By Manoj Gupta

Many of us remember studying about the industrial revolutions in school, and how it upheaved our ways of doing things. However, barring history fanatics, most of us have only an elementary understanding of these Industrial revolutions and their impact on the humanity and world.

The fourth Industrial revolution is set to catapult the entirety of earlier three industrial revolutions!

As we step into Industry 4.0, which is coined as to impact the humanity, let’s understand earlier Industry revolutions…

Industry revolutions - I, II and III

The First Industrial revolution started around 1760s, through the emergence of the steam engine, which had an immense impact on civilisation. Steam was powering agriculture and textiles industry – attracting people to move into cities to work in factories, and paving way to urbanisation. Industries and cities grew much quicker than ever before, and economy flourished along with them.

The Second Industrial revolution started around 1840, and was all about electricity, gas and oil. This phase focussed on gasoline engines and enabled assembly line mass production. It further propelled the first industrial revolution from periphery of cities into countries & continents. Invention of electricity, telephone, radio and aeroplane transformed lives. The beginning of modern world was on its’ verge.

The Third Industrial revolution started from 1950s onwards, and was all about the rise of microprocessor and computers paving new ways of information processing and sharing. The shift took place from analogue devices to digital disrupted industries. Electronics and Information technology began to automate production lines.

These three Industrial revolutions massively changed the way we were doing things, and brought globalisation, and huge advancement to our lifestyles.

While the earlier three changed what we were doing, the fourth changes us!

How?

The Fourth Industrial revolution

Industry 4.0 is the era of ‘cyber-physical systems’ - merging capabilities of machine with humans. Digitalisation, visibility, connectivity and interoperability are becoming familiar terms.

The action happening around artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, driverless automotive, biometrics, genome editing, renewable energy et al, massively influence human across personal, professional and social facets of life. The mindset & behaviour of people is getting influenced & impacted with tech and social media around - and anyone denying this fact is either naïve or ignorant. The degree and intensity of the impact may have variation though. Having said so, its’ just the beginning...

With technology advancement, everything that used to be dumb & disconnected in past will be connected & intelligent. Right from cars, ports, cities to even our bodies will be wired with sensors and will talk to each other.

The scenarios where computers and self-driving cars learn and take decisions by themselves are not far away. The refrigerators will directly connect with superstores for replenishment of milk, fruits, vegetables or any other essentials!

So, in the world where everything will be connected, where everything will be right first time, where performance will reach to perfection - the workforce skills needed will be radically different!

Thrive or Extinct will be faster than ever before!

The change isn’t incremental, it is exponential - disruption will be the new normal!

So, question is where does it lead to humanity?

The good news is - anything that cannot be digitised or automated will become extremely valuable. Yes, robots and software will do a lot of our work, but this will allow humans to focus on things which are more meaningful to our existence.

Human-only traits such as creativity, imagination, intuition, emotion, ethics will take the centre stage – because machines will be good at simulating but not at being…

Need will be, to go beyond tech & data, into human Insights & wisdom.

Are you ready?

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