“Power – the control of company money and information backed by the force of law – is shifting out from under those with legal or formal position and toward those with natural authority based on knowledge and certain psychological and political skills.”
- Alvin Toffler, author of Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century
Whether in the boardroom (“Greed is good!”) or the concrete jungle (Money, Power, Respect), you’ll come across books that encourage you to increase your power base. The 48 Laws of Power, How to Win Friends & Influence People, The Art of Persuading an Airline Hostess to Give you a Double Before Take-off, the list is endless. And I’ve read ‘em all, once loved ‘em all, and, eventually, came to hate them all. Until I came across Powershift.
Reading Powershift is like Ponce De Leon finding his Fountain, the Lion finding his Heart, or the Knicks finding a win. By reading this book, I feel like I’ve uncovered a wealth of information that serves as the manual for the 21st Century. Not surprisingly, after the U.S.S.R. fell, many of the re-building countries required their leaders & executives to use to read the book a preparatory material. In Japan, the book has reached near-Biblical proportions.
Unlike other books on ‘power’, this isn’t a self-help book, ala Dale Carnegie. This isn’t edu-tainment, like The 50th Law. The author doesn’t give a fuck about your feelings. He gives you facts. And either you act on them, or you continue to be a sheep in a wolf’s world. It’s a modern day Art of War.
“…In any economy, production and profits depend inescapably on the three main sources of power – violence, wealth, and knowledge. Violence is progressively converted into law. In turn, capital and money alike are now being transmuted into knowledge. Work changes in parallel, becoming more and more on the dependent on the manipulation of symbols. With capital, money, and work all moving in the same direction, the entire basis of the economy is revolutionized…because it reduced the need for raw materials, labor, time, space, and capital, knowledge becomes the central resource of the advanced economy.”
Basically, in today’s world, he who controls knowledge – information – controls power. If somebody fucks with you, you either (a) call the cops, or (b) take them to court (hoodlums, I ain’t forget you). If you call the cops, you’re indirectly threatening them with pain and suffering (jail time, prison rape, etc haha)…since legal violence is under the auspice of the government. Similarly, law is backed by the government, which has the only legal form of violence. This is the society we all live in.
Next up, knowledge. I have access to Wikipedia, so me, and, say, NASA’s scientists are on the same playing field. This isn’t 1495, and Galileo ain’t the only Einstein around these parts. I have the same access to information that all doctors, lawyers, musicians, that everyone has access to. So my only hindrance to complete any of my goals is me.
Tie this all up – and you realize, it’s the access to the dissemination of ideas and information that means a lot. Take a look at Roger Ailes, and his boss, Rupert Murdoch. The Australian alpha-dog own movie studios, newspapers, and the #1 news broadcasting service in America. And oh yeah, he’s the only Westerner with TV control in China. Not even the people of China can control what they watch. (If you want any additional info on this, I have a great NYT article I can send you.)
“In sum, the rise of the industrial nation-state brought the systematic monopolization of violence, the sublimation of violence into law, and the growing dependence of the population on money. These three changes made it possible for the elites of industrial societies to make use of wealth rather than overt force to impose their will on history.
This is the true meaning of powershift. Not simply a transfer of power from one person or group to another, but a fundamental change in the mix of violence, wealth, and knowledge employed by elites to maintain control.” (Bold mine)
Elsewhere in the book, Toffler writes about the upcoming war to bring HDTV to the U.S., and why the big networks wanted to keep it out of the country. It talks about the soon-to-be prevalence of voice-recognition systems, and the use of electronic information systems that will one day be available to all. He talks about an upcoming bust in the real-estate market. He talks about how every aspect of the human experience will be trivialized, monetized, commercialized, and commoditized (think reality shows, Tamagachi, or video games based on wars).
He talks about what you should know.
And, oh yeah. Powershift was released in 1990.