The Fourth Industrial Revolution
Each technological revolution has created new environments for human beings. Our societies are shaped by the infrastructure we utilize to survive. In the modern age, we are seeing distinct changes to the ways people, businesses and governments operate.
The first innovations that created an initial industrial revolution occurred in the United Kingdom. In the late 18th century and early 19th, they restricted the sale of their machinery and intellectual property from leaving the boundaries of the powerful nation. Once the knowledge reached Belgium it spread like wildfire around the world. The same thing is happening now but with different players and ideas.
Countries adopted the technologies at varying rates, but the means of transporting information were much slower than they are today. Ideas have begun traveling faster over time, perhaps using a telegraph as a point of reference. By the mid 20th century the ideas and practices that helped Europe to create massive infrastructure spread to China and India, making them the best practice ways of going about living.
During this same time, a brand new revolution was underway, primarily due to industrial experimentation and increased scientific understanding. Metals became much easier to manufacture given new methods of metallurgy. The assembly line and computers both started to lead humans in the direction of the data-driven future. By observing what is going on and experimenting with slight changes, slowly over time humans began to pick up the pace.
The methodology behind financing was forced to change given the scale of the organizations that were leading the world’s most intensive contracts. To keep up with demand for investment, companies began selling shares of their own companies to employees at other companies for funding to continue large projects. This lead to a massive pocket of wealthy humans. Primarily on the east coast of the United States. The epicenter of financial markets, especially following World War 2.
We are currently near the end of the third industrial revolution, at least in America. Other nations have been slower to adopt the ways of modern times. From life-integrated software that tracks our decisions to automation and robots that help managers make better decisions. There is a bit of a grey area between the separation of the third and fourth revolution. The marquee difference is that the machines being used during the third are controlled by algorithms that have limits to them.
The systematic change that we are going to see with the tools of tomorrow is that they will think for themselves to continuously improve. This is one of the concerns of artificial intelligence proponents, that artificial life will become more powerful and influential than the humans we know today.
Given the rate at which these technologies are being developed, I believe it to be a reasonable claim.
Yet, the benefits of a world where our devices continue to learn are immense.
The fourth industrial revolution is characterized by artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, internet of things, 5G wireless network, 3D printing, autonomous vehicles, and agile robotics. The changes that we are going to see during this time period are going to be fundamental in taking our next steps in history. Once we discover how to safely create a world of thinking machines, it will enable us to explore other planets and learn more about ourselves. We will be able to sustain more artists and teachers, as well as learn more about our race as a being on planet earth.
Artificial intelligence is often confused with machine learning. Though they could both be individual chapters in the way humans are going to be neurologically altered by technology, they each have their own importance. AI is a replica of human action allowing us to replace our human actions with that of a machine. Devices are going to be able to be programmed in planning, languages, image processing, learning and other activities performed by the human brain in our society. The two forms of AI are weak and general. Weak being predefined understood tasks, able to consistently perform easier tasks. General AI is characteristic of human intelligence, in the way that it is not perfect but can adapt over time. The only difference is you can make the computational speed of a computer much faster than a human with enough programming. Machine learning is the ability for our tools to evolve and continue to grow on their own based on their programming. This is the most intriguing and dangerous portion of modern science given the consequences of a bad mistake. There is a possibility we create machines that are more powerful than our own species. Yet the skills will allow us to achieve more than what was feasibly capable without AI & machine learning.
Nanotechnology is another interesting alley of scientific discovery. The most shocking aspect of the tech is that we are so early in the progression of humans we are not able to judge the potential size of action that can be taken. We simply don’t know what we can and can’t do. Nanotechnology is the manipulation of atoms to create reactions that would seem impossible with the base materials. It has been featured in Sci-Fi media yet we are unsure what the true implications of the scientific practice will become given the mystery of the subject. Once we discover more about the field, the idea is that we will be able to construct any molecules we desire from the ground up. Once this technology is developed it will be fundamental to the growth of our next tech, 3D printing.
Books have long predicted our ability to create anything we desire on demand. The only thing that’s changed is it is no longer a futuristic idea, it is actually happening. Though we have not made the ability to construct items with any material commercial quite yet, we are on our way to being able to create anything you want from the home. This will radically change the speed at which people create and innovate.
Within the world of 3D printing, additive manufacturing began to develop during the early 2000s. This is the idea that we can combine multiple materials to make a diverse final product. This process will not only allow people to create all of the products we know today but given the speed of production, we will see new innovations that we could not have imagined with our current levels of production and technology. Much of what we know in 2018 about manufacturing is subject to change with 3-D printing.
One of the most fundamental changes in the way the world works is going to be quantum computing. Rather than computers using binary to solve problems they are going to be able to simplify very complex problems by providing users with actionable information about data. This means our computers will work for us rather than us having to know the inputs of every scenario. This also is very telling of how much more data is going to be extracted from everyday situations. Anything that can help someone make their life better will be tracked and utilized during the fourth industrial revolution.
