FUTURE SHOCK THE THIRD WAVE

Posted by admin_akashic on Aug 7th, 2022 in Space

THE TECHNICIANS OF POWER

The question “Who runs things?” is a typically Second Wave question. For until the industrial revolution there was little reason to ask it.Whether ruled by kings or shamans, warlords, sun gods, or saints, people were seldom in doubt as to who held power over them. The ragged peasant, looking up from the fields, saw the palace or monastery looming hi splendor on the horizon. He needed no political scientist or newspaper pundit to solve the riddle of power. Everyone knew who was in charge.

Wherever the Second Wave swept in, however, a new kind of power emerged, diffuse and faceless. Those in power became the anonymous “they.” Who were “they”?

THE INTEGRATORS

Industrialism, as we have seen, broke society into thousands of interlocking parts—factories, churches, schools, trade unions, prisons, hospitals, and the like. It broke the line of command between church, state, and individual. It broke knowledge into specialized disciplines. It broke jobs into fragments. It broke families into smaller units. In doing so, it shattered community life and culture.

Somebody had to put things back together in a different form.

This need gave rise to many new kinds of specialists whose basic task was integration. Calling themselves executives or administrators, commissars, coordinators, presidents, vice* presidents, bureaucrats, or managers, they cropped up in every business, in every government, and at every level of society. And they proved indispensable. They were the integrators.