1.2 THE 21 ST CENTURY CONTEXT
“Every few hundred years in Western history there occurs a sharp transformation....
Within a few short decades, society rearranges itself –
its world view; its basic values; its social and political structure;
its arts; its key institutions.
Fifty years later there is a new world.
And the people born then cannot even imagine the world
in which their grandparents lived
and into which their own parents were born ́
(Drucker, 1992, p.95).American futurist Alvin Toffler (1981) describes in his best-selling book The Third Wave, three
periods of economic evolution: i) the Agricultural Wave, which lasted from 8000 B.C. to the mid-
eighteenth century, ii) the Industrial Wave, which lasted until the late twentieth century, and finally
iii) the Information Wave, which began in the 1960s and will last for many decades to come. These
dates are approximate and overlapping. The first wave was driven by physical labor, the second wave
by machines and blue-collar workers, and the third wave by information technology and knowledge
workers. The transition periods between these three great waves of change have been anything but
smooth. In Figure 1.1 each wave LVUHSUHVHQWHGE\DQ³6 ́showing an early period of dislocation,
followed by a long spell of maturity, and then its eventual demise as new technologies take over
(Hope & Hope, 1997).
Figure 1-1: Three waves of economic change