Jones also speaks to the issue of the credibility of distance learning and offers solutions through accreditation agencies. Finally, Jones discusses his management process of a public/private partnership for the electronic delivery of education.

The biggest shortcoming of the book is its publication date, including ten-year-old statistics from 1992 with projections for 2000. However, Jones' theories and analysis are upheld and make Cyberschools an informative introduction for those interested or involved in distance learning.

It is the collision of these concentric waves, and the turbulence created by the interaction of these waves, ie the resistance of industrial-based organizations to information-based systems, that accounts, in their view, for much of the seeming social, political and economic disorder. In short, this book seeks to postulate a paradigm that explains the entire scope of the Information Revolution. It succeeds in this goal as perhaps no other book written to date. For this reviewer, The Third Wave is as thought- provoking as we approach the year 2000 as the book The Greening of America was in the 1970s.

Clearly, they have looked into the future and given us a road map through which to navigate the post cold war information society which has grown like a virus out of control.

From economic boom (unparalleled post world war II economic expansion) to the rise in religious fanaticism and terrorist activity (including domestic terrorism as witnessed by the Federal Building, the World Trade Center and the attacks on numerous women's health clinics)to the acceleration of the information-communications driven economy ( the internet and its impact on wealth creation was no surprise to Powershift readers).

While many of the things that are foretold in this volume have come true, the open ended nature of those things is what makes reading this now so compelling. The advice and knowledge to be gained here is still valid. We are only in the top half of the first inning but the runs are being scored like mad!

This book serves as a great underpinning of understanding of the dynamics of the new world. Read this and you will be fascinated and energized by the possibilities of the future. The reading is easy and the writing is tight enough to give you the basic ideas and to allow your imagination and view of the future take flight.

A book about business priciples in the future should represent a diverse global workforce and customer base. This book, without a single female contributor, stands firmly planted in the past.

Rethinking Principles - Charles Handy, Stephen Covey Rethinking Competition - Michael Porter, CK Prahalad, Gary Hamel Rethinking Control & Complexity - Michael Hammer, Eli Goldblatt, Peter Senge Rethinking Leadership - Warren Bennis, John Kotter Rethinking Markets - Al Ries & Jack Trout, Philip Kotler Rethinking the World - John Naisbitt, Lester Thurow, Kevin Kelly

These thinkers present diverse views about key issues within their fields at the dawn of the 21st century. There are some common themes. Technology is viewed by all as the catalyst for the rapid rate of change. The widespread availability of technology has led to the democratization of information throughout the workplace. The world's leading nations in the east and the west are experiencing a shift to a knowledge-based economy requiring knowledge workers. These knowledge workers must be highly educated and possess technology skills. Another theme with strong consensus is the notion that the path to the future won't be found by implementing models and strategies that have been successful in the past.

Technology has facilitated the globalization of the world economy. This trend has forced business to rethink itself in terms of competition, markets, and trade. Convergence within and between industries will continue. This is evidenced by project or product based alliances. The goal of business is the satisfaction of customer needs. The informed customer is demanding a higher level of products, services, and satisfaction.

The 21st century leader has a responsibility to generate intellectual capital within the organization. The leader focuses the company on its purpose and principles. The leader's key obligation is to articulate vision and lead by example.

This selection is engaging reading. Gibson provides us with a wide lens to view many pictures of the future. He showcases a group of specialists from different fields. Rethinking the Future dispels the myth that the future can be easily predicted.

Melanie Tucker Pepperdine University Doctoral Student Educational Technology

Athena was also a serious topic in ancient times when she was the Greek god with a sword and shield, the one who thought up the first Trojan horse... a legacy that connects well with today's netwars.

The authors of each chapter address different issues. Most are from the perspective of military issues. Many use clear historic perspectives to show how one side or the other lost conflicts, for example, the use of smart networks by Mongols to defeat Muslims and by Ho Chi Minh against Lyndon Johnson. Other examples are drawn from the gulf war; the chief of which is that the next opponent will likely not be as dumb as Saddam.

