What do we know about the future now, I asked, that we didn't know before? "We now know that order grows out of chaos," he answered immediately. "You cannot have significant change, especially on the scale of Russia or China, without conflict. Not conflicts between East and West, or North and South, but ‘wave’ conflicts between industrially dominant countries and predominantly agrarian countries, or conflicts within countries making a transition from one to the other."
现在,人们对以前并不知道的未来又了解多少呢?我问他。他随即答道:“人们都知道,秩序产生于混乱。尤其是在俄罗斯或中国这样的大国,没有冲突就不可能产生巨变。这些既不是东方和西方之间的冲突,也不是南北之间的冲突,而是以工业为主和以农业为主的国家之间的‘浪潮’冲突,或转型时期国家内部的冲突。”
Waves, he explained, are major changes in civilization. The first wave came with the development of agriculture, the second with industry. Today we are in the midst of the third, which is based on information. In 1956 something new began to happen, which amounts to the emergence of a new civilization. Toffler said. "It was in that year that U.S. service and knowledge workers outnumbered blue-collar factory workers. In 1957 Sputnik went up. Then jet aviation became commercial, television became universal, and computers began to be widely used. And with all these changes came changes in culture."
他解释说,浪潮是文明的重大变革。农业发展带来了第一次浪潮?工业革命带来第二次浪潮。如今我们正处在依托于信息的第三次浪潮之中。新文明开始于1956年出现的变化。托夫勒说:“就在那一年,美国服务业和信息业从业人数超过了蓝领工人。1957年,苏联发射人造地球卫星。随后是喷气飞机转向商用、电视普及、计笕机开始广泛应用,文化变迁随之出现。”
"What's happening now is the trisection of world power," he continued. "Agrarian nations on the bottom, smokestack countries in between, and knowledge-based economies on top." There are a number of countries—Brazil, for example—where all three civilizations coexist and collide.
他继续阐释:“世界权力三级分化正在出现。农业国处于底层,工业国位于中间,以知识经济为主导的国家在顶层。”在有些国家,例如巴西,三种文明形态相互并存与碰撞。