Which developments led to the fourth industrial revolution

Abstract

This thesis aims to observe and analyse different technological developments which led to the fourth industrial revolution, also known as industry 4.0. The current industrial revolution builds heavily upon the third industrial revolution’s innovations, but there does still exist a need to analyse all of the previous revolutions in order to find common patterns. While the second and first industrial revolutions focused more on the transition from using human muscles as a power source in labour to supplementing that with ever more powerful machinery, powered by new and abundant power sources such, the third brought on a digital revolution where machine to machine communication was made ever more accessible. The third industrial revolution spawned things such as the internet, personal computers and mobile devices, which the fourth industrial revolution built upon. The fourth industrial revolution is thus characterized by the interconnectivity of machines and the supplementation of brain power with powerful data gathering, processing and analysis tools. The key innovations of the fourth industrial revolution are thusly related heavily to on demand interconnectivity, which is why the internet of things is such an important development within this revolution. Some other notable technologies include 3D-printing, cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence. These technologies play off one another and form complex systems that require less and less human involvement. When looking at the data from industrial revolutions, it becomes abundantly clear that there are no clear lines when a revolution begins and ends, which is why finding metrics to measure these revolutions is so difficult. Industrial revolutions share some characteristics, but their effects are not easily observable, and because innovation and development doesn’t cease between revolutions, the term becomes more of a commonly accepted term for a period of time when the nature of work shifts noticeably. Ultimately, the fourth industrial revolution is too early in its infancy for any real analysis on what specific technologies caused it and whether or not it actually is a brand-new revolution or just an extension of the third one. This does not however mean that the technologies that the current literature agrees are developments of the fourth industrial revolution aren’t shaping the nature of work significantly. The technologies presented on this thesis are garnering a noticeable amount of attention and have undoubtedly had an effect on industry 4.0.