What springs to mind when you hear the words “Industrial Revolution?”
For me, I picture things like steel mills and iron bridges – not sure why it’s all so metallic…
If you didn’t know this already, would you be surprised to learn there have officially been 4 industrial revolutions?
Would you also be surprised to learn that we’re in the middle of the 4th one right now?
I find it helpful to understand the 3 that came before, as it gives a tonne of context for what we’re navigating at the moment.
Depending on your source, the 4 IRs are categorised in a handful of ways. I personally found it easiest to digest if I described them by power discovery + some key industries.
Power discovery: Coal & steam
Key industries: Manufacturing; Metal forging at scale; Transportation of people and goods.
Power discovery: Electricity, gas & oil
Key industries: Combustion engines; Communications (telephone etc); Factories.
Power discovery: Nuclear
Key Industries: Mass produced everything; Electronics; Computers.
Power discovery: Renewable energy
Key industries: Internet; Digital technology; Data and artificial intelligence.
Yep – it took 4 goes before someone noticed the sun 😜
But seriously, the cool thing is that the 4th revolution is the first one – potentially – to end the “power by extraction” habit.
If everyone sticks to the targets, it’s been modelled and proven that 100% renewable energy globally is achievable.
The tech is not lacking – all the solutions required already exist 👈 there are 32 per-reviewed, commercially viable solutions in that link.
It’s frustrating, but it seems the roadblocks are usually politicians, and cold hard cash (the cash part is often a non-issue when seen for the long term money-making-and-saving opportunity that it is, rather than the initial expense).
As a friend often says to me though, “politicians don’t innovate, they don’t break new ground – that’s what entrepreneurs are for”.
So… How does it feel to be part of a revolution?
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