I. Summary
“Powershift” is the culmination of twenty-five-year effort to make serve of the astonishing change propelling us into the 21st century. It is the third & final volume of a trilogy that opened with “Future Shock”, continued with “The Third Wave” & is now complete.
The Book entitled “Powershift” by Alvin Toffler has six parts. Part one is the new meaning of power. Part two is life in the super-symbolic economy. Part three is the information ways. Part tour is power in the flex-firm. Part five is powershift politics. Lastly, part six is planetary powershift. Violence, wealth and knowledge are the sources of power in today’s powershift. It is a triad.
In PART ONE, its theme was all about the New Meaning of Power. With regards to The Powershift Era, the nature of power is changing. The entire power structure that held the entire world is now disintegrating. Moreover, it talks about power changes from one empire to another empire, and that results to the end of empire. The power shifts. The god-in-white-coat was a doctor who highly respected and high in authority. The doctors were considered god but because of their malpractice, the knowledge of monopoly of the medical profession has been thoroughly smashed. And the doctors are no longer a god. The substitution of information or knowledge plays also an important powershifts.
This brought trouble to General Motors (GM) & the rise of Japan. It concluded that knowledge ways the key to economic growth in the 21st century. Considering family, as an institution, was transformed its social power to other institutions-education to the school, for example. Knowledge is the most versatile source of power.
With regards to Muscle, Money, & Mind, the westerns consider this as violence, wealth, & knowledge, while Japanese considers this as sacred objects to their sun goddess-Amaterasu-omi-kami. These are the sword, jewel, and the mirror. Violence is low-quality power. Wealth is a far better tool of power, and knowledge is the highest-quality power. The military uses computerized knowledge-“expert systems” in missile defense. Knowledge is the most versatile source of power. “The control of knowledge is the crux of tomorrow’s worldwide struggle for power in every human institution.” The changes are seen from homes to supermarkets, from churches to workplaces, and from Berlin to Washington. “A powershift does not merely transfer power. It transforms it.”
In PART TWO, its theme was all about the life in the Super-Symbolic Economy. With regards to Beyond the Age of Glitz, knowledge is a key weapon in the power struggles that accompany the emergence of the super-symbolic economy. The business commandos are the ones who seize power in the super-symbolic economy. With the consultant’s hidden mission, it provides that power is not the only goal. It anticipates the deep changes soon to strike looking the role of all three – violence, wealth, and knowledge.
With regards to Force: the Yakuza Component, it entails the “secondary enforcement system” which operates around the edges of the formal, official law-enforcement system. Violence has been used to produce wealth. Just like what happened to Japan, violence has been contained, transmitted into another form - & hidden. Knowingly, the government tries to monopolize violence in its soldier and police that are the only ones legally permitted to exert violence. “And every law, good or evil, there is a hidden gun. In sum, the rise of the industrial nation-state brought the systematic monopolization of violence, the sublimation of violence, and the growing dependence of the population on money. These three (violence, wealth, & knowledge) changes made it possible for the elites of industrial societies increasingly to make use of wealth rather than overt force to impose their will on history.”
With regards to Wealth: Morgan, Milken and After, “Morganized” industry creates a hierarchically ordered, finance-driven system which essentially controlled the main flows of capital whereas X-shaped trading desk reshaped modern American Industry with Milken and his team. Moreover, Milken’s junk bond insight opens the gates of capital – Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s – that frees thousands of companies. Morgan & Milken changed American finance in contrary ways.
