Fourth Industrial Revolution
The term was popularised in 2016 by Klaus Schwab, the World Economic Forum founder and executive chairman,[3][4][5][6][7] who asserts that these developments represent a significant shift in industrial capitalism.
[8] A part of this phase of industrial change is the joining of technologies like artificial intelligence, gene editing, to advanced robotics that blur the lines between the physical, digital, and biological worlds.
[8][9] Throughout this, fundamental shifts are taking place in how the global production and supply network operates through ongoing automation of traditional manufacturing and industrial practices, using modern smart technology, large-scale machine-to-machine communication (M2M), and the Internet of things (IoT).
This integration results in increasing automation, improving communication and self-monitoring, and the use of smart machines that can analyse and diagnose issues without the need for human intervention.
[10] It also represents a social, political, and economic shift from the digital age of the late 1990s and early 2000s to an era of embedded connectivity distinguished by the ubiquity of technology in society (i.e. a metaverse) that changes the ways humans experience and know the world around them.
[13] Klaus Schwab, executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), introduced the phrase to a wider audience in a 2015 article published by Foreign Affairs.
[17] Schwab includes in this fourth era technologies that combine hardware, software, and biology (cyber-physical systems),[18] and emphasises advances in communication and connectivity.
[19] In The Great Reset proposal by the WEF, The Fourth Industrial Revolution is included as a strategic intelligence in the solution to rebuild the economy sustainably following the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is characterized by the shift to an economy centered on information technology, marked by the advent of personal computers, the Internet, and the widespread digitalization of communication and industrial processes.
A book titled The Third Industrial Revolution, by Jeremy Rifkin, was published in 2011,[23] which focused on the intersection of digital communications technology and renewable energy.
[35] The Fourth Industrial Revolution fosters "smart factories", which are production environment where facilities and logistics systems are organised with minimal human intervention.
[36] Over the internet of things, cyber-physical systems communicate and cooperate with each other and with humans in synchronic time both internally and across organizational services offered and used by participants of the value chain.
[53] These innovative connected sensors collect, interpret and communicate the information available in the plots (leaf area, vegetation index, chlorophyll, hygrometry, temperature, water potential, radiation).
Based on this scientific data, the objective is to enable real-time monitoring via a smartphone with a range of advice that optimises plot management in terms of results, time and costs.
[55] Knowledge economy is an economic system in which production and services are largely based on knowledge-intensive activities that contribute to an accelerated pace of technical and scientific advance, as well as rapid obsolescence.
This working group was headed by Siegfried Dais, of Robert Bosch GmbH, and Henning Kagermann, of the German Academy of Science and Engineering.
[74] The required automation technology is improved by the introduction of methods of self-optimization, self-configuration,[75] self-diagnosis, cognition and intelligent support of workers in their increasingly complex work.
[76] The largest project in Industry 4.0 as of July 2013 is the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) leading-edge cluster "Intelligent Technical Systems Ostwestfalen-Lippe (its OWL)".
[78] In 2015, the European Commission started the international Horizon 2020 research project CREMA (cloud-based rapid elastic manufacturing) as a major initiative to foster the Industry 4.0 topic.
[79] In Estonia, the digital transformation dubbed as the 4th Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum in 2015 started with the restoration of independence in 1991.
Although a latecomer to the information revolution due to 50 years of Soviet occupation, Estonia leapfrogged to the digital era, while skipping the analogue connections almost completely.
The early decisions made by Prime Minister Mart Laar on the course of the country's economic development led to the establishment of what is today known as e-Estonia, one of the worlds most digitally advanced nations.
Launched in 2018, key initiatives in this policy include enhancing digital infrastructure, equipping the workforce with 4IR skills, and fostering innovation and technology adoption across industries.
The Republic of Korea's I-Korea strategy (2017) is focusing on new growth engines that include AI, drones and autonomous cars, in line with the government's innovation-driven economic policy.
[9] The Department of Homeland Security in 2019 published a paper called 'The Industrial Internet of things (IIOT): Opportunities, Risks, Mitigation'.
To increase coordination between the public, private, law enforcement, academia and other stakeholders the DHS formed the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC).
Applications include machines that can predict failures and trigger maintenance processes autonomously or self-organised coordination that react to unexpected changes in production.
[91] This valuation is named the IKEA effect, a term coined by Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School, Daniel Mochon of Yale, and Dan Ariely of Duke.
[93] Also, the IR4 has sparked significant criticism regarding AI bias and ethical issues, as algorithms used in decision-making processes often perpetuate existing social inequalities, disproportionately impacting marginalized groups while lacking transparency and accountability.
