£445,000,000,000.00 unlocked by fourth industrial revolution

Revolutions

First Industrial Revolution[edit]

Picture of the "Puffing Billy" steam engine taken in the Science Museum in London.

The First Industrial Revolution took place from the 18th to 19th centuries in Europe and America. It was a period when mostly agrarian, rural societies became industrial and urban.^[4] The iron and textile industries, along with the development of the steam engine, played central roles in the Industrial Revolution.^[4]

Second Industrial Revolution[edit]

The Second Industrial Revolution took place between 1870 and 1914, just before World War I.^[5] It was a period of growth for pre-existing industries and expansion of new ones, such as steel, oil and electricity, and used electric power to create mass production. Major technological advances during this period included the telephone, light bulb, phonograph and the internal combustion engine.^[6]

Third Industrial Revolution[edit]

The Third Industrial Revolution, or the Digital Revolution, refers to the advancement of technology from analog electronic and mechanical devices to the digital technology available today. The era started during the 1980s and is ongoing.^[7] Advancements during the Third Industrial Revolution include the personal computer, the internet, and information and communications technology (ICT).

Fourth Industrial Revolution[edit]

1983 Industrial Robots KUKA IR160/60, 601/60

The Fourth Industrial Revolution builds on the Digital Revolution, representing new ways in which technology becomes embedded within societies and even the human body.^[8] The Fourth Industrial Revolution is marked by emerging technology breakthroughs in a number of fields, including robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, biotechnology, The Internet of Things, 3D printing and autonomous vehicles.

In his book, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, professor Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, describes how this fourth revolution is fundamentally different from the previous three, which were characterized mainly by advances in technology. These technologies have great potential to continue to connect billions more people to the web, drastically improve the efficiency of business and organizations and help regenerate the natural environment through better asset management.^[9]

“Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution” was the theme of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2016 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution holds unique opportunities to improve human communication and conflict resolution

UK must prepare for fourth industrial revolution, says report

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionThe UK must do more to take advantage of technology such as robotics, a report says

Advanced digital technology could give UK manufacturing a huge boost and create hundreds of thousands of jobs, a new report claims.

The independent review, chaired by the head of Siemens UK, highlights the benefits of robotics, 3D printing and artificial intelligence.

But Juergen Maier said the UK needed "greater ambition" to take advantage of such technology.

And he said a huge number of workers would need to be retrained.

His report calls for a commission to help businesses adjust to changing technologies.

The report, Made Smarter, brought together executives from companies such as Rolls Royce, GKN and IBM, with representatives from small firms as well as academics from the universities of Newcastle and Cambridge.

Its recommendations will help inform the government's industrial strategy plans.

Professor Maier told the BBC's Today programme the transition would mean job losses: "On the one hand it is going to create productivity and more exports and through that we can create more jobs but at the same time robotics and artificial intelligence will displace some jobs.

"The best thing we can do is to make ourselves ready for it in a very proactive way and that means training our people... we need to up skill one million existing workers in the industrial and manufacturing sector... so they can transition from tasks that might be displaced to, for example, managing or programming robots."

The report proposes:

• More targeted support for companies, re-skilling workers, and a National Adoption Programme piloted in the north west
• Five digital research centres to improve innovation and capability
• A national commission in charge of turning Britain into a global leader in industrial digital technologies

The proposals were backed by CBI director-general Carolyn Fairbairn, who warned about the UK's international competition.

"The UK must compete with China, the USA and much of Europe where there are already advanced plans to embrace the fourth industrial revolution," she said.

Sean Redmond, chief executive of software firm Vertizan and a contributor to the report, said the UK needed to "catch up with international competitors".

"Smaller businesses that are growing at scale, especially industrial companies, need support learning about how digitalisation can help their business grow," he said.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, or 4IR,

 is the fourth major industrial era since the initial Industrial Revolution of the 18th century.^{[citation needed]} The Fourth Industrial Revolution can be described^{[by whom?]} as a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, and impacting all disciplines, economies and industries. Klaus Schwab has associated it with the "second machine age"^[1] in terms of the effects of digitization and AI on the economy, but added a broader role for advances in biological technologies.^{[2][need quotation to verify]}

Schwab sees as part of this revolution "emerging technology breakthroughs" in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, quantum computing and nanotechnology.^[3]