Matthew Burbidge
Alvin Toffler, who for nearly 30 years has dominated popular futurist thought, shared some thoughts on the eve of the millennium with South Africans at the Lost City this week.
He and his wife and collaborator, Heidi, have written more than a dozen books that have all been best-sellers, starting in 1970 with Future Shock.
Others, like The Third Wave in 1980 and Powershift in 1990, are said to have identified trends with unerring accuracy and transformed finance, media and politics.
Toffler spoke to delegates at the Multi Rand Forum, a conference for members of the financial services industry, on Tuesday.
Toffler has a quiet, fierce intelligence. He turned 71 last week, but he doesn't look 60. He answers questions without pausing, and his concise replies seem to open up on to other areas of discussion. He gestures vaguely with his hands while he speaks, shifting slightly in his chair while he considers different viewpoints.
In a brief interview, Toffler said he had visited South Africa in 1994: "I was here at that magic moment of euphoria.
"We had been invited many times, but had refused to come before."
He said South Africa had a particularly complex economic structure and, as in many countries, there were people belonging to what he called the "three waves" of change: a rural, agrarian population, an urban industrial one and the beginnings of the third (information and technology) wave. Each group had their own problems and their interests were not the same.
"The Government and the private sector should develop multiple strategies that apply to different groups - a solution for one is not necessarily a solution for all the groups."
The three waves were not only different in terms of money, but were different in terms of cultural values, family structure, lifestyle and politics.
"The challenge facing any government is to recognise that each of the economic sectors are also cultural sectors."
Talking about problems that faced poor people, Toffler said in many countries peasants were working in the least productive sector, and while what they produced was vital for society, they could not take advantage of capital investment or education: "They work the hardest and produce the least."
He suggested that South Africa look to the Asian economies that had developed rapidly because they were rooted in information-based industries.
"Thirty years ago, Malaysia exported teak and rubber. Now it's conductor chips."
He said this was preferable to accommodating investors who were in search of cheap labour, because there would always be cheaper labour somewhere else, and technology could replace the need for any labour at all.
The cheap labour approach was a "band-aid for unemployment", and Toffler predicted that a country which followed this route would not prosper.
He said the poorest people in South Africa would have their lives transformed and improved if one computer with Internet access was set up in their area.
"Internet commerce will change the global economy, and a country that ignores it will guarantee itself half a century or a century of misery.
"A country cannot separate itself from the global economy. It needs an adequate telecommunications and information infrastructure.
"The Internet will transform the way a significant percentage of the planet lives. The gap between the information poor and the information rich is being radically reduced by the collapsing price and access to the Internet.
"A Peruvian village is selling vegetables to New York, a village in China is selling its vegetables to Germany, all through the Internet."
Toffler said he had heard that about 70 percent of South African homes had a television, and he predicted that a similar number would be connected to the Internet within a few years.
Toffler and his wife have written another book which they plan to publish in the next few years after the "hullabaloo" of the millennium.
Toffler said he would be honoured if the South African Government sought his assistance: "This is a country that I, and a great many others, fervently wish to succeed. I regard racism as a disease, essentially an anti-human disease from which this country is currently recovering."
Asked about the couple's method of writing, he said they wrote "with great difficulty".
"We spend most of our time travelling, researching and learning, and then we put it together. It's not just a set of unrelated facts - and there are no facts about the future; we look at the forces in action on the planet. We show models of social change."