[EDIT: This Went Off The Rails] The Future Is Coming: My Take on Stephen Haag’s “The Fourth Industrial Revolution”

I work at a Metaverse company. A lot of my time and energy is spent learning about the Metaverse and the adjacent technologies and upcoming innovations that will accompany it. That is why I landed upon this book, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution” by Stephen Haag.

Actually, through a number of connecting pathways, I came across this book. Tasked with explaining the Metaverse and its value, I tried to find the best story to tell that would make it easiest to consume, and the vehicle which I came to was that of the Industrial Revolution. I thought that by showing the parallels of the two, the Industrial Revolution and the coming Metaverse, it would concretize this normally abstract concept for any and everyone.

Turns out, there have been three stages of the Industrial Revolution. It could even be said there have been three Industrial Revolutions so far, and we are now entering the Fourth. Apologies, because this really might be an oversimplification here but: the first Industrial Revolution was about generating electricity. The second Industrial Revolution was about getting electricity into the homes and workplaces of regular people, instead of just inside factories. It might be recognized as the democratization of power. The Third Industrial Revolution deals with the computer, and this is where we get into Moore’s Law, which states (again, oversimplification and maybe a wee tiny bit exaggerated, but only a wee) that the power of computers and the things they can do, create, and build upon will exponentially grow. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is the democratization of processing power. Cloud or infinite computing. But it is also so much more than that. It is a wild disruption of everything we know, and you’re seeing it right now, today, whenever you get around to reading this, even if it is the day I put it up on my blog. Unlikely, that.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is the blurring of the physical, the digital, and the biological. There will be sensors in every last thing. Why do you think I’m learning Python? There are already something like 6 or 7 sensors connected via Bluetooth or the internet for every person in the world, and that number will skyrocket to 60 or 70 within the next ten years. We will see the age of the “smart” thing. Everything will be smart.

I’m beginning to realize that this blog isn’t really about the book I mentioned, but a number of books and sources that I’ve pulled from. Hmmm, this “book report” blog may not work out.

Let me continue. The Fourth Industrial Revolution will also be about how AI structures the unstructured data of the world. Online, right now, 90% of data is unstructured. You can’t really put it into a spreadsheet. Artificial Intelligence will find a way to make use of that data effectively. This data, it’s stuff like video or audio content, or the weather, or surveillance data. You’ve probably already used ChatGPT or Dall-E or something like that. With the help of AI, we will see exponential innovation.

There’s also Nuclear Power that has recently seen promising results. And beyond that, there are already regular people programming on quantum computers. Check out Rigetti, or the Forest Quantum programming environment. So if you thought Moore’s Law was dead, well it turns out that qubits might continue the trend of exponential growth, and its side effects on humanity.

Finally, there are countless powerhouses bringing internet, fast internet, to the world.

We are about to see a connected, nuclear-fusion powered, AI driven world, where there is no real separation of the digital, the physical, and the biological. For the skeptics, it’s already happening.

I’m an optimist. A lot of this might sound scary, but much of this technology is being used for good. VR is being used to teach empathy, and there are free apps that can give an education to a person all on its own, without oversight, for an hour a day (I believe, but even if it’s TWO hours a day...) that is on par with an education received in school. Decentralizing finance holds the promise of disrupting the banking system which is intentionally opaque and obviously corrupt. The promise of the blockchain might mean true security, and data ownership, instead of what we have now, which is the buying, selling, and trading of data at rates more valuable than oil, with the creators of that data receiving little to nothing for it.

Hmmm...This did not go as planned.

I guess, really, what I’m trying to say is do research on what is coming. Because there is a need for mindful people to help guide us into the future. There is great opportunity to change the world for the better, to save lives, to enable and unlock possibility for so many people who have never been given a fair shot. This next stage might be the great equalizer.

Read also “The Future is Faster Than You Think” if you’re the bookish type.