The 4th Industrial Revolution: Now is getting faster ....

When many tens of thousands of years ago, those first twigs were rubbed together and a guttering fire produced, it was no doubt uttered shortly thereafter, in whatever crude grunts passed for language, that change was afoot. Similarly, when that first set of crude and probably not very round, teeth-loosening wheels rolled forth, onlookers would have pronounced, in more sophisticated tones, that a great change was taking place. We've always been saying it. And it's always been true. In a sense through its always been seen as a reasonably steady gently accelerating process, with the odd spasmodic jerk and a few localised and depressing plateaus like the dark ages. But the pace of change feels different now. That hardly needs to be written or said, for if you haven't noticed this in the last few years or so, it can be safely assumed you're living an exile's life in outer Siberia.

 

We are now in the 4th Industrial revolution. It is being driven by a technology revolution the likes of which we have never before experienced and its impact is sending transformative shock waves through every aspect of our lives. Much of this is being driven by rampant progress in the field of artificial intelligence ("AI"), which, having suddenly erupted into the public consciousness, underpins much of the recent progress in machine learning, automation and robotics. This alone is already changing our world in ways which not so long ago we would have considered almost unthinkable. This has resulted in a plethora of eye swivelling warnings and predictions about the imminent demise of the biological human through to us all living in a state of permanent holiday from work. The nature of this rapidly accelerating technology means that it will probably develop in many ways that, from today's vantage point, we simply cannot foresee or imagine.

 

This is because we have entered the era of exponential technological change, and it's not just an AI related phenomenon; its happening everywhere. It's there in the speed and power of our super computers with Exascale computing (a billion billion calculations per second) predicted to be with us by the early 2020s. At the same time quantum computing, and the race for quantum supremacy, may be even closer and could even eclipse the journey towards Exascale computing. True quantum computing could well deliver a further shockwave to a world already in the midst of its own technologically induced future-shock. Again, this could have the potential to change our world in ways which are very hard to predict.

 

Just for a moment, consider that entity which we used to call the Internet.  Can you even remember what it was like 20 years ago, aside from being comically primitive by today's standards? In 1996 could you ever, in your wildest dreams, have imagined what it has become today along with all its tangential impacts upon our lives. Now try to imagine what it will be like in 2036, or even 2026. The technologies about us are moving at such speeds and in such interwoven and unconventional ways that such predictions are almost impossible now. It's as if our forward windows of prediction have slipped from decades to years towards months.

 

This revolution is all around us. It's will be in the exponential increase in distances that will be traveled by driverless cars and fleets of trucks. It's the rampant increase in the interconnectedness and smart-chatter of the so called Internet of things, the full implications of which may not yet be really understood. We see it in the rapidly vanishing size and expanding power of our hand held devices, which we still whimsically term "mobile phones" when they are packed with enough technology to have filled a car boot only a decade or so ago. We can sense this sudden change is the arrival and power of deep learning and learning machines and of social robotics. We have seen it is the seeming emergence out of nowhere of the "Cloud", with all its implications and how so much of what we used to possess, hoard and store has migrated away into the intangible but ever accessible. We read about astonishing medical developments like the emergence of 3-D Bioprinting and the ability to artificially construct living tissue..

 

It seems wherever we look, this multitude of strange new technologies is expanding, converging and multiplying with hitherto unprecedented speed and in increasingly unpredictable ways. And even as we recognise it for nothing like we have ever seen before, we may well remember this time as it being in its infancy.

 

For years this revolution has been expected. Initially it was foreshadowed by the authors of hard science fiction and a few lone Cassandras but gradually it has gained momentum as more serious intellectual and industry heavy weights, like Stephen Hawkings, Bill Gates and Elon Musk spoke up. Now it is entering mainstream consciousness as those respected periodicals of the establishment like the Economist are suddenly talking about AI, Uberisation and a universal basic income. Even still, this emerging wider awareness is still lagging behind the speed of developments, we still think of our future world according to our models of the past, yet it's not the rules of the game that are changing - it's a new game and very few of our "old world" institutions and mind sets are geared to keep up.

 

Our science fiction is quickly losing its fiction. Now, year by year, month by month, technology is accelerating with relentless speed with new developments seemingly rushing towards us. Despite this, technology will never move this slowly again. And that old, calmer world of just a few years ago will increasingly seem like some lingering twilight memory of a distant childhood, where everything seemed so much safer and more stable. Yet, like our childhoods, that is gone for good now. This is the new normal.

 

"Now" is getting faster and it will never slow down.