PowerShift: Knowledge. Wealth, and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century

(Bantam Books, 1990, ISBN 0-553-05776-6)

This book is the third book in one of the most thought provoking trilogies of our time. This series began over a quarter century ago with Future Shock. The second book, Third Wave, followed in 1980. Both books received acclaim and incited great controversy and debate. The third book meets and exceeds the standards set by its predecessors.

Toffler claims that we are experiencing a global “power shift” which is a deeplevel change in the nature of power. While his mass media and popularistic style may lead some to trivialize his effort, he offers too many insights to be ignored. His recommendations for coping with the unprecedented level of global change will prove useful for today’s strategic thinkers. His work is Darticularly important to those responsible for plannina and Drogramming command and control, communications, computers, and intelligence (C41) capabilities.

He augments our vocabulary with phrases that prove useful in identifying modern day occurrences.

Toffler is one of the first social thinkers to identify sometimes obvious but unnamed modern phenomenons, and has in the process armed us with a vocabulary for the future. Terms like “info-warrior”, “eco-spasm”, “fam-firm”, “super-symbolic economy”, and now “powershift” help us to better understand the changes sweeping every facet of society.

He concludes that we are in midst of a major PowerShift in which the traditional relationships between violence, wealth and knowledge are being transformed.

The very nature of power is being transformed. Power is defined as the “reciprocal of desire” or simply the ability to make people act the way you want them to. Toffler states, “Power, which to a large extent defines us as individuals and as nations, is itself being redefined.

This new definition of power stems from a qualitative rather than the standard quantitative analysis of the nature of power. When one looks at the quality of power it is easy to see why knowledge has become the most salient facet of social control.

Violence, preeminent during feudal times, has lost much of its utility today because it can only be used to punish and those it castigates often seek revenge. Unlike violence, wealth can be used to both reward and punish. However, wealth, an instrument of the industrial age, is an exhaustible resource and therefore is only rated as “medium-quality power.” The highest form of power is knowledge which is able to reward and punish and is inexhaustible.

Knowledge is quickly surpassing violence and wealth in importance. It is becoming the preeminent leg of the “power triad.” Today we find that in the work place the mind is replacing muscle. In short, Toffler states that knowledge is becoming the “ultimate substitute,” replacing the more traditional forms of power. Knowledge is a substitute for violence, wealth, Labor, energy, space, and time. Indeed, “Knowledge is the crux of tomorrow’s world-wide struggle for power.”