Fourth Industrial Revolution

Robots in a grocery warehouse

Augmented reality information about a painting

Illustrated understanding of the Internet of things in a battlefield setting

Amazon Go, a cashierless store

"Fourth Industrial Revolution", "4IR", or "Industry 4.0",^[1] is a neologism describing rapid technological advancement in the 21st century.^[2] It follows the Third Industrial Revolution (the "Information Age"). The term was popularised in 2016 by Klaus Schwab, the World Economic Forum founder and executive chairman,^{[3][4][5][6][7]} who asserts that these developments represent a significant shift in industrial capitalism.^[8]

A part of this phase of industrial change is the joining of technologies like artificial intelligence, gene editing, to advanced robotics that blur the lines between the physical, digital, and biological worlds.^[8][9]

Throughout this, fundamental shifts are taking place in how the global production and supply network operates through ongoing automation of traditional manufacturing and industrial practices, using modern smart technology, large-scale machine-to-machine communication (M2M), and the Internet of things (IoT). This integration results in increasing automation, improving communication and self-monitoring, and the use of smart machines that can analyse and diagnose issues without the need for human intervention.^[10]

It also represents a social, political, and economic shift from the digital age of the late 1990s and early 2000s to an era of embedded connectivity distinguished by the ubiquity of technology in society (i.e. a metaverse) that changes the ways humans experience and know the world around them.^[11] It posits that we have created and are entering an augmented social reality compared to just the natural senses and industrial ability of humans alone.^[8] The Fourth Industrial Revolution is sometimes expected to mark the beginning of an imagination age, where creativity and imagination become the primary drivers of economic value.^[12]