Revolutionary wealth : How it will be created and how it will change our lives

Starting with the publication of their seminal bestseller, Future Shock, Alvin and Heidi Toffler have given millions of readers new ways to think about personal life in today’s high-speed world with its constantly changing, seemingly random impacts on our businesses, governments, families and daily lives. Now, writing with the same rare grasp and clarity that made their earlier books classics, the Tofflers turn their attention to the revolution in wealth now sweeping the planet. And once again, they provide a penetrating, coherent way to make sense of the seemingly senseless.Revolutionary Wealth is about how tomorrow’s wealth will be created, and who will get it and how. But twenty-first-century wealth, according to the Tofflers, is not just about money, and cannot be understood in terms of industrial-age economics. Thus they write here about everything from education and child rearing to Hollywood and China, from everyday truth and misconceptions to what they call our “third job”—the unnoticed work we do without pay for some of the biggest corporations in our country. They show the hidden connections between extreme sports, chocolate chip cookies, Linux software and the “surplus complexity” in our lives as society wobbles back and forth between depressing decadence and a hopeful post-decadence. In their earlier work, the Tofflers coined the word “prosumer” for people who consume what they themselves produce. In Revolutionary Wealth they expand the concept to reveal how many of our activities—whether parenting or volunteering, blogging, painting our house, improving our diet, organizing a neighborhood council or even “mashing” music—pump “free lunch” from the “hidden” non-money economy into the money economy that economists track. Prosuming, they forecast, is about to explode and compel radical changes in the way we measure, make and manipulate wealth. Blazing with fresh ideas, Revolutionary Wealth provides readers with powerful new tools for thinking about—and preparing for—their future.

Contents:
Forward;
Introduction --
Part 1. Revolution --
1. Spearheading wealth --
Fad of the month --
Loosened constraints --
Guitars and anti-heroes --
Giggle news --
Embedding intelligence --
Capital tools for knowledge --
The wilder shores --
Converging possibilities --
2. The child of desire --
The meaning of wealth --
Managers of desire --
Part 2. Deep fundamentals --
3. Waves of wealth --
The pre-historic Einstein --
The man who ate himself --
Beyond fantasy --
Today's wealth wave --
Three lives, three worlds --
4. Deep fundamentals --
The inerrantists --
Obsolete fundamentals --
The future of the job --
Interplay --
Part 3. Rearranging time --
5. The clash of speeds --
Trains on time? --
Ready with the radar --
Leaders and laggards --
When elephants stand pat --
Inertia vs. hyperspeed --
6. The synchronization industry --
Dancing toward productivity --
No more cold eggs --
No last-minute scramble --
7. The arrhythmic economy --
The ecology of time --
Casualties of time --
Post-merger blues --
The time tax --
The technology ballet --
Supper without sushi --
8. The new timescape --
The chains of time --
Love at high speed --
Customizing time --
When good ideas arrive --
Media time --
Family, friends and face time --
The Americanization of time? --
The 24/7 future --
Whizzing toward where? --
Part 4. Stretching space --
9. The great circle --
Asia, ho! --
Opening the floodgates --
10. Higher-value-added places --
Yesterday's places --
Dissolving borders --
The cheap-labor derby --
Tomorrow's real estate --
11. Spatial reach --
Personal geography --
Mobile money --
Invaders and invaded --
12. An unready world --
More capitalist than thou --
The Evian and ketchup test --
Yellow dust --
True believers --
13. Thrust reversers --
The new Titanic --
Export overload --
The nano-teaspoon --
Mad Max scenarios --
14. The space drive --
From dialysis to heart pumps --
Pilots, planes and packages --
Unexplored wealth frontiers --
Part 5. Trusting knowledge --
15. The edge of knowledge --
Kicking tires --
16. Tomorrow's "oil" --
The more we use ...? --
Steel mills and shoes --
Our inner "warehouse" --
Just ASK --
Forget Alzheimer's --
17. The obsoledge trap --
Yesterday's truths --
Emily's attic --
18. The Quesnay factor --
Blooper economics --
Estimates of estimates --
Piecemeal papers --
The missing framework --
The mistress's doctor --
19. Filtering truth --
Truth on trial --
Six filters --
Consensus --
Consistency --
Authority --
Revelation --
Durability --
Science --
Truth shifts --
