Can he be serious?

Where a process might prove itself efficient, the technologist raises an Institute to its continued honour (production) and glory (growth). In the beginning there was only the Economic Council but the word of Muldoon was heard among the faithful and now we have a National Development Conference. The technologist, working out of an Institute himself, comes to believe that institutionalisation is not only the touchstone of success, it determines success.

Toffler recognises that some people, notably the 'blue-skyers' (artists, Utopians, social visionaries, idealists in general) have annoyingly demonstrated that they can have an idea without the help of an Institute. So he proposes we institutionalise them into efficiency and oblivion by creating 'imaginetic centres' and 'Utopia factories', and giving them a prestigious technological label, 'imagineers'. The saddest part is that he's serious.

Toffler's section on the 'limits to adaptability' conforms to the predictions inherent in his empirical and technological assumptions. The limits he describes are strictly those that can be experimented upon and counted — biological and psychological measures of disease-incidence and stress-behaviour. Spiritual, instinctive or emotional limits don't count, probably because they can't easily be counted. We are reminded of the experts who are going to measure our progress in the quality of life, and the educationists' point that what can be measured most easily is what is most measured and not usually what is most significant.