With regards to Knowledge: a Wealth of Symbols, if the shift toward knowledge-capital is real, then Capital itself is increasingly “unreal” – it consists largely of symbols that represent nothing more than other symbols inside the memories and thoughtware of people and computers. Capital has therefore gone from its tangible form, to a paper form that symbolized tangible assets, to paper symbolizing symbols in the skulls of a continually changing work force. Finally, the electronic blips symbolizing the paper. Capital is fast becoming “super-symbolic.” Salt, tobacco, coral, cotton cloth, copper, and cowries’ shells are useful things that served as money. However, paper money dominated the industrial society – the civilization of the Second Wave. Today, as a more advanced Third Wave economy emerges, paper money faces near-total obsolescence. Not a single coin or piece of paper money is exchanged. The “money” here consists of nothing more than a string of zeros and ones transmitted by wire, microwave, or satellite. In brief, the rise of electronic money in the world economy threatens to shake up many long-entrenched power relationships. At the vortex of this power struggle is knowledge embedded in technology. It is a battle that will redefine money itself. Moreover, the rise of the super-symbolic economy compels us to reconceptualize the entire problem of unemployment from the ground up. “Mind-work” is range of “mixed” jobs – tasks requiring the worker to perform physical labor, but also handle information. Since the inception of the Industrial Revolution, big smokestack companies have held a great control on the economy. But today, a shift of power from smokestack companies to the retailers and customers is apparently now beginning. Moreover we are also witnessing a change to a “super-symbolic” economy. In the super-symbolic economy, “wealth creation is increasingly dependent on the exchange of data, information and knowledge.”With these changes, there are now growing conflicts between the “highbrow” or knowledge-base and the “lowbrow” or muscle-base businesses.
With regards to The Ultimate Substitute, it is today’s gigantic upheaval in the knowledge base of society – not computer hype or mere financial manipulation – that explains the rise of a super-symbolic economy. Knowledge – in principle inexhaustible – is the ultimate substitute Knowledge is a substitute for both resources and shipping. In addition to substituting for materials, transportation, and energy, knowledge also saves time. Space, too, is conserved and conquered by knowledge. Because it reduces the need for raw materials, labor, time, space, and capital, knowledge becomes the central resource of the advanced economy. In this Third Wave system, “knowledge is the key weapon in the struggles that accompany the emergence of the super-symbolic economy.”
In PART THREE, its theme is all about the Information Wars. With regards to The Checkout Battle, today the supermarket is still there, but, largely, unnoticed by the public, it has become a battlefield in the information wars – one of many raging throughout the business world today. From the 1950s into the 1980s, the balance of power, with the giant manufacturers at the top and the wholesalers at the top and retailers at the bottom, remained essentially unchanged. One of the reasons for manufacturer-power was control of information. The weapon used by retailers to hurl the big manufacturers back on their heels is a small black-and-white symbol. There are two common supermarket problems: long checkout lines and errors in accounting that retailers, wholesalers, and manufacturers met for discussion with the IBM, National Cash Register, and Sweda. Since the inception of the Industrial Revolution, big smokestack companies have held a great control on the economy. But today, a shift of power from smokestack companies to the retailers and customers is apparently now beginning. For example, in a world in which money is “informationalized” and information “monetized,” the consumer pays for every purchase twice over: first with the money and a second time by providing information that is worthy money. Consumers may soon find themselves in supermarkets lined with so-called “electronic shelves.” However, like Japan, retailers are now dominant force within the distribution of industry, while the manufacturers have to rely increasingly on retailers to interpret the needs of the marketplace.
With regards to Extra-Intelligence, the networks form the key infrastructure of the 21st century, as critical to business success and national economic development as the railroads were in Morse’s era. Some of these are “local area networks,” or LANs, which merely hook up computers in a single building or complex. Networking has spread down to the smallest businesses. The result is that airlines, car makers, and oil companies are all engaged in a many-sided war for control of the emerging communication systems. Until now, the smartest networks, including the neutral networks, had only what might be called “intra-intelligence.” Today, we are reaching beyond intra-intelligence toward networks that might be called “extra-intelligence.” These are so-called “Value Added Networks,” or VANs.
With regards to Net Power, Electronic Data Interchange (IDE) simply permits the electronic exchange of documents between companies or business units. Companies are forming into what might called “information-sharing groups.” The super-symbolic and the spread of extra intelligence also shake up the transportation sector – railroads, shippers, and truckers. Information is the most fluid resources, and fluidity is the hallmark of an economy in which the production and distribution of food, energy, goods, and services increasingly depend on symbolic exchange.
With regards to The Widening War, charges and countercharges blare from full-page ads in The Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times as the battle over computer operating-system standards heats up. Once more the fate of giant corporations and whole industries hinges on a war over standards. Thus, on every front – scientific, political, economic, and technological – the battle over standards can be expected to intensify as the new system for wealth creation replaces that fast-fading smokestack world of the past.
