The Discontinuous Future: A Bold but Overoptimistic Forecast
Barry Buzan and Gerald Segal's Anticipating the Future boldly treks across disciplinary boundaries to look far ahead, but the authors underestimate the impact of the information revolution.
Alvin Toffler's books include The Third Wave and Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century. He and Heidi Toffler are coauthors of War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the 21st Century. Their most recent book is Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave.
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The French always seem to be opposing the United States on some issue or other. They coddle Saddam Hussein and denounce American "cultural imperialism." Why is France so difficult to deal with? It is, quite simply, in a bad mood, unsure of its place and status in a new world. The French are jealous of America, which seems to run the world; afraid of globalization, which threatens to erode their culture; and ambivalent about European unification, which might drown out their voice. France must meet these challenges while struggling with a cumbersome statist economy and a rising extreme right. To do it all, France must transcend itself.
All have heard about the virtual corporation. What the world is witnessing now is the rise of the virtual state. After World War II, led by Japan and Germany, the most advanced nations gave up territorial conquest to compete instead for world trade. As more corporations farm out production and land becomes less valuable than technology, knowledge, and portfolio investment, the state will further shift its efforts from amassing productive capacity to choosing industries and investing in people. War over territory is becoming quaint, but so is the welfare state.
From news services to "blogs," the Internet has revolutionized the international news market--opening it up to a broader and more active audience. Such technological innovations are rapidly changing the way people produce and consume news, making the traditional model of foreign correspondence obsolete.
