The Fourth Industrial Revolution
The development of the modern industrialized world could be interpreted as a series of jumps, rather than a continuous line of development. The first is reckoned to be the application of controlled power to production. The big leap came as water and then steam replaced men, horses and oxen as sources of energy. Textile manufacturing led the field in adopting such changes, but they spread to the iron industry, agriculture, and mining.
The Second Industrial Revolution is reckoned to include the development of railroad and telegraph networks, allowing faster movement of people and the rapid spread of ideas, as well as electricity, which allowed factories to develop the modern production line.
The Third one has been the recent shift to an economy centered on information technology, with the introduction of personal computers, the Internet, and the widespread digitalization of communication and industrial processes.
Some claim that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is happening today. It combines Artificial Intelligence with a huge shift in the speed at which existing industries are impacted upon in a large number of sectors. As with the other revolutions, many incumbent businesses and their employees are displaced as newer, faster and more efficient techniques are developed. But as with the previous ones, it creates new jobs to replace the old, and greatly increases the wealth of societies that embrace it.
Established industries and their employees will lobby to curb the spread of the new and retain the ways that currently provide their living. Textile workers threw their wooden sabots into the new machines to ‘sabotage’ them. Coaching companies lobbied Parliament to have the new horseless carriages preceded by a man walking with in front of them with a red flag.
Governments will try to slow down the pace of change so they can control it. They are already talking about the ‘dangers’ posed by the accelerating technology, and already trying to put themselves in charge of it by introducing regulations designed to place it within their grasp.
The odds are that they will fail, partly because they do not understand it, and partly because elements of it are uncontrollable. A world government might impose its fiat, but competing nations will not. Pandora’s box has been opened, and brickbats as well as benefits are pouring out. Since we can’t stop it, we might as well embrace it and concentrate on securing more of its benefits.
Dr Madsen Pirie