With regards to The Executive Thought Police, “Chief Information Officers” (CIOs) are the men – only a few, so far, are women – who are responsible for spending the huge budgets corporations now allocate for computers, data processing, and information services. Because of this day they find themselves at the hot center of the info-wars.
With regards to Total Information War, the info-wars cast the corporations – and the work that goes on in it – into a new light. But total information war might not end with passive information collection. The temptation to engage in “commercial covert action” is growing. We are surrounded by info-war and info-warriors fighting to control the most crucial resource of the Powershift Era.
In PART FOUR, its theme is all about Power in the Flex-Firm. With regards to Cubbyhole Crush, any bureaucracy has two key features, which can be called “cubbyholes” and “channels” – is in the hands of two types of executive: specialist and managers. Bureaucracy is also a ways of groupings “facts”. A firm neatly cut into department according to function, market, region, or products is after all a collection of cubbyholes in which specialized information and personal experience are stored. The vaunted “rationality” of bureaucracy goes out the window. Power, always a factor, now replaces reason as the basis for decision. The power structure based on control of information was clear, therefore: While specialists controlled the cubbyholes, managers controlled the channels.
With regards to The Flex-Firm, the flex-firm concept does not imply structurelessness; it does suggest that a company, in being reborn, may cease being a mule and turn into a team consisting of a tiger, a school of piranhas, a mini mule or two, and who knows, maybe even a swarm of information-sucking bees. The family firm is the only one of a host of colorful formats that shifts power away from manager-bureaucrats in the year ahead.
With regards to Tribal Chiefs and Corporate Commissars, power – the control of company money and information backed by the force of law – is shifting out from under those with legal or formal position and towards those with natural authority based on knowledge and certain psychological and political skills.
With regards to The Autonomous Employee, there are two imperatives make its largely unstoppable. The first is the “innovation imperative”. It also implies totally different power relationship between employer and employee. The second imperative is Speed. Advance economies are accelerated. This accelerated pressure also shifts power by undermining the fixed, bureaucratic chain of command. “Today we are living through the next power shift in the workplace. It is one of the grand ironies of history that a new kind of autonomous employee is emerging who, in fact, does own the means of production.”
With regards to The Power-Mosaic, the hierarchical monoliths control the power economy. “When we create profit centers, flatten the hierarchy, and shift from mainframes to networked desktop computers, linked both to mainframes and to one another, we make power in the company less monolithic and more mosaic.” To understand power in the business world of tomorrow, therefore, forget fantasies of near total concentration, a world dominated by a few mega-firms. Think, instead, about power-mosaics. Management theorists are belatedly beginning to speak of “organizational capital” But there is also what might called “positional capital” – the strategic location of the firm in the overall web-work of mosaics and meta-mosaics.
In PART FIVE, its theme is all about Powershift Politics. With regards to The Decisive Decades, the age of mass democracy was also the age of immense concentrations of power at the level of the nation. Thus concentration reflected the rise of mass-production technology and national markets. The “politics of levels” can be expected to split voters into four distinct groupings: globalists, nationalists, regionalists, and localists. Mass democracy is the most significant contribution of the Second Wave industrialism and it implies the existence of the “masses” or homogeneous mass society. But with the rapid changes, diversity and heterogeneity in the labor force and the economy, mass democracy is under resistance. The economy base on interchangeable labor force has caused the de-massification of the society. As such, people’s needs and demands to the government have diversified and brought the beginning of “mosaic democracy” as it replaces “mass democracy.”
With regards to The Invisible Party, according to Atwater, highly placed leader is a captive of the “system.” This system is not capitalism nor socialism, but bureaucratism. For bureaucracy is the most prevalent form of power in all smoke-stack states. Invisible Party holds massive power over people’s lives, irrespective of whether their governments are “liberal” or “conservative,” “right-wing” or “left-wing,” “communist” or “capitalist.”
