#7 Nobody Expects the 4th Industrial Revolution
Seeing the forest through the trees
Examining and understanding the ways that Industrial Revolutions have shaped our world for the past several hundred years is my Roman Empire.
I was drawn into this topic thanks to Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, a reading assignment for a Sociology class during my first year of college, and its thesis has been firmly situated in the foundation of how I think ever since. During my time at WeWork, when I was building the company’s short-lived Future of Work and Place practice, I could be found in front of a whiteboard with my giant noise-canceling headphones on, sketching out how Weber’s work connected to productivity, the “American Dream,” organizational culture and employee experience, and the future of work.
To coworkers passing by, I can only assume the scene looked a bit like this:
In the five years since then, more people have turned their attention to this conversation and the threads that bind many aspects of our lived experience into one big, complex topic. Last week, I was interviewed on What’s Your Work Fit? about how the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) will change work. The short answer is that it will change everything, and I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.
You can watch the episode here or follow the link for the audio version.
Every industrial revolution—and capitalism itself—is rooted in extraction and exploitation. For the system to survive, it must continue to grow. For it to continue growing, it must have a consistent supply of resources to consume. For generations, resource-rich lands have been mined without the regeneration of the environments and the communities they support in mind. For many in the Western world, this has been an abstraction that has not had a direct and correlative impact on the average person’s life until now.
The 4th Industrial Revolution brings extraction and exploitation to many of our doorsteps like never before. In addition to the natural resources needed to support our evermore technological lives, the primary resources extracted and exploited in the 4IR are our knowledge and the time we commit to our work.
This is the daunting reality that we face today. Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, was once quoted saying:
"The changes are so profound that, from the perspective of human history, there has never been a time of greater promise or potential peril. My concern, however, is that decision-makers are too often caught in traditional, linear (and non-disruptive) thinking or too absorbed by immediate concerns to think strategically about the forces of disruption and innovation shaping our future."
Where previous industrial revolutions evolved how work was done—evolving behaviors from writing letters to making phone calls to sending emails—this fourth industrial revolution will completely transform work itself and compress the hours required to do it, which means it will ultimately transform all facets of human life. Handled poorly (or not handled at all), this will be perilous. Handled with foresight, care, and humanity in mind, this will offer greater promise than most of us can wrap our minds around.
Intimidating, yes. Improbable, no. This industrial revolution is our invitation to consider what life after work should be like and to break up with the puritanical ideologies that spurred industrial revolutions in the first place.
When work is not the cornerstone of our lives–whether by choice or necessity–what will each of us be like? What will our values be? How and where will we pass the time? Who will we be with? Where will life lead us?
The answers to these questions might initially sound daydreamy and frivolous but push through the discomfort/judgment/assumption anyway. In truth, the answers are the foundation for the futures that we want for ourselves, our loved ones, and the world we inhabit. If changes are inevitable, then they should change in the ways that we want them to.
-C
