The third wave is about integrating the internet into everything we do. No longer limited to PCs, tablets and other devices, the internet is becoming part of our homes, automobiles, agriculture and cities. This technologically-integrated age has also been referred to as the Internet of Things.
In the wake of the third wave, ideas will continue to come from unexpected places, causing disruption that entrepreneurs should embrace. These ideas will lead to old paradigms being shifted or completely destroyed, which means success will only come to those who take risks and recognize future opportunities.
the third wave book summary
Like companies during the first wave, innovative third-wave companies need to build strong partnerships with industry gatekeepers. Otherwise, these big corporations may regard new entrepreneurs as competition and block their path.
Ron Jones, the teacher who conducted the original 1967 experiment, called it "The Third Wave". This is surfer lingo common in California; the third wave is usually the strongest. The Third Wave also provides an allusion to The Third Reich. Strasser mirrors this in the novel by having Mr. Ross refer to the movement he creates as "The Wave".
Finally, the third factor is perseverance, again I recognize that people are not going to like to hear this because overnight successes are awesome when you get them, but in many cases these are complicated problems and are going to require engaging over a long period of time with partners on policy and other things. Perseverance is going to matter. I used to say that AOL was a decade in the making overnight sensation. In the mid-90s it looked like we came out of nowhere, but we had been slogging away for a decade before anybody really noticed. I think that dynamic is going to become more important in the third wave. Some of the things around people, products, and platforms will continue to be important, but partnership, policy, and perseverance will be critical in the third wave as they were in the first wave.
I think in this third wave, having some expertise and having some credibility is also important. Partners are important and having some track record is going to be critical to really get the partnership accelerated. If you are going to lead the way in on policy, if there is credibility there it will result in your views being more likely to be heard. I think it will be a mix, like anything, a diverse mix of entrepreneurs doing a lot of different things in a lot of different ways. I would expect in this third wave, the partnership, policy, and perseverance aspects to be more important, more perspective and age a little bit older. Frankly, I would expect and hope to see a more diverse mix of entrepreneurs. The second wave was dominated by the engineers, mostly in places like Silicon Valley, predominantly white guys, and I expect in the third wave to see the playing field leveled a little bit, so there will be a more diverse mix of entrepreneurs in the third wave.
Case: Each of them are a little bit different. There are some things that are common. First, each of them is critical to how we live, are educated, move around in cities, how we stay healthy. Second, because of that, they tend to be regulated. They are such important aspects of society that there is a sense that they need to be regulated to level the playing field of competition, or due to the need for safety or protection. And because of the nature of them, many are more enterprise-oriented than consumer-oriented, and that is why partnerships with some of those players will become more important. Of course there will be a lot of different ideas, a lot of different companies doing things in different ways, but in general in the third wave those will be some of the dynamics that define the sectors the most.
Case: There are several factors, but it is important to note that this phenomenon is not new. Fifty years ago, if you wanted to be in the financial service world, the general view was to that you had to be in New York. Similarly, fifty years ago if you wanted to be in the entertainment industry, you had to be in Hollywood. While New York is still strong in financial services, and Hollywood and Los Angeles are strong in entertainment, we have seen those industries disperse. And what we will see with this third wave is that the internet and technology and innovation will disperse frequently around the country as well as globally.
Some of the factors driving this change include some of the structural changes, such as new ways to access capital including crowd-funding can get people more access to capital in a more diverse array of geographies. This partnership aspect of the third wave will become more important in driving some of the ag-tech innovation. Those are some of the dynamics that are beginning to drive this. The other thing is that investors are beginning to recognize that there are some interesting break-out successes outside of Silicon Valley. In Provo, Utah there are four multi-billion dollar enterprise SAS software companies on one street. In Baltimore, Under Armour initially was athletic wear, but are now in in a lot of things around health-tech and fitness-tech and the company is helping to revitalize that city. The craziest one is Magic Leap, one of the hottest virtual reality/augmented reality companies in the world. They raised $1.3 billion in capital, including from Google and Alibaba, but they are not in Silicon Valley, they are not in Boston, they are in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. People will still flock to Silicon Valley for opportunity, but increasingly people will find it easier to start businesses no matter where they are.