With regards to Info-Tactics, according to President Lyndon, “Freedom of information is so vital that only the national security, not the desire of public officials or private citizens, should determine when it must be restricted.” “Secrecy Tactic” is the first, probably oldest and most pervasive info-tactic. Secrecy is one of the familiar tools of repressive power and corruption. “Guided Leak Tactic” is the second most common info-tactic. Some secrets are kept; other leak. Such leaks drive official into deep dementia. Any data, information, or knowledge that is communicated requires (1) a source or sender; (2) a set of channels or media through which the message flows; (3) a receiver; and of course (4) a message. Power players intervene at each of these points. “Masked Source Tactic” is so frequently used. It can take many forms, in different settings, from business boardrooms to prison cells. “Back-Channel Tactic” helped prevent World War III. “Double-Channel Tactic” entails sending of alternative or contradictory messages through different channels to test reactions or to sow confusion and conflict among the recipients. “Need-to-Know Tactic” entails data, information, and knowledge are compartmentalized and carefully kept away from all but specified receivers with a validated “need to know” which is contrary to “Need-Not-to-Know Tactic.”Other tactics are omission tactic, generality tactic, timing tactic, dribble tactic, tidal wave tactic, vapor tactic, blow-back tactic, big lie tactic, and reversal tactic.”
With regards to Meta-Tactics, along with changes in the general population, therefore, fed by the shift to the new wealth-creation system, comes parallel upgrading of the tools of manipulation used by politicians and government officialdom to hold on to their power. That is what mete-tactics are all about.
With regards to A Market for Spies, the US has CIA or The Company, the Soviet Union has KGB, the British has GCHQ, and France has DGSE. All these companies are part of a massive information marketplace. As new system of wealth creation intensifies priorities of the main spy services. Three specific topics will command top-level attention from spies in the future: economics, technology, and ecology. The growing privatization is occurring not on earth but in space. Five nations – Unites States, France, Japan, India, and Soviet Union – now peddle data collected by their space satellites.
With regards to The Info-Agenda, the new super-symbolic system of wealth creation thrusts a wide range of information-related issues onto the political agenda. Because of the growing global character of technology, environmental problems, finance, telecommunications, and the media, new cultural feedback systems have begun to operate that make one country’s information policies a matter of concern for others. The info-agenda is going global.
With regards to The Image Makers, the new economy is tightly tied not only to formal knowledge and technical skills but even to popular culture and the expanding market for imagery. “For better or worse, the old lines between show business and politics, leisure and work, news and entertainment, are all crashing, and we are exposed to a hurricane of often fragmented, kaleidoscopic images.
With regards to Subversive Media, the new overarching media system is a cause of the rise of the new, knowledge-based economy, and it represents a quantum jump in the way the human race uses symbols and images. The new media system is a power accelerator. There are three media modes of communication. The First Wave is the communication passed mouth-to-ear and face-to-face. The crowd was the first mass medium. The Second Wave was based on factory mass production, needed more communication at a distance and gave rise to pst office, telegraph, and telephone. The Third Wave reflects the needs of emerging post-mass-production economy like he “flexible manufacturing” plants.
With regards to The “Screenie” Generation, there are six distinct features of electronic infrastructure of the advanced economies. These are interactivity, mobility, convertibility, connectivity, ubiquity, and globalization. Moritz used the term screenie to describe the video-drenched generation, which has digested thousands of hours of televisions imbibing its “video-logic.” In a knowledge-based economy the most important domestic political issue is no longer the distribution of wealth, but of the information and media that produce wealth. Social justice and freedom both now increasingly depend on how each society deals with three issues: education, information technology, and freedom of expression. The link between education and the six principles of the new media system - interactivity, mobility, convertibility, connectivity, ubiquity, and globalization – have scarcely been explored. The second priority involves the speedy universalization of access to computers, information technology, and advanced media. A key objective of those who want an advanced economy, therefore, should be to accelerate the workings of the Law of Ubiquity – that is to make sure that all citizens, poor and rich alike, are guarantees access to the widest possible range of media. Finally, the essence of the new economy is knowledge, the democratic ideal of freedom of expression becomes a top political priority, rather than a peripheral matter.
In PART SIX, its theme is all about Planetary Powershift. With regards to The Global “K-Factor,” the transformative advances, seemingly remote from the worlds of diplomacy and politics, are in fact inescapably linked to today’s geopolitical eruptions. Knowlegde is the “K-Factor” in global power struggles. The K-factor helps explain the fragmentation of the “developing countries” and the rise of three distinct groupings among them.
