Industry 4.0

I openly admit that I am one of these human beings that is utterly impressed every time I come across either a new term, a new concept or an innovative idea capable of impacting the course of humankind. In my constant quest for such novice elements I recently stumbled over Professor Klaus Schwab's book entitled the "Fourth Industrial Revolution". Until that moment it had totally eluded me that we had already undergone three industrial revolutions, a fact that was only manifesting the size of my shameful ignorance on the subject. Soon after the surfacing of this major cognitive vacuum I stormed the internet in search of mental food to fill the gap. On a closer look though, I realised that I wasn't really that ignorant but rather disorganised in the fashion in which I stored these interconnected and succeeding events in my mind.

A more structured approach on the subject, which would also help to better attribute the number of revolutions to phases of humankind's economic development would dictate the identification of key factors that impacted each phase. Hence, while "steam" was the basic ingredient that enabled the first industrial revolution, "electricity" and with it the capability to develop streamlined "production capacities" were the basic ingredients of the second industrial revolution. From this point onward it is almost self-evident and easy to predict that the rise of "computer science" constituted the platform that triggered the transition to the third industrial revolution. And I believe that each and every one of us has a fairly good understanding of the contribution that each of the previous revolutions brought to the strengthening of individual economies, to the creation of society and its different income layers abut also to the formation of collective consciousness and politics.

But what on earth is the 4th industrial revolution then all about? Prof. Klaus Schwab provides the answer, which is founded on a synergy between the digital, the physical and the biological. There are millions of people today that are connected to one another either through smart devices and/or the internet and with them a wealth of digitalised data and information that is travelling non-stop. This overflow of digital data and its impressive speed of circulation has impacted the way we look at ourselves, our professions, the environment and our economies. In recent years we have managed to unlock the black-box inside our brains and have become more mindful about a range of things. The effects of this mindfulness are reflected in our diversified and improved understanding of biological ageing, is reshaping our relationship to life itself, and is redesigning our views about our planet. On a medical level we have managed to incorporate an impressive degree of high-tech into our bodies that makes it hard to separate between the natural and the artificial. We are on our way to become super humans.

Our economies have transformed from linear to circular. This means that we have abandoned traditional forms of "take make and dispose" models of production in favour of models that are more aimed at the promotion of greater resource productivity aiming to reduce waste and to avoid pollution by design or intent and in which material flows are of two types, namely: (a) biological nutrients designed to re-enter the biosphere safely and (b) technical nutrients which are designed to circulate in high quality in the production system without entering the biosphere, as well as being restorative and regenerative by design. The shift from linear economies to circular fits into the desire for creativity and innovation. It is without the slightest doubt that there was a long standing need for a different economic model. Not as much in the sense of communism vs. capitalism but rather a shift in the system along the lines of the two big changes that happened in world economics during the 20th century, i.e. the Keynesian economic dogma, which had a greater focus on health and education and with the government working side-by-side with the business and then later in the same century Milton Friedman's neoliberalism, where the focus was on free markets, the freedom of the individuals and getting government out of the way. We are now shifting to a new system, which will allow us to meet the basic needs of every individual not looking to maximise growth but to increase the well-being of every human on the planet. At least on a theoretical level at this stage. History tells us that a value shift is always triggered by a new story about how we want to live. We are trying to de-couple growth from the resource constraints that we have.

The 4th industrial revolution is not here to change what we are doing but is here to change us. It sets the new rules of the game and it does shape the profile of the modern human being. One might argue that it updates the human code as we knew it and it indeed requires us to develop super-human skills, if we are to survive in this new environment. It calls upon us to enhance our change-management skills and to embrace the landscape ahead. Are we cut out for this? I cannot say. Are we prepared for it? I do not know. Fact is that evolution is always one directional and points always toward the future. It is without any doubt that, if we were to describe the cornerstone element of the 4th revolution in one word, this word would be "innovation". The Internet of Things (IoT) which allows the communication between hardware without any need for human intervention, the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) which spurs the development of robotics and with 3D printing being possible it seems that the possibilities ahead are endless and difficult to even grasp at this point. One thing that we can predict for sure? Times ahead can hardly be described as boring.