Industrial Revolution 4.0. On the Threshold of a New Age

Economists are saying that the world is standing on the threshold of the fourth industrial revolution. This is the name of today’s age of innovations when advanced technologies change radically; whole domains of the economy in a dramatically fast way.

We’ll see absolutely new types of industrial development, which will be based on big data and data analysis, complete development automation, augmented reality technology, and internet of things.

CHARACTERISTICS OF INDUSTRY 4.0

The first industrial revolution started in the first part of 18th century after the steam engine had been invented, that allowed us to pass from manual work to machinery work.

The second was provoked by an acquisition of electricity and intense line production.

The third industrial revolution—so-called digital revolution—started in the middle of 20th century, when people created first computers setting the preconditions for the informational technology revolution.  We’re living right in this era.

Now, digital revolution is passing into the fourth wave, which is characterized by the implementation of cyber physical systems in the manufacture process.

Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum claims that the fourth revolution will blur borders between physical, digital, and biological areas. He also wrote a book about it, which is called simply “The Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

“This refers to series of discoveries, caused by the development of connectivity: robots, drones, smart cities, artificial intelligence, brain research,”

                                                                                                             says Schwab.

It is intended that these cyber physical systems will be connected in one network in real-time mode, bootstrap, and learn new behaviors.

They will be able to build production with fewer errors, interact with manufactured goods and, if necessary, adapt to the new needs of consumers.

For example, goods in the manufacturing process may determine for themselves the equipment that is capable of producing them in a completely autonomous mode without human intervention.

The first steps of the world toward a new industrial revolution where cloud technologies, the methods for collecting and analyzing Big Data, crowdsourcing, biotechnology, unmanned vehicles, and medicine based on 3D printing. In the world of finance, these are the Bitcoin crypto currency and the Blockchain technology.

BIG DATA

The Big Data concept is a set of technologies that are designed to perform such operations as:

– handle large amounts of data compared to “standard” scenarios;

– be able to work with fast incoming data in very large volumes;

– be able to run with structured and poorly structured data in parallel in different aspects.

Collider can be an example of Big Data production.  It produces an enormous quantity of data permanently.

THE INTERNET OF THINGS

The Internet of Things is a concept of space, where everything from analog to digital worlds may be connected.

It’s not just a variety of different devices and sensors, connected together by wired and wireless communication channels and connected to the Internet—it is an integration of the real and virtual worlds in which communication is provided between people and devices.

VIRTUAL AND AUGMENTED REALITY

Virtual reality is the world, created by technical methods and transmitted to humans through the sensations: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and others. Virtual reality imitates both impact and reaction on this impact.

Augmented reality means an addition of the virtual feature to a physical object, as a display of information about it, which may be personalized to each user.

3D PRINTING

3D printing is a cross-functional method for the creation of a wide spectrum of physical objects based on a common platform. This method gives us an opportunity to choose from multiple approaches for various solutions in favor of a consistent approach realized in the digital world.

CONSEQUENCES AND RISKS OF INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

For economy

Economic sector that has access to data bulk will have an opportunity to improve the quality of decisions made on its basis, especially routine ones.

This refers to banking and legal services, insurance, accounting, management, consulting and audit, metrological support, healthcare, etc.

There are four core effects:

• growth of customers’ expectations;
• improvement in the quality of products;
• common innovations;
• new forms of organization.

Those companies, which own the unique platform connecting thousands of people, will get the advantage.

For people

Although we will be free from hard and routine work, the complete independence of manufacturing process from people will lead to a mass loss of jobs, which can now be observed in countries where automation is practiced at factories and enterprises.

For human personality

A world based on digital technologies will change human personality because Industry 4.0 will lay the basis for new principles in our ethics and aesthetics.

Our individual behavior will become more digitized due to our plunge in the digital field. This will provoke not only estrangement of our inner world, but also the segregation of people based on their identity, and, as a consequence, the polarization of human communities.

Source: NIX SOLUTIONS