by Kai Hong
Introduction
The doyen of Futurology, Alvin Toffler became famous with his predictions of the future shape of the post-industrial civilization. I personally don’t agree to premises upon which he builds the future shape of the post-industrial society. The second wave and the 3rd wave are both ushered in by new key technological innovations, mainly accomplished by Western Science and Western technologies. As Thomas Kuhn showed (and Alvin Toffler would agree), all scientific endeavors took place within a certain taken-for-granted scientific paradigm and within its rules of the (language) game. Within each scientific paradigm is, whether explicitly or implicitly, embedded a certain set of philosophical assumptions of epistemic and ontological kinds. (continue…)