Third Wave

Every entrepreneur out there should grab a copy of The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future by Steve Case and read it. If you don’t know Steve, you’ve probably heard of him. He’s had a remarkably entrepreneurial journey starting with co-founding AOL in the 1980s. While AOL has now been absorbed into Verizon (after having been bought, spun out, and bought again) at its peak around 2000 nearly half of all Internet users in the US accessed the internet via AOL and everyone over the age of 40 knows how to say “You have mail.” ...

When I was 14, my dad gave me a copy of Alvin Toffler’s book The Third Wave It blew my fucking mind. I then read the prequel – Future Shock – which was good – but since my mind was already blown, it was anticlimactic. If you don’t know the arc of Toffler’s waves, they go as follows: The First Wave: agricultural society The Second Wave: industrial society The Third Wave: post-industrial society Future Shock was written in 1970 and The Third Wave was written in 1980. While the idea of post-industrial society seems obvious in hindsight, in 1980 it was a completely new idea. ...