The Big Answer

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Toffler tells us that the technologies of deception are increasing more rapidly than the technologies of verification. Now we have really powerful tools for deceiving one another.

He says that some knowledge that’s no longer accurate is really misinformation. There is a lot of it around. It’s something that people believe, and it may be a fact or idea that is no longer correct.

Our education system is a second-rate, factory-style organization pumping out obsolete information in obsolete ways

Toffler: "For instance: our schools. Our education system is a second-rate, factory-style organization pumping out obsolete information in obsolete ways. And it’s not just that they haven’t gotten the science books updated. They are simply not connected to the future of the kids they’re responsible for. All education springs from some image of the future. It springs from some implicit assumptions about what the future holds." Toffler goes on to say that when your kid asks what good is it to learn math you respond that "you’ll need it in the future." They'll need math, or social studies, or science or something—but more likely all of these. That assumes the educators are making various assumptions about what the society will be like in the future. If they're thinking "smokestack, assembly-line economy," then they are preparing the kids for the Second Wave past, not the Third Wave future.

Toffler also describes how poverty can be reduced by the Internet by microtrade

Toffler also describes how poverty can be reduced by the Internet. We are (almost) all connected, so villages across the globe can trade with cities in the U.S.—which Toffler calls "microtrade."