Page 41 - MSDN Magazine, November 2019

1,400 1,200 1,000
800 600 400 200 -
(200)
Billions of Photos Taken Per Year
lution (steam and mechanization), the Second Industrial Revolution (electric power and mass production) or the Third Industrial Revo- lution (digitization and information technology), they all involved a radical change in labor.
Today, the news about labor is peppered with concerns about AI and autonomous robots (in which I include autonomous transpor- tation) and how these technologies will replace today’s work force. Research by the McKinsey Global Institute predicts that 45 percent of current work activities could be automated by existing technology right now. It also finds that about one-third of the tasks in 60 per- cent of existing jobs can be performed by computers. These are premonitions of dire unemployment.
Of course, similar predictions occurred with the previous indus- trial revolutions, and all proved inaccurate with time. While work was radically affected in all cases, especially when the technology was democratized, the technology that triggered each industrial revolution generally enabled people to move on to better jobs over- all. In short, labor improved. Is today’s technology any different?
The problem with charts like this, and the numbers underlying them, is that they illuminate exponential trends in hindsight, only after they’ve already happened.
Staying with the labor theme, consider the profits of companies delivering exponential technologies. For a company like Amazon the number of employees doesn’t correlate to an increase in sales, which may increase exponentially while employment only increases linearly. Likewise, companies in exponential markets can see net income per employee (NIPE) increase exponentially. Consider, for example, the NIPE of the top four tech companies in 2018, as reported by CSIMarket, shown in Figure 3. By contrast, the aver- age NIPE in 1990 for the top three automobile manufactures was just less than $60,000, when adjusted for inflation.
At the same time, companies are favoring independent contractors over full-time employees. (This dynamic may change as employment law steps in to protect workers, such as the recently passed Assembly Bill 5 in California, which requires that app-based companies treat their contractors like employees.) Regardless, the breadth of disrup- tion across major industries such as print media, music, television, transportation, hotels, banking and agriculture is breathtaking.
These are all significant changes in labor, but are they enough to credit this decade with the introduction of a fourth industrial revo- lution, as suggested by Klaus Schwab, head of the World Economic Forum and author of the book, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution” (Penguin Group, 2017)? Or are these trends simply a continuation of the the digital revolution? That is, perhaps, a question best left to historians to answer, but today’s technology revolution does present some important differences from past cycles. Consider:
1826 1873 1930 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2012 2015 2017
Figure 1 The Exponential Growth of Photography
offering storage that’s close to free (especially if the provider is licensed to advertise or mine the information posted).
Another key characteristic of exponential technologies is democratization—making the technology ubiquitous. In the case of photography, this occurred because of the parallel adoption of mobile phones—another exponential technology. (For more on this dynamic, consider exploring the work of Salim Ismail and Steven Kotler, who both identify characteristics to look for in identifying exponential technologies.)
Figure 2 offers a small sample of some of today’s exponential technologies. As with photography and mobile phones, what’s amazing is that each is likely exponential on its own, but together they amplify each other, making the doubling time even shorter.
The breadth of even the short list in Figure 2 is almost shocking. And when you consider the impacts of all these technology areas converging at once, it raises the question: Are we experiencing another industrial revolution?
Industrial Revolution or Inflection Point
Historically, industrial revolutions are characterized by changes in labor—the way we work. Whether it was the First Industrial Revo-
Figure 2 Exponential Technology Areas
Figure 3 Net Income Per Employee for Top Tech Firms
Material Science
Energy Storage
Autonomous Transportation (cars/ trucks, drones, etc.)
Internet of Things (IoT)
Quantum Computing
Nanotechnology
Artificial Intelligence/ Machine Learning
Blockchain
Bio-Technology/ Medicine
Robotics
Computers
Virtual Reality
3D Printing
Cloud Computing
Neuroscience
No. of Employees
Net Income Per Employee
Facebook
25,105
$634,694.00
Apple
92,600
$393,097.00
Microsoft
118,000
$171,000.00
Alphabet (Google)
53,861
$158,057.00
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