- The last 200 years have transformed
just about every facet of human living.
It certainly hasn't been evenly distributed.
Even today in the second decade of the 21st century,
hundreds of millions of people
still don't have consistent access to basic human needs.
The United Nations Sustainability Development Goals
identify 17 areas where gaps in inequality
must be addressed by 2030,
including access to electricity, and water, as examples.
Progress has been good in many areas
and much more work is needed in others.
As we approach 2030 and move beyond,
the effects of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
will be unfolding.
However, it will be markedly different
in how these will be experienced on a global basis.
Previous industrial revolutions were unevenly distributed
and change often took time to have broad reach.
This revolution will transform
with greater velocity, scope, and impact
then has ever been experienced before.
What do we mean by velocity?
Velocity is the speed in which
a change is taking place in terms of time.
One of my favorite visuals is the time it took
certain technologies to reach 50 million users.
Here's just a few.
The telephone, 75 years.
Television, 13 years.
The internet, four years.
Twitter, nine months.
And Pokemon GO, 19 days.
Each one presents a very different time in human history.
The telephone first appeared in the late 1800s,
whereas the popular smartphone game, Pokemon GO,
first appeared in 2016.
In the 1950s, when televisions became relatively popular,
a TV show could be seen by just a few million
and only in limited geography.
Today, popular YouTube videos
are watched by billions of viewers in just a few month,
and their reach is to every corner of the Earth.
An idea, a joke, a misspoken word, breaking news,
and fake news can all travel virally
around the world in minutes and sometimes even seconds.
A new tech product can sell millions in just a few days
and be available in global markets in the same week.
Recently, e-scooters started showing up in many cities.
This wasn't a multiyear deployment plan.
The product arrived in volume
and in multiple places at the same time.
This velocity is clearly consequential
to sellers, buyers, competitors, politicians,
systems, regulators, and so many more.
Next we'll look at scope.
What do we mean by scope?
Here we're dealing with the extent of the introduced change.
Instead of a narrow, limited purview,
the scope of Fourth Industrial Revolution change
will be deep and wide, and its scope will be expansive.
Let's use an example to explore this.
Not so long ago,
software was distributed in physical packaging
and available to buy in an electronics store.
A new popular software program might sell well
but would take years to reach millions of people
through relying on a complex supply chain.
After all, it required us to go to a store,
purchase the product, return home,
or go to our business and then install the software.
Today, when Apple and Microsoft release new versions
of their computer operating system software,
the software is seamlessly distributed
over the internet to millions of people within hours,
all across the planet.
The benefits of those new operating systems
can be experienced by tens of millions of people
within just a few days.
And if the software includes
some radically new functionality,
such as health-related software, the change can be profound.
Equally, a problem distributed at that scale
can be a challenge too.
Finally, let's take a look at impact.
What do we mean by impact?
Here we're taking about the magnitude
of the effects of change.
After many years, cars began
to have automatic transmission rather than manual.
This was a remarkable convenience.
While it costs more, drivers would no longer have to worry
about clutch pedals, and shifting gears constantly.
It wasn't inconsequential but the extent
of the impact was relatively limited.
Now let's contrast that with another change in our cars.
The emergence of autonomous cars.
The impact of self-driving cars will radically reshaped
everything from how spend our time traveling,
to how we design cities,
to the loss of jobs for people
who make their living driving vehicles.
Let's briefly look at a change
that combines all three characteristics.
Keep in mind that not all change will be positive,
and we need to focus on
having appropriate defenses in place.
Let's imagine for a moment
that a popular new free app is downloaded
to a couple of billion devices over several days.
Suddenly, one month later,
it is discovered that a vulnerability
has enabled the app to nefariously program
to shut down the device's telecommunications capabilities.
While a fix is being found,
billions of people are impacted.
In this scenario, the velocity, scope, and impact
all mean the consequences are dire.
Never before have we had
to contemplate this scale of change.
This is a revolution unlike any other.