The Fourth Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwab

​I keep hearing this phrase 'the Fourth Industrial Revolution' being thrown around without knowing exactly what if refers to so I decided to read a book about it. This book is written by Klaus Schwab the Founder of the World Economic Forum, the organization that hosts the ultra exclusive Davos Conferences, so one has a sense of how he is positioned in society, and how his positionality influences his views.

Schwab claims that the Fourth Industrial Revolution will "entail nothing less than a transformation of humankind" (p. 1) through technologies that bridge across the "physical, digital, and biological worlds."

It is unlike the other industrial revolutions due to the "size, speed and scope" of the transformations, and he makes a good case for believing so. The transformative potential of the Fourth Industrial Revolution can either be an opportunity or a disaster for contemporary society. (We can already see the signs of the transformation in the form of precariats who may have been middle class workers a generation ago.) However, as he points out, access to the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution will not be equally distributed: 17% of the global population lack stable access to electricity and half the global population lack access to the internet, which means that they do not experience the second and third industrial age.

Schwab divides technological innovations of the Fourth Industrial Age into three categories: physical (autonomous vehicles, robots, new materials), digital (IoT), and biological (CRISPR). The Fourth Industrial Age is disruptive because of the potential combination of these technologies.

These technologies have vast implications for the economy, for society, for individuals, nation-states etc. One interesting thing I've noticed is how apolitical his POV is. Schwab writes about issues like climate change as a matter of negative externalities that can be solved through technology. His explanation for wealth inequality is the destructive effect of new technologies and automation, which substitute capital for labour. One can compare his narrative with David Harvey in his book on neo-liberalism for a completely oppositional narrative.

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