In 1980, “futurologist” Alvin Toffler published The Third Wave to herald the beginning of a new era in human history that he believed would be based on information. The central premise of Toffler’s book is that the history of human civilization, while being complex and contradictory, can be seen to fit patterns, which he calls waves—sea changes in the way human civilization is organized.

According to Toffler, humans started off as hunter-gatherers, living a nomadic lifestyle, moving only when resources were tapped in a specific location. During the First Wave, the first radical change in the way human civilization organized itself that Toffler demarcates, the development of agriculture enabled nomadic people to settle into villages and cities. In the Second Wave, the industrial revolution made possible the modern industrial state. Toffler writes: “The Second Wave Society is industrial and based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass recreation, mass entertainment, and weapons of mass destruction.” When these things are combined with standardization, centralization, and concentration, he says, we “wind up with a style of organization we call bureaucracy.” According to Toffler, a Third Wave has just begun to form in the place of the Second: current bureaucratic organizational structures will be overturned by the rise of computing and telecommunications technologies, which will in turn transform the global economy and have political and social implications every bit as profound as those of the First and Second Waves.

Meanwhile, deep in the industrial heart of America, in the very Second Wave city of Detroit, techno music pioneer Juan Atkins was citing Toffler’s theories—in particular the phrase “techno rebels,” whom Toffel considers to be the “agents of the third wave”—as the inspiration for his use of the word “techno” to describe the musical genre that he would eventually receive credit for creating. On their 1983 release under the moniker Cybotron, Enter, Atkins partnered with Rick Davis to document the sound of a collapsed industrial empire that would exist sometime in the not-too-distant future, when the Third Wave would finally erase most of our collective cultural memory of the Second. Like Kraftwerk before them, Cybotron celebrated the romance of technology, of the city, of speed, using purely electronic instruments and sounds.

Dystopic, dark, and funky, Enter evokes a post-industrial world in which evidence of a coming Fourth Wave are only just becoming evident. In an interview with Jon Savage in 1993, Davies explained: “At the time of ‘Cosmic Cars‘ I was living in the suburbs. Juan would have to take long drives to get together. It was part of the city’s nightlife that you had to interface with car radios—Gary Numan did it with ‘’Cars.’” On another track, the Kraftwerk-inspired “Clear,” Atkins and Davies set the blueprint for what Atkins originally termed techno and which would later provide Missy Elliot with a sample around which to base “Lose Control.” The least vocals-driven track on the album, “El Salvador,” is so convincingly futuristic that it now, even two decades later, sounds like it could pass for a new release.

Atkins had no trouble staying busy throughout the 80s and 90s, even after he left Cybotron in 1985. In fact, the period from 1985 to 1987 proved to be his most influential. During that time, he founded his own label, Metroplex Records, in 1985 and recorded his first single as Model 500, called “No UFO’s.” Derrick May, who was living in Chicago at the time, invited Atkins over and told him to bring his records. The duo sold thousands of copies, and “No UFO’s” soon became a hit with Chicago mix shows like the Hot Mix Five. Later Metroplex singles like “Night Drive” and “The Chase” also sold well and helped to set the template for Detroit techno; moody and sublime machine music, inspired by the drone of automated factories and trips down the I-96 freeway late at night.

Although it has long-since parted ways with Juan Atkins’ original definition, “techno” music, in its many incarnations, attempts to prove that within unlimited information access there is overload—that destruction can be a condition of progress. As our past, present, and future start to spin before our eyes in the way that Toffler described, the positivism inherent in techno serves as an attempt to guide listeners to enlightenment in the form of readiness for an immanent future. Despite all of the evidence to support a less than smooth transition from the Second to the Third Wave, Juan Atkins says, “I’m very optimistic. This is a very good time to be alive right now.” Let’s hope he’s proven right. Until then, I think he’d just like everyone to dance.

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