Toffler’s second and third waves colliding in U.S. federal government

In his 1980 book The Third Wave, futurist Alvin Toffler depicted the long-term evolution of modern socio-economy as a series of three waves. The first was agrarian – the cultivation and sale of plant crops and animals. The second was the industrial era that began in the 18th century. According to Toffler, this wave reached its peak in the 1970s when services took on a more dominant role relative to manufacturing – the third wave.

The transitions between the waves play out over many decades and are fraught with tension between the receding and rising waves. Not surprisingly since in each, the scale of social and economic change is enormous with broad implications for how and where people work and live. The previous socio-economy and its industries and settlement patterns is remade into the next.

Toffler wrote of advances in information and communications technology and fiber optic telecommunications infrastructure that would fundamentally alter the second wave industrial era based on centralization of production in offices and factories in metro centers. The third wave, Toffler prognosticated, would instead bring about decentralization.

Second wave office work would migrate back to homes that Toffler termed “the electronic cottage.” Toffler’s prediction came just six years after fellow futurist Arthur C. Clarke issued a similar forecast, envisioning the end of commuting to urban downtown office buildings. “Men Will No Longer Commute, They Will Communicate.” And plenty of women too who have entered the workforce since Clarke’s 1964 prognostication.

Toffler’s and Clarke’s future has arrived – gradually since the mass market personal computer in the 1980s and Internet in the 1990s – and suddenly following the social distancing public health measures of the 2020 viral pandemic. Millions of office workers migrated to the electronic cottage, creating home offices and no longer regularly commuting.

The tension between the second industrial era and third information era waves is now starkly evident in the federal government and in two prominent figures of the current American administration: President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

Trump is a product of the second wave and the 1980s in particular when he developed his identity as a real estate developer including office buildings. The younger Musk is more complex, a creature of both the second and third waves. He embraces technology but largely in the context of second wave transportation advances: automobiles (Tesla) and rocket ships (SpaceX).

Both men are essentially second wave industrialists. For them, Toffler’s postindustrial third wave electronic cottage doesn’t exist. It’s a dwelling, not a place to work. Working there instead of commuting to a distant office is even “immoral” as Musk put it. Consequently, the administration has ordered federal workers to report for duty at the office.

The customer service model and government offices

The Trump administration’s offer this week to federal employees to either do their jobs in government offices or resign effective later this year reflects a conceptualization of public sector knowledge work similar to that expressed by some state governors who imposed similar personnel rules over the past few years. It likens it to customer facing services people receive in brick-and-mortar locations like retail stores. These locations must be necessarily be staffed during business hours.

Some government services – state motor vehicle departments and health clinics – fit that description. But much of what government does is plan and make decisions on how to allocate public resources and deliver them through government programs. They are what Roger L. Martin would describe as “decision factories” as he termed them in a 2013 Harvard Business Review article.

Prior to the 21st century, these activities were nearly always performed in vast cube farms, closed door offices and meeting rooms in government owned or leased buildings centralized in Washington DC and state capitols.  

Advances in information and communications technology since then have diminished the need for these locations to allow staff to share, analyze, discuss and plan while seated together in these offices. Personal computers and devices and the Internet generally work as well outside of these locations as within including residences, thus eliminating the need to travel to a centralized commute-in office for most forms of knowledge work.

But when they are used in a knowledge worker’s home, a cognitive dissonance occurs, particularly for those who are not digital veterans (early adopters) or younger generations of digital natives. Prior to these ICT advances, the home was clearly for personal time and relaxation – not working. Daily activities were defined by the space in which they occurred. Home is home and offices “workplaces.” That distinction is no longer so sharply defined.

Making the conceptual shift away from those sharp distinctions is difficult, requiring an adjustment in thinking that can be challenging for both public and private sector organizations.

Trump administration Infrastructure Initiative would fund efforts to reduce metro rush hour traffic

The Trump administration’s 2018 Infrastructure Initiative contained within the administration’s fiscal year 2018 budget proposes work be performed outside of commute-in offices and during regular business hours in order to reduce traffic congestion in American metro areas. This was among a half dozen proposals will be pursued by the administration as part of the Infrastructure Initiative laid out in this fact sheet:

Incentivize Innovative Approaches to Congestion Mitigation. The Urban Partnership Agreement Program – and its successor, the Congestion Reduction Demonstration Program – provided competitive grants to urbanized areas that were willing to institute a suite of solutions to congestion, including congestion pricing, enhanced transit services, increased telecommuting and flex scheduling, and deployment of advanced technology. Similar programs could provide valuable incentives for localities to think outside of the box in solving long-standing congestion challenges. (Emphasis added)

The advanced technology that can do the most to decentralize knowledge work and commute-driven traffic congestion is advanced telecommunications technology that enables knowledge workers to work in their communities rather than commuting daily to a remote office, generating unnecessary transportation demand that is taking a toll on the nation’s aging roads and highways. The administration should fund the rapid deployment of fiber optic telecommunications infrastructure to homes and community co-working spaces in order to achieve this objective.