Author: Jeremie Averous

In the 1960’s for the first time ever, we took pictures of Earth from space. From space!…

The Earth appeared to all eyes like a fragile, small, blue sphere teaming with life in the middle of inhospitable space.

The mindset shift which followed cannot be underestimated.

At the same period there started to be significant pollution scandals, observation of severe health effects of industrial activities, and large scale environmental disruptions. But no event touched humankind globally like these pictures.

For all of previous mankind history, nature was to be exploited. Humankind exploitation capabilities increased dramatically with each Revolution. The Industrial Age was able to lead to global changes in the Earth atmosphere with long term consequences.

Now, for the first time, nature had to be protected. For the sake of Humankind. For this small blue ball in the middle of the void, this miraculous sparkle of life.

This mindset shift is in opposition to Industrial Age mindset and to the mindset of all previous Ages.

It is a true precursor of the Fourth Revolution.

When cheap, reliable contraception appeared in the 1960’s it was a social transformation. For the first time ever women could choose whether and when to have children.

Social shifts were deep. While they are still not entirely widespread when it comes to equal opportunity between genders, a long way has already been done towards it.

Half of humankind got an unprecedented freedom to decide on their life.

The next generation got an unprecedented opportunity: to be mostly desired children.

Each Humankind Revolution increases the freedom and availability of an increasing proportion of the population.

Since the 1960’s, the freedom and availability of half of humankind got liberated.

That’s another deep precursor of the Fourth Revolution.

A manufactured widget today has much more brain content than ever before.

Armies of engineers, designers, market specialists are engineering, designing, optimizing, marketing it.

Manufactured widgets do not come any more as a standard commodity. They have to be different. They have to be unique. They have to have options and be customizable.

It takes today 15 years and billions of dollars of intellectual work to design a new aircraft type, and hundreds need to be sold to get the money of its design back.

Fifty years ago it took a few million dollars, a handful of engineers and two years. A few dozen of models sold, and that was enough to ensure fortune for the manufacturing company.

The same trend is at work in the automotive industry. Developing a new car type takes billions of dollars of intellectual work.

So, even standard manufactured widgets contain a lot more intellectual work than a few decades ago.

Not only manufacturing industries loose weight compared to the services industry, but even within them, the shift has occurred. When you buy a car, a large chunk of its price is to pay for intellectual work. Not for extracting and refining the raw material, or manufacturing the car. For pure intellectual work.

The Fourth Revolution is already at work in the economy.