It sounds far too futuristic. The idea that people will be able to interact with all the devices in their home sounds foreign. The convenience of the internet of things revolution is going to make the tools we use more intelligent and fit to our needs. In the years to come, ioT could imply the creation of houses without having to strike the ground. The most well-known concepts involving ioT are related to smart home technologies. These implementations are going to reduce energy use massively around the world and provide people with convenience that we can’t comprehend in 2018. Enabling voice technology with smart devices will allow you to literally have a conversation with your house. You can turn all of your lights off when you go to bed or change the music from room to room as you move around your house. As people age, the value of ioT shifts. Elderly residents will be able to feel much safer in their own homes. They can interact with their physicians and medical assistants by speaking with their house, rather than having to keep track of their phone. Those with mobility issues will be able to live more comfortably than what is possible now.
Commercial industry will face change as a direct result of the internet of things. Doctors will be able to have conversations with their patients remotely and find recordings of all past health data for all of their patients. This will reduce manual mistakes in diagnosis and also allow doctors to have more actionable data when making health decisions. In the event of an emergency, people are going to be able to contact emergency services much easier. For people who are injured and not mobile, they can now speak up in their home or hospital room to bring attention to medical professionals. Researches in the scientific field are going to be able to communicate with their devices rather than having to manually operate them. The dynamic of all of these changes will feed into each other changing the health field forever.
ioT amongst automobiles will save lives and energy. Cars are going to be able to communicate with each other to avoid accidents and dangerous situations. Traffic is going to be reduced massively because automobiles will map out the road together rather than the manual free for all we have on today’s highways. Finding parking will no longer be something people have to think about. Every free parking spot will be mapped out. Tolls are going to be completely automated saving high way passengers time and energy. Businesses are going to reduce costs to ship because routes will be perfectly mapped out based on the transportation network of the region. As machine learning delves into the topic, there are going to be changed in the automotive industry that we could not have imagined.
The manufacturing industry is subject to the most value creation from ioT. Managers are going to be able to control their entire factory from their computer with sensors allowing them to capture more data than possible. All of the processes of a business will have actionable data to make better decisions. From production to logistics to sale every process can be mapped and made as efficient as possible. Digital control systems are going to help business owners know when they need to invest in new machinery and optimize production.
Right now, temperature, rainfall, humidity, wind speed & soil content are not being monitored as much as they should be in order to be properly managed in the world’s farms. All of these factors play a role in the success of growing seasons, and by tracking and using this data, we are going to be able to feed more people. Farmers are going to change from general speculation to actionable decisions based on the realities of the area they are planting. By utilizing machine learning, farmers are going to make decisions that are going to change the way they operate forever. The only problem is the data hasn’t been entered to discover these changes quite yet.
The infrastructure of the world is going to fundamentally change from the analog age to the digital age. Our notebooks and toolboxes have been replaced by our phones but our roads, bridges, and energy facilities are still old school. As these begin to change our cities are going to be mapped out more efficiently saving time and resources.
ioT devices are going to manage wildlife in a way that will restore more natural habitats than we can imagine. By tracking the water, soil & air we are going to have better understandings of the world around us. Wildlife tracking will enable us to preserve species that are endangered and redevelop lost populations of animals around the world.
The world is going to adapt in a way that will allow us to change the environments we live in. Slowly over time the developments from ioT are going to become second nature in our lives and their benefits go beyond what we can predict.
Our ability to interact has been slowly accelerating over time. During this revolution, the change we are going to see is the 5th generation of cellular communications. Devices are going to speak faster to each other with less latency. This will mean games will run seamlessly on phones, robots will have the intellect to work in a factory environment & self driving cars are going to be safe enough to be on the road.
The next wave in the automotive field will become autonomous vehicles which will enable people to spend much less time driving. The idea is that 90% of car accidents are caused by human error. If we can create cars that drive on their own we will only have the 10% of accidents that we currently have. This effect coupled with newly developed ioT cities are going to make our lives much safer and more reliable.
I think the most notable difference in our everyday lives will be the integration of mobile robots in the world. All of the activities which can be replaced will be performed by robots. I imagine there will be some human interactions as a novelty but for things where major amounts of time can be saved, people will slowly adapt to preferring robots. In the same way that people once searched through stores to find the items they wanted, now all they have to do is scroll through a website.
The change that I am thinking has massive potential which is not recognized as part of the fourth industrial revolution is the age of social media. In the past communication between people was impossible. In certain cases you could lose track of someone and never find them again. The resources we had for the networks of people around the world made it impossibly difficult to track specific people. Now during the age of social media, people can be reached instantaneously. I think the increased knowledge of what is going on in other places in the world will allow us to make more informed geopolitical decisions. Slowly over time people are going to realize we are capable of working together and achieving things we could not have imagined during our current age.
Extreme space travel is not out of the question if the world figures out how to be cooperative across the globe. The world has the pooled resources to make scientific discoveries in the deep ocean, the majority of which are entirely uncharted. The deep vast caves of our planet will be mapped out to the point where we will have a physical understanding of the makeup of the world. Once we utilize these technologies we can use materials from other planets to make discoveries about the universe that would have been impossible without the minor technological changes that occurred over time.
The new age is approaching. Everything we do is going to become easier and faster, and those who choose to adopt the valuable ones will see that this age is the best time to be a human. We are going to figure out how to interact with our world from a perspective that was impossible without the modern infrastructure we are establishing. The revolutions of ages to come are going to be shockingly advanced compared to the archaic dawn of the computer age we are currently in. In history classes hundreds of years from now, people are going to talk about the beginning of the mobile phone revolution as if it were as archaic as the development of steel. These devices will be the constructs which we establish our world upon.