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Navigating the fourth industrial revolution
Andrew D. Maynard considers the challenges of ensuring the responsible development and use of converging technologies.
A new framework for advanced manufacturing is being promoted in Germany, and is increasingly being adopted by other countries. The framework represents a coalescing of digital and physical technologies alongthe product value chain in an attempt to transform the production of goods and services1. It is an approach that focuses on combining technologies such as additive manufacturing, automation, digital services and the Internet of Things, andit is part of a growing movement towards exploiting the convergence between emerging technologies. This technological convergence is increasingly being referred to as the fourth industrial revolution,and like its predecessors, it promisesto transform the ways we live and the environments we live in. (While there is no universal agreement on what constitutes an industrial revolution, proponents of the fourth industrial revolution suggest thatthe rst involved harnessing steam power to mechanize production; the second,the use of electricity in mass production; and the third, the use of electronics and information technology to automate production.) Yet, without up-front eorts to ensure its benecial, responsible and responsive development, there is a very real danger that this fourth industrial revolution will not only fail to deliver on its promise, but also ultimately increase the very challenges its advocates set out to solve.
At its heart, the fourth industrial revolution represents an unprecedented fusion between and across digital, physical and biological technologies, and a resulting anticipated transformation in how products are made and used2. This is already being experienced with the growing Internetof Things, where dynamic information exchanges between networked devicesare opening up new possibilities from manufacturing to lifestyle enhancement and risk management. Similarly, a rapid amplication of 3D printing capabilitiesis now emerging through the convergence of additive manufacturing technologies, online data sharing and processing, advanced materials, and printable biological systems. And we are just beginning to see the commercial use of
potentially transformative convergence between cloud-based articial intelligence and open-source hardware and soware, to create novel platforms for innovative humanmachine interfaces.
These and other areas of development only scratch the surface of how convergence is anticipated to massively extend the impacts of the individual technologies it draws on. This is a revolution that...