The Fifth Industrial Revolution
The first known industrial revolution in history started with the emergence of the textile industry and the game-changing invention of the steam engine. The second revolution gave us the assembly line, industrial mass production, and high mass consumption through the use of electrical energy. Far ahead, the third industrial revolution came about and enabled information to be captured in digital format and to be cost-effectively transformed, manipulated, and transmitted. Towards the end of the 20th century, we saw the rise of the Internet with its rapidly evolving communication technology. Fast forward to the current fourth industrial revolution, the world was jolted into a hyper mode of smart technologies, smart factories, and how everything will be automated and connected.
This revolution has provided us with artificial intelligence, robotics, drones, augmented and virtual reality, Nanotechnology, and 3D printers. The fourth and fifth industrial revolutions were combined. The main features that will be formed by this outcome of the mixing process are the basic principles of the next revolution and the focus will be on the use of the main sustainable technologies, which will save the planet and humanity.
The Fifth Industrial Revolution
The overlap between the Fourth and Fifth Industrial Revolutions will create huge job opportunities and will help in achieving sustainable development goals around the world. Intelligent automation — a major feature of the Fourth Industrial Revolution — has had a major impact on humanity, while the Fifth Industrial Revolution (Industry 5.0) can be summed up as a mixture of people and machines in the workplace. With our current state of knowledge, it is hard to estimate the magnitude and complexity of the change that would occur.
Characteristics of the Fifth Industrial Revolution
Previous generations had to adjust their lifestyle and adaptation to suit the technology imposed by previous industrial revolutions, as the available technologies in the third and fourth revolutions were harsh on humans and the environment, the fifth industrial revolution was conceived to do the opposite and put people in the foreground and give them priority in the production process. Here are some of the changes that will become common and characterize the Fifth Industrial Revolution:
• AI and robotics will change how we work; humans will have more leisure time.
• Lean management will be implemented by machines.
• People working remotely (Cloud People) will be widespread and a normal way of work.
• Cultivated technologies (human microchip implant) will spread for health and other purposes, increasing the health of people and live longer.
• Edge computing will allow users to bring computing closer to data, this will address application latency requirements, as well as data sovereignty concerns.
• Chatbots — an Artificial Intelligence program — will grow into a routine part of the Customer Experience (CX).
- 3D printing will become more popular.
The Fifth Industrial Revolution will make the communication process smoother and closer through the 5G and 6G networks, and the smart devices that we use today will be a thing of the past, as they will be replaced by new technologies in the likes of “brain-computer interfaces”. Until a few years ago, machines connected to the human brain and nervous system were primarily intended for scientific research and medical uses — for example, to repair spinal cord injuries or treat Parkinson’s disease. More recently, research has focused on other, non-therapeutic uses.
Futuristically speaking, it will be very likely that you will work with non-human colleagues in the form of intelligent robots or machines. In industry and entrepreneurship, Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and big data will provide information and decision-making that will help you work better, faster, and more productively. This change started in Industry 4.0, but it will become more and more popular as we enter the future. Tracking systems will improve real-time production tracking from checkout to the retailer, financial constraints and inventory will appear instantly. This helps reduce material waste, prevent theft, and prevent mismanagement of assets when combined with technologies such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, machine learning technologies, deep learning, and block-chain.
* Strategic Technology Advisor in Future Jobs, Industry 4.0, Artificial Intelligence, and Robotics.
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