Oddly there isn't much in the book about China and Russia, the cyber-bullies of today's world. Even if one did want to look up material on these countries the missing index prevents it. With a new abbreviation on every page it would also be helpful to have a Rosetta stone inside the back cover.

The example of the wild west is used and very applicable here. There are only isolated pockets of law and order. Good and bad guys are hard to distinguish. Outside occasional enclaves good guys can only trust their resources and a few friends. This high level discussion can be directly translated to domains, firewalls, and virtual private networks. It argues against lowest-bidder security implementations.

Computer network managers will understand diminishing role of government in the direction of commercial systems. This means less traditional compliance-driven security technology will be available. Corporate security, network administrators and infrastructure managers are out there on their own. "Street smart" information behavior will be necessary to survive.

Through the book the term "cyber" is overused. It almost never appears in serious government discussions or commercial security where the emphasis is on all aspects of network issues.

Security managers who want a superficial self improvement should skip this book. It is very concept-dense and filled with ideas which will cause the reader to stop and think about strategy. Few solution specifics are presented. Concepts in this book are suited for someone who is developing a strategic vision for protecting their organization from network attacks.

[adapted from a review published in Security Management. All rights reserved by the author]

Oh and their deal about 'Socialism' is actually Communism...you think that they could decifer the two.

In that men have difficulty adjusting to change (see "Who Moved My Cheese"), Toffler outlines how these clashes will be resolved. Just as companies in growth industries altenate between spurts of growth and plateaus of consolidation, societies experience the same disruptions. The Austrian school of economics would call it "creative destruction".

This book's core principles emanate from the mind of a visionary thinker. If you want a top-down view of the last couple of centuries it's worth the few hours of reading and thinking you'll have to invest.

Toffler's main argument is that humanity, as of 1970, is in the midst of an enormous shift from an industrial society to a super-industrial society. This new society will be characterized by such things as an acceleration of images, words, ideas, and technologies that could possibly overwhelm mankind (Sound familiar? Watch the news tonight and see how many graphics float by on the screen). Mankind will suffer a serious disconnect when these new ideas reach their fruition (if not well before then). This disconnect is "future shock," an inability to process the enormous amounts of information and change associated with the super-industrial revolution. Toffler likens future shock to the same sort of disorientation that a person experiences when he moves to a new area, or a new country, and suffers a severing of all he has known. While some people can adjust with seeming ease to this kind of dislocation, most of us suffer various maladies from this "shock." Toffler ends up attributing most of societies ills to this jarring social shock. Crime, drug use, the disintegration of society, the burgeoning of quasi-religious movements: all of these are symptoms of a society that can no longer cope with the vast amounts of information and change that technology is bringing about.

These changes involve education, work, government and other dimensions of life. Toffler believes that we should not be afraid to scrap massive sections of any of these areas if doing so can improve our chances of adjusting and functioning within the new society. Toffler proposes forming numerous groups that would deal exclusively with trying to take charge of the situation so that a safer, slower future will come about. Toffler even supports oversight of technology so that any new products or ideas can be examined to determine their effects on society at large (a big no-no to big business).

Some of Toffler's visions are pretty impressive. Toffler predicts that work will increasingly be made up of short-range ad hoc committees that would tackle specific problems within a company. This is certainly true today, although the hierarchy is still alive and well in the business community. Toffler also saw the explosion in the entertainment industry, even though some of his ideas are pretty weird and have yet to be realized. Such ideas as genetic engineering and cloning are still in the formative stages, but Toffler mentions them here as well. One of the more interesting observations in this book concerns the structure of the family. Toffler sees divorce as a problem, and he proposes the idea of short-term contractual marriages as a possible solution. I whole-heartedly support this idea if it doesn't involve alimony payments! He also believes that children could be farmed out to families whose sole purpose in society would be to take care of kids. Kind of like daycare, except the little rugrats won't come home at the end of the day.

There really isn't any reason to read this book today unless you're a sociologist, interested in seeing the same old day-to-day stuff in a new way, or just interested in seeing how freaky some of Toffler's ideas are. Mr. Toffler does come off as a huge socialist, and that's a bit scary. Still, this is an intelligent book written in an easy style. You could do a lot worse than reading this one.