The Fourth Industrial Revolution Read online

  – Real-time identification

  – Cultural shift (eternal memory)

  The shift in action

  – Digital tattoos not only look cool but can perform useful tasks, like unlocking a car, entering mobile phone codes with a finger-point or tracking body processes.

  Source: https://wtvox.com/3d-printing-in-wearable-tech/top-10-implantable-wearables-soon-body/

  – According to a WT VOX article: “Smart Dust, arrays of full computers with antennas, each much smaller than a grain of sand, can now organize themselves inside the body into as-needed networks to power a whole range of complex internal processes. Imagine swarms of these attacking early cancer, bringing pain relief to a wound or even storing critical personal information in a manner that is deeply encrypted and hard to hack. With smart dust, doctors will be able to act inside your body without opening you up, and information could be stored inside you, deeply encrypted, until you unlock it from your very personal nano network.”

  Source: https://wtvox.com/3d-printing-in-wearable-tech/top-10-implantable-wearables-soon-body/

  – A smart pill, developed by Proteus Biomedical and Novartis, has a biodegradable digital device attached to it, which transmits data to your phone on how the body is interacting with the medication.

  Source: http://cen.acs.org/articles/90/i7/Odd-Couplings.html)

  Shift 2: Our Digital Presence

  The tipping point: 80% of people with a digital presence on the internet

  By 2025: 84% of respondents expected this tipping point will have occurred

  Having a presence in the digital world has evolved rapidly in the past 20 or more years. Just 10 years ago, it meant having a mobile phone number, email address and perhaps a personal website or a MySpace page.

  Now, people’s digital presence is regarded as their digital interactions, and traces through a multitude of online platforms and media. Many people have more than one digital presence, such as a Facebook page, Twitter account, LinkedIn profile, Tumblr blog, Instagram account and often many more.

  In our increasingly connected world, digital life is becoming inextricably linked with a person’s physical life. In the future, building and managing a digital presence will become as common as when people decide how to present themselves to the world everyday through fashion, words and acts. In that connected world and through their digital presence, people will be able to seek and share information, freely express ideas, find and be found, and develop and maintain relationships virtually anywhere in the world.

  Positive impacts

  – Increased transparency

  – Increased and faster interconnection between individuals and groups

  – Increase in free speech

  – Faster information dissemination/exchange

  – More efficient use of government services

  Negative impacts

  – Privacy/potential surveillance

  – More identity theft

  – Online bullying/stalking

  – Groupthink within interest groups and increased polarization

  – Disseminating inaccurate information (the need for reputation management); echo chambers78

  – Lack of transparency where individuals are not privy to information algorithms (for news/information)

  Unknown, or cuts both ways

  – Digital legacies/footprints

  – More targeted advertising

  – More targeted information and news

  – Individual profiling

  – Permanent identity (no anonymity)

  – Ease of developing online social movement (political groups, interest groups, hobbies, terrorist groups)

  The shift in action

  If the three largest popular social media sites were countries, they would have almost a billion more people than China “See Figure I.”

  Figure I: Active Users of Social Media sites compared with the populations of the world’s largest countries

  Source: http://mccrindle.com.au/the-mccrindle-blog/social-media-and-narcissism

  Shift 3: Vision as the New Interface

  The tipping point: 10% of reading glasses connected to the internet

  By 2025: 86% of respondents expected this tipping point will have occurred

  Google Glass is just the first of many potential ways in which glasses, eyewear/headsets and eye-tracking devices can become “intelligent” and lead to eyes and vision being the connection to the internet and connected devices.

  With direct access to internet applications and data through vision, an individual’s experiences can be enhanced, mediated or completely augmented to provide different, immersive reality. Also, with emerging eye-tracking technologies, devices can feed information through visual interfaces, and eyes can be the source for interacting with and responding to the information.

  Enabling vision as an immediate, direct interface – by providing instruction, visualization and interaction – can change the way that learning, navigation, instruction and feedback for producing goods and services, experiencing entertainment and enabling the disabled are helping people to engage more fully with the world.

