EDITORIAT

Even lumber itself disappears

THE EXPERTS' projections that you can read I on the following pages deal with l98l and the years immediately following it. What we would like you to consider here is the world beyond that time, what is commonly called the future.

This vague, unsighted world has been the focus for a rapidly growing collection of experts called futurists; men and women who use science, art and hunches to divine what the future holds. It is a fascinating and unsettling business.

Alvin Toffler, author of the best selling book, Future Shock, this year published his latest work, The Third Wave. ln it he hypothesizes nothing less than that oyr present society began in the 1960s a change so radical as to be unlike anything preceding it. He describes the agricultural based society of man, from earliest times until about 300 years ago as the Fint Wave. The Second Wave is the industrial world that developed since then. He writes that his "Third Wave of historical change represents not a straight line extension of industrial society, but a radical shift of direction, often a negation, of what went before it. It adds up to nothing less than a complete ftansformation . . ."

Many share his view and if they are correct, that sector of life involving work, business and industry are in for some wrenching changes that will make the change of recent years positively mild by comparison.

Futurists see technology, among other things, bringing rapid and radical change. Consider: will you or your employees perform the job at home, before a computer screen? Will trees be immediately converted into wood fiber after harvest, with all subsequent products being a reconstitution of the fiber and chemicals. If so it would mean the elimination of lumber itself, as we know it today, from the business inventory. All of this is clearly within the realm of possibility, futurists assure us.

Few of us think very much about that kind of fufure. Yet it seems reasonable to be concerned enough so that we don't find ourselves caught flat-footed by lightning swift change that so surprises us that we are unable to react successfully.

Paul Bunyan Faces The New Year

Assuring his friends of continued service, Paul extends his sincere thanks and best wishes for the coming year.