NEXT Thursday, futurist Alvin Toffler will give Japan a dose of future shock. It will be the second such Toffler-administered jolt to the Japanese in the space of two weeks.
Mr Toffler is an author-cum-academic, social thinker, journalist, former factory worker and guru for an uncertain global future, who, often in partnership with his wife Heidi, has written such best-sellers as Future Shock, The Third Wave, Previews and Premises, and most recently, in English, Powershift.
For the most part, Mr Toffler writes primarily about world trends, problems, and likely developments. But now he is looking specifically at the Asia-Pacific region - not least because the area is economically dynamic, and it is profitable for him to do so.
On January 27 his latest book War and Peace was published in Japanese. It will be some time before it's likely to appear in English. The American edition, which will contain more material and may even be broken up into two volumes, is not due until the autumn at the earliest.
War and Peace pays much attention to the ''changing nature of warfare''. Its origins are interesting. When he co-authored The Third Wave with his wife, he did not have the military specifically in mind. But the American defence establishment found the book's analysis interesting and offered Mr Toffler a briefing on how technological changes were affecting their thinking.
''Ten years later,'' he said, ''all those changes were right there on CNN as it brought the Gulf War into every home on television.'' As he sees it, ''the way you will make wealth (in the future) relates to how you will make war. Both activities will take advantage of the great changes in information technology.'' On February 11 Mr Toffler will go beyond the printed page to give the Japanese their second jolt when he features as the host and interviewer of a two-hour documentary on Fujisankei Television in Japan, to be shown on National Foundation Day, a national holiday. The documentary will not be the ''film-of-the-book'', but as he takes an extended look at some aspects of Asia-Pacific geopolitics, the book and the TV programme will obviously be related.