September 29 EEC 290 Lecture 1

The 4th Industrial Revolution: Democratizing the Information Infrastructure The concentration of the world’s population around cities has resulted from the impact of the three industrial revolutions we have experienced in the past 250 years. The First Industrial Revolution originated in England in the late eighteenth century and used water and steam power to mechanize production. It resulted in the early rise of the city as a center of activity, when farming became more effective using mechanization and more people turned to cities for work. The Second Industrial Revolution in the late nineteenth century started in the US and used electric power to create mass production, which brought even more people from rural areas and farms to the assembly lines. The Third Industrial Revolution also originated in the US in the mid to late twentieth century, and used electronics and information technology to automate production, thus forcing people out of the assembly lines and in unemployment. Now in less than fifty years from the beginning of the previous technological revolution we stand on the brink of a new one which may be more powerful and more dangerous than all the previous ones. In its scale, scope, and complexity, this transformation may be unlike anything we have experienced before. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is building on everything we have discovered so far and it is using the internet to connect humans and machines in one task. It may bring together technology and culture in a clash of unprecedented proportions resulting in further concentration of population to what we call Mega-Cities and more social instability. Farm land will be managed by robots, factories will employ robots, and humans will use robots for low level jobs leaving us wonder of what role humans will eventually play in this futuristic society. This seminar series will bring speakers who will present various aspects of the Third Industrial Revolution (Age of Computers) with specific focus on electronic applications and could speculate on the challenges and opportunities of the next one. Considering that the world we live in is a construct of many designed systems, engineering could play a key role in addressing many of the possible negatives this new revolution may bring about and create a more just world.