Case: I think that there has been progress. I think there is more awareness, certainly at the federal level of the role that startups play in providing job growth and economic growth, but there is still a lot of work to be done. There are still a lot of things that need more time to make sure we have the right regulations in place for the third wave, to enable good things to happen and to protect us against bad things. You need to make sure capital flows to everybody so the playing field is level on the sort of things like crowd funding. When you look at the tax code, how do you create more incentives around investments that drive economic growth? There has been progress on a bunch of issues, but there is still a lot of work.
Cassie lives with her parents (Ron Livingston and Maggie Siff) and her little brother Sam (Zackary Arthur). Her "normal" life disappears when a mysterious object appears in the sky over earth. Then come the different "waves" of attack from the aliens referred to as "The Others." The first wave is an electromagnetic pulse that kills the power across the globe. Airplanes fall from the sky. The second wave is a series of tsunamis that wipe out coastal areas. The third wave is a plague that kills millions more. The fourth wave involves snipers who stalk and kill the survivors of the other waves. And the fifth wave, unknown, is imminent.
These important elements are sketched-in and undeveloped in the film. Instead, we're left with Cassie and Evan throwing longing looks at one another, confusing monologues where people figure out what the "5th wave" is, and reunion scenes that have no punch. The closing narration is milquetoast cliche, something the Cassie in the book, with her raw tenderized heart, would never have tolerated.
In reading the essays on postfeminism in this section of EBR, I'm struck by the imprecision of the term. Some of the essays - like Stobb's - seem not to be discussing postfeminism per se, but just younger feminist negotiations with the conditions of life in the early 20th century. Others, like Guertin, use the term postfeminism but without a particular sense of its significance; this piece seems more to be discussing feminism in general, or perhaps third wave feminism - I find the discussion of cyberfeminism fascinating, but I don't buy that it's equivalent to postfeminism. Helford, Yaszek, and Mazza seem to be engaging with the idea of postfeminism in ways that I find most interesting and useful; they're identifying something other than third wave feminism, and they're considering the significance of the "post" rhetoric as it applies to feminism in an era of backlash.
The term "postfeminism" always makes me wary - it's a suspect term, a catchphrase from the early '90s that was used to suggest that we no longer need feminism, that we're past it. I don't hear it that much anymore, but when I do, it's often problematically used in a way that suggests it's synonymous with third wave feminism.
Now, speaking of imprecise and suspect terms, third wave feminism is right there with them - it's a highly contested term that loosely defines a generational and political cohort born after the heyday of the second wave women's movement. Although I've edited a collection of essays that both embraces and interrogates the term,Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century (Northeastern University Press, 2003) others - like Bitch publisher Lisa Jervis - have argued that it's time to get rid of it altogether.
The controversies surrounding the use of the term "third wave feminism," however, are different from those surrounding "postfeminism." When feminists debate the third wave, generally they're trying to determine if there's enough of a generational divide between older and younger feminists to warrant a whole new label. The question seems to be, have we moved far enough from the social issues that propelled the women's movement in the 1960s and '70s to be able to suggest that there's a new wave? The rhetoric surrounding postfeminism, by contrast, tends, as Lisa Yaszek notes, "to describe the contemporary moment as one in which the goals of feminism have been achieved" and "to invoke a `blame-the-victim' mentality." Often arguments made from a postfeminist perspective rely on what Elyce Helford identifies as "the belief that personal choices and `bootstrap' efforts can bring a woman (and hence all women) empowerment and equality." While the third wave says, "We've got a hell of a lot of work to do!" postfeminism says, "Go buy some Manolo Blahniks and stop your whining." 2ff7e9595c
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