"The dawn of this new civilization is the single most explosive fact of our lifetimes. It is the central event--the key to understanding the years immediately ahead. It is an event as profound as that First Wave of change unleashed...by the invention of agriculture, or the earthshaking Second Wave of change touched off by the industrial revolution. We are the children of the next transformation, the Third Wave.

"We grope for words to describe the full power and reach of this extraordinary change. Some speak of a looming Space Age, Information Age, Electronic Age, or Global Village. Zbigniew Brzezinski has told us we face a 'technotronic age.' Sociologist Daniel Bell describes the coming of the 'post-industrial society'.... I myself have written extensively about the arrival of a 'super-industrial society.' Yet none of these terms, including my own, is adequate."

What Toffler leaves out is that through all these ages, before and after each of them, right now and into the future, one constant has remained. The family is the central unit of life, of education and success, of happiness and progress. How we serve and love within our families--not the Information Age--is the central event of our lives.