20. Trashing the lab --
Razor blades and rights --
Flip-flop politics --
Patriarchy and palmistry --
Las Vegas as role model --
The eco-missionaries --
Secret science --
21. The truth managers --
Persuading the boss --
22. Coda : convergence --
Tortoise time --
Once-true analogies --
Mapping the knowable --
Part 6. Prosuming --
23. The hidden half --
The prosumer economy --
A mum in a million --
The potty test --
What price disintegration? --
Grossly distorted product (GDP) --
24. The health prosumers --
Betting on one hundred? --
The panic zone --
Besieged by breakthroughs --
The diabetes game --
25. Our third job --
Beyond the buffet --
The supermarket shove --
26. The coming prosumer explosion --
Guitars and golf bags --
Rampant consumerism? --
Cookies and simulations --
Dwarfing Hollywood --
Collective prosuming --
Busting the hierarchies --
27. More "free lunch" --
Teachers, nurses and horses --
Amateurs matter --
Uncooking the books --
Down-to-earth --
Attacking anthrax --
28. The music storm --
Estonian geeks --
Prosumer power --
Baby prosumers --
Liposuction without surgery --
29. The "productivity" hormone --
Beyond education --
Rajender's game --
30. Coda : invisible channels --
The prosumer impact --
Unnoticed therapy --
Part 7. Decadence --
31. The gospel of change --
The third source --
Teen trash --
Paul's story --
Hollywood hedonism --
One step in the river --
32. Implosion --
Pandemic loneliness --
Post-kindergarten factories --
Creative accounting --
Intensive care --
The golden years --
Politics of the surreal --
Systemic breakdown --
An epidemic of failure --
Stars on strike --
33. Corroding the wires --
FBI time --
Global space --
An overload of obsoledge --
34. Complexorama --
What Bill Gates knows --
12,203 problems --
35. The Sepulveda solution --
Every American woman --
Fake transformation --
Shifting chairs --
Cameras and cops --
Creating new institutions --
Innovations that breed innovations --
Inventing the think tank --
36. Coda : after decadence --
The values of war --
Extreme extremes --
Anti-decadence --
Mingling with moguls --
Inventing new models --
"Satanic mills" --
Post-Cassandra? --
Part 8. Capitalism's future --
37. Capitalism's end game --
Cars and cameras --
The untouchables --
The fetish of touch --
The horse and the song --
38. Converting capital --
Ranges of risk --
Democratic doorways --
Growth in econo-land --
Flattening the down --
39. Impossible markets --
Rare money --
Mass + Mass = Mass+ --
Flash-markets --
Personal pricing --
Approaching the limits? --
Whispered secrets --
The virtual twin --
40. Running tomorrow's money --
The hidden tax --
Blips on chips --
The closing bell --
Wildcat currency --
Para-money --
The anti-obesity card --
Streaming money --
Pepsi vodka --
Prosumer pay? --
Part 9. Poverty --
41. The old future of poverty --
Hitting the limit --
A poverty of strategies --
Typical Japanese "muck" --
The spillover effect --
Asia can't wait --
42. Twin tracks to tomorrow --
India awakened --
Bangalore central --
The greatest generation? ---
Yes, but no --
43. Cracking poverty's core --
Instead of trial and error --
Bring on the bananas --
Bio-economies --
Help from the heavens --
Secret prices --
The smartest agronomist --
Smart dust --
Bill Gates's echo --
What worked best won't --
Distributing energy --
Hyper-agriculture --
Part 10. The new tectonics --
44. China's next surprise? --
Looming over the world --
Accelerating acceleration --
Global space --
Mining knowledge --
Wave politics --
Three Chinas --
Mercedes, mall and militia --
Wave war --
The bloody thread --
Meet Mao II --
45. Japan's next bamboo ring --
Latte, anyone? --
Japan's lopsided leap --
Flex-nations --
Decision delay --
No more Christmas cakes --
The silver wave --
A Filipina or a robot? --
Awaiting the ring --
46. Europe's lost message --
The all-time low --
The widening split --
Speeding in slow motion --
Yesterday's heartland --
The Lisbon dream --
47. Inside America --
More wave warfare --
24 billion hours --
Stealing the future --
The nameless coalition --
Forces for change --
The next step --
48. Outside America --
The old game --
An "unsordid act" --
Backlash and bewilderment --
Reversing homogeneity --
49. The unseen game of games --
Neo-games --
No longer human? --
Tomorrow's NGOs --
Religio-economics --
God on the move --
The end of petro-power --
Utopia past --
The fragility of power --
The nano-now --
50. Epilogue : The prologue is past --
The nostalgia brigade --
A prosumer pathway? --
Pessimist-in-chief --
Moon power --
Hope for the human race? --
From picos to yoctos --
Notes --
Bibliography --
Acknowledgments --
Index.