The Fourth Industrial Revolution By Klaus Schwab, World Economic Forum, ￡6.99/ $9.99
The World Economic Forum does a remarkable job of forging the conventional wisdom among the global elite. The trouble is that conventional wisdom is invariably wrong. So what are we to make of the theme of this week’s gathering in Davos: the arrival of the fourth industrial revolution? Peak Tech?
The book, written by Klaus Schwab, WEF’s founder and published just ahead of the organisation’s annual meeting atop a Swiss mountain, slaloms through the new technologies of artificial intelligence, robotics, the internet of things, autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, the blockchain, biotechnology and so on. The argument is that the confluence of these technologies amounts to the fourth industrial revolution of the book’s title.