The Fourth Industrial Revolution

We all have heard the word "revolution". And today we are going to talk about one major revolution, which changed the world. Also, it’s changing the world and is going to change the world. That is generally known as the industrial revolution. But, the Industrial Revolution has had four phases so far, The first, second, third, and fourth industrial revolutions. Before talking about the fourth industrial revolution, let’s get a brief idea about what are the previous industrial revolutions.

The First Industrial Revolution

Since ancient times people used the power of the muscles for industrial applications. As one major turning point for earthlings, People invented steam energy between the late 80th and early 90th centuries. People started using. People in the United States and Great Britain were introducing steam energy for almost all the industrial applications due to the higher efficiency, and that transition is called the first industrial revolution. James Watt’s steam engine is a major invention from this era.

The Second Industrial Revolution

The second industrial revolution happened in between the period of World War I and Electricity, rubber, petroleum industry can be identified as some major products of it. Industry after this revolution is named industry 2.0.

The Third Industrial Revolution

This is also called the digital revolution because the digitalization of electronics computers and the internet was based on the digitalization of electronics computers and the internet. Nuclear energy is also a product of the third Industrial Revolution, which was a major step ahead of power generation. The beginning of the third industrial revolution was marked in the 1960s. As I’m writing this in the year 2022, we are now living with the technologies and concepts of industry 3.0.

Now we have a basic knowledge about the previous industrial revolutions. So, let’s go to the main topic of today.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution

The Beginning of Fourth Industrial Revolution

The term “Fourth Industrial Revolution” was born in the year 2011, by a group of German scientists. So, industry 4.0 is the industrial concepts and technologies. Later, Klaus Schwab presented the Fourth Industrial Revolution concept with a book named “The Fourth Industrial Revolution” in 2016. However, Klaus Schwab has mentioned that “I believe that today we are at the beginning of a fourth industrial revolution” in his book. So, one can say that we are living in a transitioning era from industry 3.0 to industry 4.0.

 

Megatrends of Fourth Industrial Revolution

Trends of the 4^th industrial revolution can be mainly categorized into three categories.

Physical

• Additive Manufacturing – Also known as 3D printing.
• Autonomous Vehicles – Generally called self-driving, driverless, or auto-pilot vehicles.
• Advanced Robotics – Autonomous and Artificial Intelligence-based robotics to collaborate with humans.
• New Materials – Development of advanced, stronger, and less-weight (nano) materials.

Digital

Internet of Things (IoT), Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), homes becoming smart homes.

Biological

Synthetic biology is one example.

 

Deep Shift

Klaus Schwab has mentioned how the 4^th industrial revolution is going to change the world and lives in his book. Some of them can be listed as follows.

• Vision as a New Interface – Even today, 10% of the reading glasses are intelligent and they are connected to the internet. Good impacts from this are improved visual aids and provides the ability to manage the movements and interactions of disabled persons. As a negative impact, addiction is increased.

• Implantable Technologies – You can find implantable mobile phones even now. This will connect devices more and more with people. As positive impacts, these technologies can be used to find missing children, better health decision making. Increased distraction, escapism can be identified as some negative impacts.

• Wearable Internet – According to Klaus Schwab’s book, 10% of people are already wearing smart clothes which are connected to the internet. Smartwatches are also can be put into this category.
  

• Driverless cars – We have seen that huge companies like Tesla, Audi are working on autonomous cars. Electric vehicles over petrol vehicles, improve the safety of driving are positive impacts while the cyberattacks on vehicles and job losses for drivers are some negative ones.

 

Other than that, there is a long list of upcoming technologies with industry 4.0. Hope you had a pretty good idea of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and you can free download the Fourth Industrial Revolution book by Klaus Schwab if you need to read further. Hope to see you with another interesting article!