THE THIRD WAVE
We glimpse here instead the emergence of what might be mlled a “practopia”—neither the best nor the worst of all possible worlds, but one that is both practical and preferable to the one we had. Unlike a Utopia, a practopia is not free of disease, political nastiness, and bad manners. Unlike most Utopias, it is not static or frozen in unreal perfection. Nor is it reversionary, modeling itself on some imagined ideal of the past.
Conversely, a practopia does not embody the crystalized evil of a Utopia turned inside out. It is not ruthlessly antidemocratic. It is not inherently militarist. It does not reduce its citizens to faceless uniformity. It does not destroy its neighbors and degrade its environment.
In short, a practopia offers a positive, even a revolutionary alternative, yet lies within the range of the realistically attainable.
Third Wave civilization, in this sense, is precisely that: a practopian future. One can glimpse in it a civilization that makes allowance for individual difference, and embraces (rather than suppresses) racial, regional, religious, and sub-cultural variety. A civilization built in considerable measure around the home. A civilization that is not frozen hi amber but pulsing with innovation, yet which is also capable of providing enclaves of relative stability for those who need or wantthem. A civilization no longer required to pour its best energies into marketization. A civilization capable of directing great passion into art. A civilization facing unprecedented historical choices—about genetics and evolution, to choose a single example—and inventing new ethical or moral standards to deal with such complex issues. A civilization, finally, that is at least potentially democratic and humane, hi better balance with the biosphere and no longer dangerously dependent on exploitative subsidies from the rest of the world. Hard work to achieve, but not impossible.
Flowing together in grand confluence, today’s changes thus point to a workable countercivilization, an alternative to the increasingly obsolete and unworkable industrial system.
THE WRONG QUESTION
They point, in a word, to practopia. Why is this happening? Why is the old Second Wave suddenly unworkable? Why is this new civilizational tide rushing in to collide with the old?
Nobody knows. Even today, 300 long years after the fact, historians cannot pin down the “cause” of the industrial revolution. As we have seen, each academic guild or philosophical
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