The Fourth Industrial Revolution

NOT ONE TASTY BUG RECIPE!

The book reads like someone got really into NLP in the 80s and desperately wants you to repeat "The Fourth Industrial Revolution" in your sleep. While the negative externalities from the near future (widespread joblessness, inequality, political upheaval) are made very concrete, the benefits and the solutions to the problems, appear only as vague handwaving and the kind of meaningless fluff words business management people take courses in to swindle investors with.
Also 20% of the book is just an appendix with a series of random summaries about various promising technologies or products that exist, the future of which are then hypothesized about. Did you know we didn't used to have computers and the internet, and show more now we do? Can you imagine what happens when everyone has an iPhone and Apple Watch? Access to education! Participation in the global economy! Expanded market size and e-commerce! Hype and buzzwords masquerading as information. show less

NOT ONE TASTY BUG RECIPE!

The book reads like someone got really into NLP in the 80s and desperately wants you to repeat "The Fourth Industrial Revolution" in your sleep. While the negative externalities from the near future (widespread joblessness, inequality, political upheaval) are made very concrete, the benefits and the solutions to the problems, appear only as vague handwaving and the kind of meaningless fluff words business management people take courses in to swindle investors with.
Also 20% of the book is just an appendix with a series of random summaries about various promising technologies or products that exist, the future of which are then hypothesized about. Did you know we didn't used to have computers and the internet, and show more now we do? Can you imagine what happens when everyone has an iPhone and Apple Watch? Access to education! Participation in the global economy! Expanded market size and e-commerce! Hype and buzzwords masquerading as information. show less

A brief and somewhat superficial overview of the current (as of 2015) state of Technology and Civilisation as viewed by the Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum (hence representing the neoliberal globalist Davos crowd). To his credit, he tries hard to stay neutral and present the facts and trends as they are without too much bias, including many dangers and pitfalls that will have to be overcome. Unfortunately (and perhaps inevitably given the short length) there are few proposed solutions, just an outline of the issues that we'll need to contend with in the coming decades. I am hopeful that the 2018 sequel "Shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution" addresses these concerns with some concrete solutions.

Technological advances are rapidly changing how we do business, how we earn a living, how we make things...and, well, pretty much everything. This book provides a fairly superficial overview of several areas in which this is happening and extrapolates into the near future. The basic message is that societies need to address these changes and adapt. Specific recommendations on how are largely lacking, and the presentation is extremely dry. The fact that this is such an interesting and important topic warrants bumping my subjective rating to 3 stars, but it's far from the best book I've read on these issues.

Technical Library - shelved at: C11 - initially with Nigel Ostime

ein spannendes Buch über die Zukunft der digitalen Welt