The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler

Toffler's earlier works flit from topic to topic which makes for provocative reading. In the Third Wave, he slows down and attempts to delve deeper, however he just provides anecdotal evidence, which only occasionally provides the impact of FutureShock.

In the mid-1950's, when the Second Wave reached its mature stage in the United States, world population stood at only 2.75 billion. Today it is over 4 billion. In the mid-1950's the earth's population used a mere 87 quadrillion BTU of energy a year. Today we use over 260 quadrillion (doubling the average human's usage).

-- Chapter 18, The Corporate Identity Crisis, A Pentagon of Pressures

Six threshers (humans) with flails = 36 liters of wheat
Belgian threshing machine = 150 liters of wheat
French threshing machine = 250 liters of wheat
English threshing machine = 410 liters of wheat
American threshing machine = 740 liters of wheat
Only those who have never spent years at grueling manual labor can lightly brush aside machinery that, as early as 1855, could thresh grain 123 times faster than a man (per hour)

Chapter 23, Gandhi with Satellites, The First Wave Strategy