With regards to The Fast and the Slow, the speed of exchanges of data, information and knowledge will be the new criterion that will divide the world. They will be divided into the fast and slow countries. In addition, less developed countries (LDC) should plug into the fast economy in order to attain technological advances and close the information and electronic gap which are vital for the new system of wealth creation. With the Soviet Union’s fall, Japan, Europe and the USA will reshape the global power structure because of their ability to generate, manipulate and control the sources of power especially knowledge in the global level. The “gap” that must be closed is informational and electronic. It is a gap not between the North and South, but between the slow and the fast.
With regards to Socialism’s Collision with the Future, just as feudal “social relations” once hindered industrial development, now socialist “social relations” made it all but impossible for socialist countries to take advantage of the new wealth-creation system based on computers, communication, and above all, on open information. A single obsolete assumption about knowledge: the arrogant belief that those in command – whether of the party or of the state – know what others should know. State socialist nations guaranteed economic stupidity and derived from the concept of the pre-cybernetic stupidity machine as applied to society and life itself.
With regards to The Power of Balance, diplomats like to talk about the balance of power. The poweshift principle helps gauge not only the balance of power but the “power of balance.” Nations can be divided into three types: those whose power is based predominantly on a single leg of the violence-wealth-knowledge stool, those whose power rests on two legs, and those whose global clout is balanced on all three of the main sources of power. By contrast, Soviet power was, and remains, totally unbalanced. Its claim to superpower status derived exclusively from its military. Its economy counted for little in the world system. While R&D was excellent in a few dense-related sectors, its general technological know-how was backward, cramped by paranoid secrecy. Its telecommunications were abominable. Its education system was mediocre, its centrally controlled media, tightly censored backward.
With regards to Triads: Tokyo – Berlin – Washington, Japan today is pursuing the power of balance. Japan has recently needed little prodding to expand its armed forces. The world’s largest banks and securities firms are now Japanese. Japan, as a nation, has been enrolled in one big juku for decades, working overtime to expand the country’s ultimate power source-its knowledge base. As with military matters, Europe’s key financial decisions will once more be made in Berlin, in the German finance ministry and the Deutschebank, a dominance reflecting economic realities. The emergence if this Germano-centric system is, however, only part of an unfolding Ost-Strategie of breathtaking scope. Europe has a grand, overarching strategy that aims at shifting regional and world power. This strategy –reborn, rather than freshly invented – is to control what the geopoliticians of the past called the planet’s “heartland.” The wounded giant is the United Sates. The United States cannot police the entire tumultuous and highly dangerous world, on either its own behalf or anyone else’s, but its unique capability suggests that it may, in alliance with other nations or international organizations, squelch regional conflicts that threaten world peace. More serious than America’s much-lamented “twin deficits,” both likely to decline, are the institutional obsolescence and social instability eroding American society and threatening to tear families, communities, and ethnic groups apart, and the spread of drugs in a society whose members are alienated from the state and from one another. Far more vital for US power over the long run than its mass manufacturing base is its knowledge system or info-sphere.
With regards to The Global Gladiators, “Global Gladiators” will also shape the global landscape. These are the global corporations, international criminal organizations and religious institutions that are “already sharing de facto power with the nation-states.”
II. Discussion
Points of Agreement
The new concept of powershift introduced by Toffler provides a new façade on the nature of power. In his book, he has pointed out some inferences in the nature of power in 21st century that, I believe, should be given importance and scrutiny.
Foremost, knowledge is the highest quality of power. In this age of information, knowledge plays a crucial role in the society. Every economy and government in the world relies its operation on how knowledge is being generated, manipulated and controlled in the local to the global levels. Other sources of power will depend largely on knowledge. I agreed to the adage that “knowledge is power.”
Second, capital is fast becoming “super-symbolic”. Electronic money now replaces, but not totally, paper money as the medium of exchange. With this transformation of money, capital also is being transformed.
Third, workers become less and less interchangeable. During the Second Wave industrialism, workers depended on muscle power to do work of any sort. But now, a more specialized type of worker that depends on critical and irreplaceable knowledge is proliferating in the workforce.
Fourth, the democratic ideal of freedom of expression becomes a top political priority. As we advance towards a super-symbolic economy, it is imperative to permit an extremely wide range of free expression. If the government intervenes in the free flow of knowledge, it is hindering itself the benefit and advances of the new economy.
