The Fourth Industrial Revolution: A glimpse into the future.
Looking back at the history of mankind, we saw some significant paradigm shifts in the way we conduct ourselves, usually bought about by impactful innovation. We like to call these phenomenons revolution and over the course of human progress, we saw many revolutions. After the agrarian revolution which transformed the forager/hunter lifestyle to an agricultural lifestyle, we further witnessed three Industrial revolutions. The first Industrial revolution was ignited by the invention of steam engines which brought about a shift in human labour from agriculture to a range of other newly formed industries kick-started by mechanized production.The second Industrial revolution starting 19th century with the invention of electricity achieved mass production of goods and services. The third Industrial revolution starting 1960s, also called the digital or computer revolution is what we are experiencing to date, characterized by large-scale adoption of computing devices and the penetration of Internet. Today a series of new inventions and technologies are laying the groundwork for the next Industrial revolution:The fourth industrial revolution. Inventions in robotics, computing, data storage, 3D printing and the emergence of Big Data,IoT and AI are the key contributors to the fourth Industrial revolution.
In the book The fourth Industrial Revolution, author Klaus Schwab who is the Chairman of World Economic Forum believes many of the tipping points leading to the revolution would happen by 2025. By asking Industry leaders and experts, the probability of the tipping points happening were found out. For instance 81% of experts believes that 5% of consumer goods would be 3D printed by 2025 and 89% believes 1 trillion sensors would be connected to the Internet and so on.
Another interesting aspect of this revolution would be the decline of capitalism as the dominant economic force and the rise of the collaborative commons aided by the Internet of things, as stated by the author Jeremy Rifkin in the book Zero Marginal Cost Society. Capitalism in a competitive economy increases the productivity and continuously decreases the marginal cost of goods, aided by newer innovations in technology.Finally a point will reach where we will be having an abundance of goods at zero marginal cost,for example the MOOCs have led to near zero marginal cost education making a shift from education in brick and mortar class rooms and the 3D printing technology would allow the production of goods at near zero marginal cost by consumers themselves. In the book he envisions the rise of “prosumers”, where the consumers themselves turn the producers. The communications Internet along with the Energy internet and logistics Internet would form the IoT platform and accelerate the rise of the collaborative commons. The collaborative commons have always existed in the society, communities of people who collaborated together for various purposes.In the future for instance, local communities would produce their own goods with the help of 3D printing, with renewable energy supplied by local micro-grids at near zero marginal cost. Capitalism would no more be the dominant force by 2050 and would shrink to supplying the underlying network and specialized services.The social commons would absorb the good in both Capitalism and Socialism unleashing a new economic future.
Another important feature is the rise of platforms, the on demand economy and the shift from ownership to access which is described by Klaus Schwab in his book. The on-demand economy raises the fundamental question: What is worth owning — the platform or the underlying asset? As media strategist Tom Goodwin wrote in a TechCrunch article in March 2015:
“Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate.”
The Key Technologies that would define 4IR
Robotics and Automation
In the book the The industries of the Future by Alec Ross who is a distinguished visiting fellow at John Hopkins University and former adivsor to Hilary Clinton on innovation explains how Japan plans to deal with caring its aging population. He points out that today 25 percent of Japanese population is above age 65 and the figure would be 29% by 2020 and projected to rise to 39% by 2050. Japan doesn’t have enough young population to take care of its elderly, neither does it allow large scale immigration. The solution before them was robots and Japan expects robots to take care of its elderly in the near future and companies there are working on it.
Robots are improving their features and capabilities with time, today with artificial muscles and skin, robots look ever more human like.Before Robots were programmed as autonomous units,today they are connected to the cloud which gives them access to information remotely via the cloud and the ability to connect with other robots real time.Advances in cloud technology and material sciences would make the robots more capable and human like.
Automation would free humans from all kinds of repetitive work. Klaus Schwab in his book writes “Robots and algorithms increasingly substitute capital for labour, while investing (or more precisely, building a business in the digital economy) becomes less capital intensive”. In the book Industries of the future, Alec gives us the example of Foxxconn, where its CEO Terry Gou wishes to have a factory of only robots and his purchasing of one robot for every single worker of his factory as a primary step towards eliminating Foxxconn’s entire human workforce.As he explained in a 2012 New York Times article:
“As human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache.”
Big Data
Vast amount of data was created in the last 3 years with the rise in internet traffic and social media. With advanced AI/Machine learning techniques this data is put to use to make prediction algorithms. Data enhanced products are the future.With more sensors and ‘things’(appliances, buildings etc) getting connected to the Internet, we have the Internet of Things and an exponential rise in the data creation moment by moment. This is what we call Big Data. With more computing power and cheaper storage, Machine learning algorithms could be put to greater use.
Land was the raw material of the agricultural age. Iron was the raw material of the industrial age. Data is the raw material of the information age.
IoT
IoT is the backbone of the Fourth Industrial revolution.We have a connected future.More and more physical infrastructure would get connected to the Interenet. When more of the things get connected, we have Big Data, a powerful tool for productivity and for achieving greater “thermodynamic efficiencies”.
AI
Newer advances in ML techniques, deep learning and neuroscience is key to human progress into the fourth industrial revolution. Machines would become smarter and robots more intelligent with Big Data and Cloud.
3D Printing
Advances in 3D printing would bring manufacturing to the hands of the consumer. Author Jeremy Rifkin writes in his book “The price tag was $30,000. Today, “high-quality” 3D printers can be purchased for as little as $1,500.2 It’s a similar cost curve reduction to that of computers, cell phones, and wind-harnessing and solar technologies. In the next three decades, industry analysts expect that 3D printers will be equipped to produce far more sophisticated and complex products at ever-cheaper prices — taking the infofacturing process to near zero marginal cost.”
Advances in Genomics like Gene Editing and in Material Science(for example advances in nano materials like Graphene) are other key areas that would define The Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The Future of Jobs
The Fourth Industrial Revolution would happen faster than the previous revolutions.Rapid advances in technology would displace jobs faster than creation of new jobs. In the book the Zero Marginal Cost Society, the author points to the fact that how after the 2008 recession, countries had a jobless recovery. Jobs involving repetitive actions are the first to be displaced.Even service sector jobs, which were considered less prone to automation would be displaced.For instance robots would start serving food at restaurants and self driving cars would displace the taxi drivers out of their livelihood. Companies like Uber have a dedicated team of specialists working at their labs with this vision at hand. Experts predict that an entire class of jobs would be wiped out from the job pyramid and jobs of the future would be classified as either high skilled/high pay or low skilled/low pay.
References:
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
Zero Marginal Cost Society
The Industries of the Future

