I’ve been re-reading The Third Wave, by Alvin Toffler. Though first published over twenty years ago, there’s still some serious predictive mojo left in that book. The basic concept is this: there have been two previous “waves” of civilization. The first was the agricultural wave, which spread across the world over the course of several thousand years. About three hundred years ago, the second wave of civilization began—the industrial revolution. Now we are in the middle of the next wave, the information revolution.