The Revolutions: How Industrial Advancement Has Shaped The Working World
Industrial Revolutions have shaped the working world as we know it today. The birth of modern workflows, modern technologies and even modern science are all benefits we reap as a society from the innovators and creators who have come before. Whilst keeping a future-first focus is important, understanding the foundations of how our highly-technological society came to be is also imperative. Let’s look back at the history of industrial advancement to better understand how we are capable of progressing even further.
The First Industrial Revolution: The Birth Of A New World
Characterised primarily by developments in modes of transportation and production, the First Industrial Revolution saw a significant shift in the relationship between production and consumption.
Spanning the period between from approximately 1760 to 1830, the First Industrial revolution saw the invention of the railroad and the steamboat, the building of roads and canals, and manual work being replaced by industrial factories. These new capabilities drastically upleveled the rate of productivity and production in comparison to what had ever been seen or achieved before.The First Industrial Revolution was largely confined to Britain, but also inclusive of continental Europe and the United States. The textiles industry is noted to have seen significant growth during this period, and was the first industry to utilise means of modern production.
Value of output, rate of employment, and capital invested in textiles was so great, it allowed the sector to stand as a leader in innovation for the duration of the First Industrial Revolution, and in turn helped Britain obtain the title of the world’s leading commercial nation. Great confidence saw a rise in the population. These significant developments began to shift the way in which the working world operated, and more specifically, the way in which the workforce was able to leverage technological innovation to maximise productivity, and in turn, success.
The Second Industrial Revolution: Advancement in the United States
The Second Industrial Revolution was a period of groundbreaking advancement in manufacturing, technology and industrial production methods, particularly in the United States, between approximately 1870 to 1914.In this time, the utilisation of materials previously untouched by industrialisation, such as lighter metals, rare earths and synthetic products like plastics, alongside new energy sources, allowed for significant growth in the rise of automated assembly lines. Factories saw the development of mechanisation. Other advancements of this period included widespread adoption of telegraph and railroad networks, water and gas supply and sewerage systems, which had now expanded from its earlier precursor of only being implemented in select locations.
Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company amongst many other accolades, also mastered and implemented the moving assembly line, in turn rapidly bringing on the age of mass production.
Arguably the most significant development of the Second Industrial Revolution was the rapid expansion of telegraph and rail lines which encouraged significant movement of people and supercharged the growth and development of other up and coming technologies such as electrical power and telephones. The Second Industrial Revolution continued until the start of World War 1.
The Third Industrial Revolution: The Digital Revolution
The Third Industrial Revolution, also known as The Digital Revolution, saw the shift from mechanical and analogue electronic technology to digital electronics.
This began in the later half of the 20th century with the adoption and proliferation of digital computers and digital-record keeping, which continues to maintain an integral role in the industrialisation of the modern world today.Nuclear energy emerged, and shifted the way in which large scale production means were fuelled. Furthermore, the rise of electronics, telecommunication means and computers, allowed for drastic innovation including space expeditions, biotechnology, and advanced research.
To assess and leverage this data in order to support the uprise of digitisation, Programmable Logic Controllers (also known as PLSs) and robots were also developed. In turn, The Third Industrial Revolution saw the birth of high-level automation, completely transforming the efficiency of production processes.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution: A New World of Digitisation
The advances of the internet surrounding the beginning of the third millennium also saw the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the Revolution we currently live within.
Specific technologies that saw, and continue to see emergence, out of the Fourth Industrial Revolution include artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of ‘things’ (such as ‘smart’ refrigerators and televisions), robotics, virtual reality (VR), mobile devices, 3D printing, smart sensors, large-scale data and analytics, augmented reality (AR), and data visualisation.
This hyper-connectivity has shifted the application of technological advancement into a form that is much more highly personalised for the user.These technologies have shaped the way the workforce operates, allowing teams to leverage information to curate services and products that meet the current, direct, data-backed findings surrounding consumer needs.
In turn, this has created significant opportunity, particularly for those in the e-commerce, broadcasting and consulting industries, to challenge traditional industrial archetypes and reinvent the standards around leveraging data in order to achieve business success.
The Fifth Industrial Revolution: Machine VS Mind
The Fifth Industrial Revolution is what we see when the machines and systems have advanced to such a degree that the nature of mind and machine start to become congruent.Where in the Fourth Industrial Revolution society stood hyper-connected to its devices, the Fifth Industrial Revolution looks to rewrite human interaction with technology by fusing it with the human psyche itself. As described by Patrick Noack, the Fifth Industrial Revolution “will make that connection closer and seamless, and will feel unmediated. The smart device onto which we tap and into which we speak will disappear. Brain-computer interfaces will replace them.” We will see the digital networks that currently exist make significant developmental change in order to accommodate the abstract ideas and philosophies that were once much more difficult to articulate through pen-to-paper ideation, and hold space for challenge and creation to even further optimise the human experience through use of data optimisation and utilisation.
User experience and interface design will reach new heights, creating solutions for queries that transcend the boundaries of the physical technological innovations of the past.
In simple terms, the Fifth Industrial Revolution will see mind and machine connect.
Overview
As history has shown, industrial revolutions shape the path for future generations of innovators to disrupt and provoke necessary and advanced changes to the world around us, and in turn, provide us with the tools required to truly bring visions of the future to life.
The optimised workflows and improved user experiences created through collection of highly targeted data is only possible through the decades of innovation that have come before.
The future, now, is in the hands of how we choose to explore the relationship between man and machine.
Angela Goodsir
Thinkly Founder and Director, Angela Goodsir is an enterprise wide executive with a proven track record in transformative industry and business change and has a vision to drive businesses successfully into the future.
