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BIOGRAPHY OF ALVIN AND HEIDI TOFFLER
RUSSIA'S FIRST NGO
Very early on, the Tofflers also recognized the rise of NGOs or non-governmental organizations as a new force in society. In 1976, Alvin Toffler testified before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee about their growing internationalization.
In 1986, -- along with a small group of other intellectuals including playwright Arthur Miller, novelist James Baldwin, actor-writer Peter Ustinov and Nobel prize-winning French novelist/poet Claude Simon - the Tofflers met in Khirgizia (now Khirgistan) at the instigation of then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. There they created the first non-governmental, non-Communist Party organization in the U.S.S.R. since the 1917 Communist revolution. Today there are between 300,000 and 450,000 NGOs in Russia.
SELF-HELP TO HIP-HOP
Concepts drawn from the Toffler books have entered current discourse with implications for a wide range of social issues, from ethnic and race relations to marriage, work, stress, childrearing, education, self-help and organization theory. Similarly, ever since their earliest book, The Culture Consumers, the Tofflers works have touched the arts as well. They have influenced science fiction. The Third Wave inspired a symphony and the techno-music phenomenon. Future Shock was turned into songs by Herbie Hancock and Curtis Mayfield, as well as a record label, a hip-hop dance group, a game called Terminator: Future Shock and a musical performed at the Edinburgh Festival. Toffler terms like "future shock" and "adhocracy" are now embedded in dictionaries, their phrases found in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.
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