  Positive impacts

  – Immediate information to the individual to make informed decisions for navigation and work/personal activities

  – Improved capacity to perform tasks or produce goods and services with visual aids for manufacturing, healthcare/surgery and service delivery

  – Ability for those with disabilities to manage their interactions and movement, and to experience the world – through speaking, typing and moving, and via immersive experiences

  Negative impacts

  – Mental distraction causing accidents

  – Trauma from negative immersive experiences

  – Increased addiction and escapism

  Unknown, or cuts both ways

  – A new segment created in the entertainment industry

  – Increased immediate information

  The shift in action

  Glasses are already on the market today (not just produced by Google) that can:

  – Allow you to freely manipulate a 3D object, enabling it to be moulded like clay

  – Provide all the extended live information you need when you see something, in the same way the brain functions

  – Prompt you with an overlay menu of the restaurant you pass by

  – Project picture or video on any piece of paper

  Source: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/augmented-reality-smart-glasses/

  Shift 4: Wearable Internet

  The tipping point: 10% of people wearing clothes connected to the internet

  By 2025: 91% of respondents expected this tipping point will have occurred

  Technology is becoming increasingly personal. Computers were first located in large rooms, then on desks and, following that, on people’s laps. While technology can now be found in people’s mobile phones in their pockets, it will soon be integrated directly into clothing and accessories.

  Released in 2015, Apple Watch is connected to the internet and contains many of the same functional capabilities as a smart phone. Increasingly, clothing and other equipment worn by people will have embedded chips that connect the article and person wearing it to the internet.

  Positive impacts

  – More positive health outcomes leading to longer lives

  – More self-sufficiency

  – Self-managed healthcare

  – Better decision-making

  – Decrease in missing children

  – Personalized clothes (tailoring, design)

  Negative impacts

  – Privacy/potential surveillance

  – Escapism/addiction

  – Data security

  Unknown, or cuts both ways

  – Real-time identification

  – Change in personal interactions and relationships

  – Image recognition and availability of personal data (anonymous network that will “yelp” you)
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  The shift in action

  The research and advisory group, Gartner, estimates approximately 70 million smart watches and other bands will be sold by in 2015, with the total increasing to 514 million within five years.

  Source: http://www.zdnet.com/article/wearables-internet-of-things-muscle-in-on-smartphone-spotlight-at-mwc/

  Mimo Baby has created a fast-growing wearable baby monitor that reports a baby’s breathing, body position, sleep activity, etc., to your iPad or smart phone. (This has caused some controversy over where to draw the line between helping, and creating a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. In this case, supporters say it helps the baby sleep better, while critics say sensors are not a replacement for parenting.

  Source: http://mimobaby.com/; http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/16/smallbusiness/mimo-wearable-baby-monitor/

  Ralph Lauren has developed a sports shirt that is designed to provide real-time workout data by measuring sweat output, heart rate, breathing intensity, etc.

  Source: http://www.ralphlauren.com/product/index.jsp?productId=69917696&ab=rd_men_features_thepolotechshirt&cp=64796626.65333296

  Shift 5: Ubiquitous Computing

  The tipping point: 90% of the population with regular access to the internet

  By 2025: 79% of respondents expected this tipping point will have occurred

  Computing is becoming more accessible every day, and computing power has never been more available to individuals – be that via a computer with internet connection, a smart phone with 3G/4G or services in the cloud.

  Today, 43% of the world’s population is connected to the internet.79 And, 1.2 billion smart phones were sold in 2014 alone.80 In 2015, sales of tablets are estimated to take over sales of personal computers (PCs), while mobile phone sales (all combined) will outpace computers by six to one.81 As the internet has been outgrowing every other media channel in speed of adoption, it is expected that, in only a few years, three-quarters of the world’s population will have regular access to the web.

  In the future, regular access to the internet and information will no longer be a benefit of developed economies, but a basic right just like clean water. Because wireless technologies require less infrastructure than many other utilities (electricity, roads and water), they will very likely become accessible much quicker than the others. Hence, anyone from any country will be able to access and interact with information from the opposite corner of the world. Content creation and dissemination will become easier than ever before.

  Positive impacts

  – More economic participation of disadvantaged populations located in remote or underdeveloped regions (“last mile”)

  – Access to education, healthcare and government services

  – Presence

  – Access to skills, greater employment, shift in types of jobs

  – Expanded market size/e-commerce

  – More information

  – More civic participation

  – Democratization/political shifts

  – “Last mile”: increased transparency and participation versus an increase in manipulation and echo chambers

  Negative impacts

  – Increased manipulation and echo chambers

  – Political fragmentation

  – Walled gardens (i.e. limited environments, for authenticated users only) do not allow full access in some regions/countries

  The shift in action

  To make the internet available to the next 4 billion users, two key challenges must be overcome: access must be available, and it must be affordable. The race to provide the rest of the world access to the web is underway. Already, over 85% of the world’s population lives within a couple kilometres of a mobile phone tower that could deliver internet service.82 Mobile operators around the world are expanding internet access rapidly. Facebook’s Internet.org, a project with mobile network operators, has enabled access to free basic internet services for over a billion people in 17 countries in the last year.83 And, many initiatives are under way to affordably connect even the most remote regions: Facebook’s Internet.org is developing internet drones, Google’s Project Loon is using balloons and SpaceX is investing in new low-cost satellite networks.

