The third wave in health sciences education

摘要

In 1980, the futurist, Alvin Toffler, published a book, The Third Wave, in which he described human history in terms of 3 waves; the first related to agriculture and accumulation of land mass, with lords and ladies owning vast tracts of land to be farmed by their serfs, the second, the industrial revolution, related to the accumulation of wealth through the efficient production of mass goods, leading to an aristocracy based on finance and resources—the Carnegies, Rockefellers, and Vanderbilts of late nineteenth century America, and, in 1971 still far in the future but now upon us, a third wave based on knowledge. Of course, the computer revolution, and the instant access to the world's knowledge through Google, exemplifies the third wave.