Alvin Eugene Toffler is an American futurologist (born Oct. 4, 1928, New York, N.Y.—died June 27, 2016, Los Angeles, Calif.), who wrote the immensely influential best-selling books Future Shock (1970) and The Third Wave (1980), in which he attempted to prognosticate and describe the economic and societal changes that were likely to take place in the rapidly materializing post-industrial age.
He correctly foretold the changes that advanced technology would make in the workplace and also accurately predicted transitions in family structure (including the acceptance of same-sex marriage) and the advent of a disorienting proliferation of choices in almost every area of life. Toffler was sought after as an adviser by government officials and corporate CEOs, and his works were particularly admired and studied in China.
He graduated (1950) from New York University and moved to Cleveland, where he engaged in assembly-line work and also became a welder. In 1954 Toffler became a reporter for the trade newspaper Labor’s Daily, and in 1959 he was hired by Fortune magazine as a labor writer and editor. He left that job in 1962 in favor of freelance writing, and he won praise for a 1964 interview of Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov that was published by Playboy magazine. Toffler’s other notable works include Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century (1991) and Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave (1995; with his wife, Heidi).