  Shift 6: A Supercomputer in Your Pocket

  The tipping point: 90% of the population using smart phones

  By 2025: 81% of respondents expected this tipping point will have occurred

  Already in 2012, the Google Inside Search team published that “it takes about the same amount of computing to answer one Google Search query as all the computing done – in flight and on the ground – for the entire Apollo programme!”84 Moreover, current smart phones and tablets contain more computing power than many of the formerly known supercomputers, which used to fill an entire room.

  Global smart phone subscribers are anticipated to total 3.5 billion by 2019; that will equate to 59% smart phone penetration by population, surpassing the 50% penetration of 2017 and underlining the significant growth from the 28% level in 2013.85 In Kenya, Safaricom, the leading mobile service operator, reported that 67% of handset sales were smart phones in 2014, and the GSMA forecasts that Africa will have over half a billion smart phone users by 2020.86

  The shift in devices has already occurred in many countries across different continents (with Asia leading the trend today), as more people are using their smart phones rather than traditional PCs. As technology is progressing to miniaturize devices, increase computing power and, especially, decrease the price of electronics, smart phone adoption will only accelerate.

  According to Google, the countries in Figure II have a higher usage of smart phones than PCs.

  Figure II: Countries with Higher Smart Phone Usage than PC (March 2015)

  Source: http://www.google.com.sg/publicdata/explore

  Figure III: Countries with Nearly 90% of Adult Population Using Smart Phones (March 2015)

  Source: http://www.google.com.sg/publicdata/explore

  Countries such as Singapore, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are the closest to reaching the tipping point of 90% of the adult population using smart phones (Figure III).

  Society is headed towards adopting even faster machines that will allow users to perform complicated tasks on the go. Most likely, the number of devices that each person uses will grow strongly, not only with new functions performed but also with specialization of tasks.

  Positive Impacts

  – More economic participation of disadvantaged populations located in remote or underdeveloped regions (“last mile”)

  – Access to education, healthcare and government services

  – Presence

  – Access to skills, greater employment, shift in types of jobs

  – Expanded market size/e-commerce

  – More information

  – More civic participation

  – Democratization/political shifts

  – “Last mile”: increased transparency and participation versus an increase in manipulation and echo chambers

  Negative impacts

  – Increased manipulation and echo chambers

  – Political fragmentation

  – Walled gardens (i.e. limited environments, for authenticated users only) do not allow full access in some regions/countries

  Unknown, or cuts both ways

  – 24/7 – always on

  – Lack of division between business and personal

  – Be anywhere/everywhere

  – Environmental impact from manufacturing

  The shift in action

  In 1985, the Cray-2 supercomputer was the fastest machine in the world. The iPhone 4, released in June 2010, had the power equivalent to the Cray-2; now, the Apple Watch has the equivalent speed of two iPhone 4s just five years later.87 With the consumer retail price of smart phones tumbling to below $50, processing power skyrocketing and adoption in emerging markets accelerating, nearly everyone will soon have a literal supercomputer in their pocket.

/>   Source: http://pages.experts-exchange.com/processing-power-compared/

  Shift 7: Storage for All

  The tipping point: 90% of people having unlimited and free (advertising-supported) storage

  By 2025: 91% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred

  Storage capabilities have evolved tremendously in the past years, with an increasing number of companies offering it almost for free to their users as part of the service benefits. Users are producing increasing amounts of content, without worrying about ever having to delete it to make room for more. A clear trend of commoditizing storage capacity exists. One reason for it is that the storage price (Figure IV) has dropped exponentially (by a factor of approximately ten, every five years).

  Figure IV: Hard Drive Cost per Gigabyte (1980-2009)

  Source: “a history of storage costs”, mkomo.com, 8 September 200988

  An estimated 90% of the world’s data has been created in the past two years, and the amount of information created by businesses is doubling every 1.2 years.89 Storage has already become a commodity, with companies like Amazon Web Services and Dropbox leading this trend.

  The world is heading towards a full commoditization of storage, through free and unlimited access for users. The best-case scenario of revenue for companies could potentially be advertising or telemetry.

  Positive impacts

  – Legal systems

  – History scholarship/academia

  – Efficiency in business operations

  – Extension of personal memory limitations

  Negative impact

  – Privacy surveillance

  Unknown, or cuts both ways

  – Eternal memory (nothing deleted)

  – Increased content creation, sharing and consumption

  The shift in action

  Numerous companies already offer free storage in the cloud, ranging from 2 GB to 50 GB.