Ch. 26 The Third Industrial Revolution

"The digital age is a game-changer, offering us

the opportunity to reimagine and rebuild an economy

that is sustainable, just, and inclusive."

-Jeremy Rifkin

We've already talked at length about the Second Industrial Revolution and its components. 

• Communication- telephone, television, radio
• Energy/power- oil, internal combustion engine 
• Transportation- planes, trains, and automobiles

Now let's talk about the Third Industrial Revolution: 1969 - present

Also called the dawn of the atomic age, the third Industrial Revolution brought forth the rise of electronics, telecommunications, and the most dramatic invention of all, the computer. It was during this era that space exploration, research, and biotech brought forth new technologies to support them as well.

We've seen the invention of Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) which led to the rise of further mechanization in manufacturing processes. In other words, machines replaced human workers at a greater rate during the third Industrial Revolution than any other period in history.

But remember, a true Industrial Revolution must have advances in all three areas: 

1. Communication
2. Energy
3. Transportation

With this in mind, the one true breakthrough of this Industrial Revolution (so far) has been the advancement in the area of Communication, namely the internet. 

While we are all familiar with the internet, we use it every day, it has become part of the fabric of our lives, we may not have delved into the true importance of this new technology. The internet is more than just a useful tool, it has ushered in a new way to organize and share resources and information and provided a revolutionary new way of looking at the world. 

Remember when we talked about the authoritarian nature of capitalism? 

Shareholder supremacy, top-down, vertically integrated. The CEO answers to the shareholders. Everyone else answers to the CEO via a chain of command. That's how our capitalist economy is structured. This stratified system is embedded in every facet of our culture. From businesses to schools to churches to households, this mostly patriarchal top-down system is at play. 

The internet, however, is a near polar opposite of that system. 

Developed with public funds, the internet is a laterally distributed network that everyone has equal access to. Most websites and platforms on the internet, certainly the platforms we are most familiar with, Google, Amazon, etc., were built using free open source technology. 

The internet has proven to be a major disruptive force on traditional top down structured businesses, from music to print media, to bookstores to car dealerships. Shelves of hardcover encyclopedias have been replaced by Wikipedia. Created and edited by volunteers from around the world, Wikipedia is one of the world's largest repositories of information and has proven to be astonishingly accurate. 

Traditional corporate-run media is now competing with millions of bloggers and podcasters (with admittedly questionable outcomes). 

But perhaps the biggest impact of the internet has been its influence on culture. 

It has opened our eyes to the power of networking, collaboration, and shared intelligence. Young people, in particular digital natives (people born mid-1990s or later and brought up during the age of digital technology) have only known a world where social networks, large scale multiplayer games, and open source collaboration was the norm. 

This may be difficult or even impossible for some people from older generations to understand but this is a whole new way of organizing and moving the world. 

These young people intuitively understand that real power lies in the strength and span of the network they are tied into. And they are experts at weaving a tight social fabric and working cooperatively to find solutions to big and complex problems. 

This new Communication technology, which is open, distributed, and connected, has opened the door for a the Third Industrial Revolution. 

What is still missing is the wide-spread adoption of the other two elements of that revolution. 

It's time to push for a breakthrough in Energy and Transportation. 

If the internet is how we communicate in this revolution, how do we power the revolution? 

With renewable and green energy sources, of course. Renewable energy resources are found everywhere, in all corners of the world. 

Energy

First, there’s the sun. Solar power is viable anywhere that enjoys a decent amount of sunshine. We can also utilize wind energy, which is becoming increasingly ubiquitous in the modern world. Geothermal energy represents a clean energy source that can be accessed in many parts of the world.

But that’s just for starters. We’re working on ways to utilize waste and garbage and convert it into energy. Europe and Asia have more than 700 of these types of facilities alone. Mankind isn’t going to run out of trash any time soon, so these facilities make logical sense.

Those are ways we can generate our energy, but how are we going to gather and distribute it? 

We do this by utilizing buildings. There are buildings everywhere. Each building in a city like New York could be converted into a micro power plant, with solar panels on the roof, wind turbines on the walls, and even ways to incinerate the building’s garbage into power.

Buildings are how we collect energy, and not just big buildings in cities. Every building. Everywhere. 

The energy will be distributed through a decentralized smart energy grid. Every building will be equipped with a smart meter (which you can purchase now off the shelf) and connected to every other building through a smart network. An internet of energy so to speak. 

Just as the internet itself is a decentralized and distributed network that everyone has access to, so would our new energy infrastructure. 

Note this major difference between the Second and Third Industrial Revolution Energy systems.

The Second is top down, owned and controlled by the upper percenters and the fossil fuel industry.

This new Energy system will be cooperatively owned by the people. 

We'll talk more about this later, but although the fixed costs (the initial costs of building the energy network) for these methods will be high, the marginal costs to maintain them and produce more energy are minimal. A solar power cell requires little maintenance or effort after installation. Plus, the sun and the wind never send you a bill. These are renewable, sustainable energy sources and they can be installed in every skyscraper in New York City and every home in Wichita.

So now we know how we Communicate and Power the Third Industrial Revolution... How do we move it? 

Transportation 

We have a Communication Internet, and we have talked about how to build an Energy Internet. Now let's talk about how to create an Internet of Transportation... Sharing resources is what the Third Industrial Revolution is really all about, and we need to continue to focus on that. 

Simply switching to a system where every person owns their own electric car is no more sustainable than every person owning a fossil fuel powered car. Instead of a consumer ownership-based system like we have now, we need to create a shared access system.

Every shared car takes 18 cars off the road.  On any given day, the average person will only use their car twice, usually going to and from work. They also tend to travel only about 2 miles per day. 

Carsharing can help take millions, maybe billions of cars off the road. 

Electrically powered public transportation using renewable energy is even more crucial, even in rural areas which tend to get ignored by these types of technological updates. 

A handful of buses running every 15 minutes or so along one commute route can take up to 168 cars off the road each hour 

A bus could replace around 30-40 cars.

Just one train can take 300 trucks off the road and one full passenger train can take up to 600 cars off the road 

But what do we mean when we say Transportation Internet?

Just as an internet search engine such as Google is made exponentially more efficient by collecting relevant data from users - a smart collectively owned Energy grid can be made more efficient by analyzing energy usage and inefficiencies. 

But aren't we already beginning to see the same type of data collection with regards to Transportation?

Google maps can often provide up to the minute information on heavy traffic while you are driving. 

Corporations like Tesla are using every one of their customers vehicles to collect data to be used for improving self-driving technology. 

As we move forward we will see more and more of this type of data collection. Eventually a network of sensors will be added to our streets and highways that can collect data and even interact with our vehicles, enabling self-driving technology to be even more safe and effective. 

With enough green, electric public transportation options, and enough shared electric vehicles, personally owned vehicles may become a thing of the past. Consumer-driven ownership will be replaced by distributed, on demand access. A Transportation Internet. 

But again, this is a 30 year plan... so we aren't going to ask you to give up your car quite yet. 

We'll talk more about the utility and logical benefits of a Shared Economy in a later chapter. For now, let's talk about the 5 Pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution.