Home › Books & Reviews › Review Essays › The Discontinuous Future: A Bold but Overoptimistic Forecast

The Discontinuous Future: A Bold but Overoptimistic Forecast

Alvin Toffler and Heidi Toffler
March/April 1998

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.

We're sorry, but Foreign Affairs does not have the copyright to display this article online.

Related

Review Essay, Jul/Aug 1999
A Glass Half Full? Thurow Dissects the Third Industrial Revolution
Jeffrey E. Garten

Lester C. Thurow's gloomy new book trumpets the knowledge revolution's virtues but warns that neither Europe, nor Japan, nor even America is ready for them.

Read
Review Essay, May/Jun 1999
One Economy, Ready or Not: Thomas Friedman's Jaunt Through Globalization
Barry Eichengreen

In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas L. Friedman argues convincingly that globalization is here to stay, thanks to the Internet and the microchip.

Read
Essay, Jan/Feb 2003
Borders Beyond Control
Jagdish N. Bhagwati

Migration lies at the center of global problems today. Rich countries are trying to attract skilled immigrants and keep unskilled ones out; poor countries are trying to keep skilled labor at home. Both sides are doomed to fail. Governments must stop trying to curtail migration and start managing it to seek benefits for all.

Read
Cover image

In the Magazine

November/December 2009 / 6, 88
Essay
The Dollar and the Deficits
C. Fred Bergsten

The global economic crisis has revealed the folly of large U.S. budget and trade deficits, as well as of the strong dollar that makes them possible. If it is serious about recovery, the United States must balance the budget, stimulate private saving, and embrace a declining dollar.
Read