Finally, a revolutionary form of education must be undertaken. Most educational systems in the world are highly centralized and subject to the dictates of a national ministry or department of education which limits innovation and experiment. Furthermore they are still patterned, with slight variation, to the factory system of education in the Second Wave system. As we approach to the Third Wave system, more innovations and experiments in the educational system should take place in order to generate more knowledge to cope with the transforming power structure in every level of human institution.
Points of Disagreement
There are also some points, however, raised by Toffler that needs to be taken into consideration. These are the following:
Foremost, revival of religious power is apparent. Although different religions still have stronghold on many of their subjects, there is now a rapid decline in the number of followers especially in Christian nations where people are freer. But as wrenching changes coming ahead, many religions, even stricter Islam, would eventually be affected and constantly under resistance.
Second, speed, or hyper speed, is desirable in the new system of wealth creation. The speed of exchange of information is one factor that differentiates the new system from the old one. Speed in business transactions, production and creation of wealth is imperative in the new system. But speed, I believe, poses a great impact in humans and in society in general. The reason is that it undermines the value of leisure. With the changing world, people now always run after time and sometimes forget to pause and rethink the value of traditional ways of having personal and family leisure.
Third, the rise of electronic money and transactions is convenient. This new innovation in the Third Wave system brought a sigh of relief and ease. But this also triggers the rise of new forms of fraud. Cyber fraud is one great problem that accompanies electronic transactions in the businesses and the economy. Although some remedies were done, cyber fraud is still the most elusive and hardest crime to caught and penalize.
Fourth, de-massification of society is the result of less interchangeable labor. The existence of the “masses” is the core essence of mass democracy. But with the emergence of the new economic system, less interchangeable labor, rise of computers, people have become more individualistic. People now seek their own diverse needs and desires. The bonds that connect every individual are also fast disintegrating. This could be one reason for the increase of individualism and self-centeredness of most people in the advance countries.
Finally the USA still holds the lead of any of the three great capitalist centers in the world. Undoubtedly she still has the monopolistic-like tendency on the power triad in the global scale. As such, the USA will still remain as the traditional “hegemon” as it was before. This is one paradox of the powershift that with the advances in technology, de-massification of society and emergence of a new economic system, the shift of power in the global level has not gone away from the USA. The world is not having a “true” powershift when still one has the control of the power triad in the global level.
III. Synthesis
The world now is witnessing a great upheaval. This is brought by deep changes in the nature of power. Alvin Toffler, the author, examines the nature of power in the 21st century. Power involves the use of violence, wealth and knowledge and its role and impacts in every human relationship and society. Knowledge plays a vital role in the power struggles in every human institution. With these profound changes, we are now in the dawn of the Powershift era.
Powershift provides us with a new look and understanding of the nature of power. It raises some important changes that have taken or will take place in the 21st century. These important changes are the use of knowledge as the highest quality of power; capital is becoming “super-symbolic”; workers become less interchangeable; the pervasiveness of freedom of expression; and as the new system begins, a revolutionary form of education is taking its course. These changes, however, are paralleled with consequences that would also affect every human society. There is now the revival of religious power; individualism permeates society; cyber fraud will be usual and rampant; less appreciation on traditional values especially leisure; and still the dominance of USA in the global level are some of the consequences that every one of us must face in the 21st century.
In this Powershift era, the control of the of the power triad especially knowledge poses a great impact to humankind in the 21st century. As we shift to the new economic system, power will also shift and be transformed in the process. The control of knowledge will be the crucial basis of power struggles in the local and global level. Hence, anyone who can generate, manipulate and control knowledge, and other power resources, will take a lead and reign supreme in the course of history in the 21st century.
IV. Recommendation
Powershift is a significant work by Alvin Toffler. It gives us a picture of the changes in the nature of power in the 21st century. However the book is still devoid of perfection and needs further improvements. The reader recommends that Toffler must view the world in a less America-centric. Although biases are sometimes important, he must also look the developments that are happening in some parts of the world. Then, the reader recommends that other resources of power should be included not only the power triad. Although he mentioned culture as an aspect of knowledge, culture still plays an important role in the analysis of power. Lastly, the reader recommends that the book must be updated. Many changes have done since the publication of the book. So it is essential to include such changes which affect the nature of power in the 21st century.
