Alain Touraine Quotes

Cities have made the transition from industrial to service economies.

Industrial forces set in motion by steam and electricity have materially changed the structure of our civilization.

Mankind had the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, and now this third one, the information revolution.

A major one which no one can overlook is technological and based on inventions and discoveries which have altered the whole basis of production and deeply affected social relations.

Any discrimination, like sharp turns in a road, becomes critical because of the tremendous speed at which we are traveling into the high-tech world of a service economy.

We are effectively living in a world of communications and information abundance.

Futurism: This was a movement of intellectuals who wanted to replace tradition with the modern world of machinery, speed, violence, and public relations. It proves that we should be careful what intellectuals wish for, because we might get it.

People are naming it the Third Wave, the Information Age, etc. but I would say those are basically technological descriptions, and this next shift is not about technology - although obviously it will be influenced and in some cases expressed by technologies.

We're still in the first minutes of the first day of the Internet revolution.

Good intentions can often lead to unintended consequences. It is hard to imagine a law intended for the workforce known to Henry Ford can serve the needs of a workplace shaped by the innovations of Bill Gates.

A completely industrialized society is of no consequence to me.

The machines, which mark the triumph of science, become, by reason of the antithetic conditions of the social plexus, instruments which impoverish millions and millions of artisans and free peasants.

The industrial revolution turned time into a commodity.

In a modern and innovative society, where advancements are plentiful and communication is instantaneous, science and technology are a part of everyday life.

As our farms and factories grew more efficient, they accounted for a shrinking share of our economy. And the more productive agriculture and manufacturing became, the fewer people they employed.

The information revolution has changed people's perception of wealth. We originally said that land was wealth. Then we thought it was industrial production. Now we realize it's intellectual capital. The market is showing us that intellectual capital is far more important that money. This is a major change in the way the world works. the same thing that happened to the farmers during the Industrial Revolution is now happening to people in industry as we move into the information age.

Acknowledge to yourself that the factory job is dead. Having a factory job is not a natural state. It wasn't at the heart of being human until very recently. We've been culturally brainwashed.

The industrial revolution in the new century is, in essence, a scientific and technological revolution, and breaking through the cutting edge is a shortcut to the building of an economic giant.

We live in a dominant culture of ceaseless Departure and Progress that has so far lasted two or three centuries.

The world is poised on the cusp of an economic and cultural shift as dramatic as that of the Industrial Revolution.

Europe and North America, we are told, are less dependent on energy-intensive heavy industry than in the 1960s and 1970s. It seems we squeeze more GDP out of a barrel of oil than in those benighted days.

Leaders in China and India realize that science and technology lead to success and wealth. But many countries in the West graduate students into the unemployment line by teaching skills that were necessary to live in 1950.

Technological innovation is indeed important to economic growth and the enhancement of human possibilities.

What the Internet has done is it has decentralised power.

I don't think love for technology itself breeds change.