THE THIRD WAVE
A company called Bradley Automotive already offers a “Bradley GT kit” that lets you “put together your own luxurious sports car.” The prosumer who buys the partly preas-sembled kit mounts the fiberglass body on a Volkswagen chassis, connects the engine wires, sets up the steering, plugs in the seats, and so on.
One can easily picture a generation brought up on part-time paid work as the norm, eager to use their own hands, equipped with many cheap mini-technologies in the home, forming a sizable segment of the population. Half in the market, half out, working intermittently rather than all year round, taking a year off now and then, they might well earn less—but compensate by supplying their own labor for many tasks that now cost money, thus mitigating the effects of inflation.
America’s Mormons offer another clue to possible future life-styles. Many Mormon stakes—a stake corresponds to, say, a Catholic diocese—own and operate their own farms. Members of the stake, including urban members, spend some of their free time as volunteer farmers growing food. Most of the produce is not sold but stored for emergency use or distributed to Mormons in need. There are central canning plants, bottling facilities, and grain elevators. Some Mormons grow their own food and take it to the cannery. Others actually buy fresh vegetables at the supermarket, then take them to the local cannery.
Says a Salt Lake City Mormon, “My mother will buy tomatoes and can them. Her relief ‘society,’ the women’s auxiliary society, will have a day and they’ll all go and can tomatoes for their own use.” Similarly, many Mormons not only contribute money to their church but actually perform volunteer labor—construction work, for example.
None of this is to suggest that we are all going to become members of the Mormon church, or that it will be possible in the future to re-create on a wide scale the social and community bonds one finds in this highly participatory yet theologically autocratic group. But the principle of production for self-use, either by individuals or by organized groups, is likely to spread farther.
Given home computers, given seeds genetically designed for urban or even apartment agriculture, given cheap home tools for working plastic, given new materials, adhesives, and membranes, and given free technical advice available over the telephone lines, with instructions perhaps flickering on the TV or computer screen, it becomes possible to create lifestyles that are more rounded and varied, less monotonous, more creatively satisfying, and less market-intensive than those that typified Second Wave civilization.
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