THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND

SOCIETY

Science and technology is the best thing society could ever ask for. Since the industrial revolution in the 18th century
science has been in progress. Some sectors that have been boosted by science and technology are energy, physical
sciences, information and communication. The society has greatly gained with the invention of technology.

Infrastructure in the society has grown with the help of science and technology. Modes of transport like electronic
railway lines were realized and these actually benefited the society by offering them a better means of transport. In
the past, almost everything was analog but thanks to the science and technology we are now being digitalized by the
day. The invention of the telephone and radio services has broadened human communication.

Without society then there would be no science and technology and that is why the invention of certain tools and
equipment have helped achieve big things. Society can not do without the industries we have today. The society
needs science and technology. The creation of computers is work of art by individuals was a milestone that would
come a long way in helping the society. A computer helps us to leverage ourselves by gaining valuable information
that we can use to enrich our lives. The impact of science and technology can seriously be recognized. Many people
around the world take for example scholars in colleges and universities have taken the lead examining the
relationship between science and technology.

The evaluation of this relationship has emerged as an important area of research. Public interest groups and
academic organizations throughout the world are recognizing the importance of STS. The reason is that people need
to recognize that there are people who are affected by the science and technology. Controversies such as modified
foods, stem cell research are the issues that have brought policy makers and scientists together to have a way
forward on this.

Science and technology has actually largely contributed to the vision of man about himself. Science has been
modified the opinion about the origin of man and place of origin too. Through the results of scientific discoveries the
perception of man about his behavior and his place of origin has been modified diversely. Experiments in science
today are in one way or another affecting the society.Take for example the experiment on cloning a human being.
The experiment brought a lot of controversy since the society was skeptical about it.

How is science and technology related to society: The developing world has a long tradition of participatory action
research, popular education and community organization joining up to solve some science and technology issues that
affect the society. How is science and technology related to the society is something that is calling even for the
government intervention. Science and technology related issues are actually been discussed worldwide today.
Progress in this has resulted to the ability to produce diverse types of material items. Answering the question how
science and technology is related to society.
 The golden age of Islam
The Abbasid caliphs established the city of Baghdad in 762 CE. It became a center of learning and
the hub of what is known as the Golden Age of Islam.

Overview
 After the death of Muhammad, Arab leaders were called caliphs.
 Caliphs built and established Baghdad as the hub of the Abbasid Caliphate.
 Baghdad was centrally located between Europe and Asia and was an
important area for trade and exchanges of ideas.
 Scholars living in Baghdad translated Greek texts and made scientific
discoveries—which is why this era, from the seventh to thirteenth centuries
CE, is named the Golden Age of Islam.
A love of knowledge was evident in Baghdad, established in 762 CE as the
capital city of the Abbasid Caliphate in modern-day Iraq. Scholars,
philosophers, doctors, and other thinkers all gathered in this center of trade
and cultural development.. Academics—many of them fluent in Greek and
Arabic—exchanged ideas and translated Greek texts into Arabic.

Chief Muslim leaders after Muhammad’s death were referred to as

Caliphs.The era of the Abbasid Caliphs’ construction and rule of Baghdad is
known as the Golden Age of Islam. It was an era when scholarship thrived.

Abbasid Caliphate
After the death of Muhammad and a relatively brief period of rule by the
Rashidun Caliphs, the Umayyad Dynasty gained the reins of power. Based
in Damascus, Syria, the Umayyad Caliphate faced internal pressures and
resistance, partly because they displayed an obvious preference for Arab
Muslims, excluding non-Arab Muslims like Persians. Taking advantage of
this weakness, Sunni Arab Abu al-Abbas mounted a revolution in 750 CE.
With support from his followers, he destroyed the Umayyad troops in a
massive battle and formed the Abbasid Dynasty in its place.

Baghdad

A map of the city of Baghdad.

The city center is round with the
river Tigris running through the
outskirts on the eastern side of
the city.
A map of the city of Baghdad. Image
credit: Wikimedia

The leaders of the Abbasid

Dynasty built Baghdad, the
capital of modern-day Iraq.
Baghdad would come to replace and overshadow Damascus as the capital
city of the empire. It was located near both the Tigris and Euphrates rivers,
making it an ideal spot for food production that could sustain a large
population.

The Abbasids built Baghdad from scratch while maintaining the network of
roads and trade routes the Persians had established before the Umayyad
Dynasty took over. Baghdad was strategically located between Asia and
Europe, which made it a prime spot on overland trade routes between the two
continents. Some of the goods being traded through Baghdad were ivory,
soap, honey, and diamonds. People in Baghdad made and exported silk,
glass, tiles, and paper. The central location and lively trade culture of the city
made a lively exchange of ideas possible as well.

A map of the extent of the Abbasid Dynasty from 750 to 1258. Extent of
Abbasid dynasty is shown in red and covers most of the modern-day Middle
East and North Africa.
A map of the extent of the Abbasid Dynasty from 750 to 1258. Image credit: Wikimedia

Baghdad attracted many people, including scholars, to live within its borders.
To get a sense of what living in the newly constructed city was like, here’s an
excerpt from the writings of Arab historian and biographer, Yakut al-
Hamawi, describing Baghdad in the tenth century:

The city of Baghdad formed two vast semi-circles on the right and left banks
of the Tigris, twelve miles in diameter. The numerous suburbs, covered with
parks, gardens, villas, and beautiful promenades, and plentifully supplied
with rich bazaars, and finely built mosques and baths, stretched for a
considerable distance on both sides of the river. In the days of its prosperity
the population of Baghdad and its suburbs amounted to over two [million]!
The palace of the Caliph stood in the midst of a vast park several hours in
circumference, which beside a menagerie and aviary comprised an enclosure
for wild animals reserved for the chase. The palace grounds were laid out
with gardens and adorned with exquisite taste with plants, flowers, and trees,
reservoirs and fountains, surrounded by sculpted figures. On this side of the
river stood the palaces of the great nobles. Immense streets, none less than
forty cubits wide, traversed the city from one end to the other, dividing it into
blocks or quarters, each under the control of an overseer or supervisor, who
looked after the cleanliness, sanitation and the comfort of the inhabitants.

Tenth-century historian Yakut al-Hamawi, from Lost History 60-61

Pursuit of knowledge
Abbasid Caliphs Harun al-Rashid and his
son, al-Ma’mun, who followed him,
established a House of Wisdom in
Baghdad—a dedicated space for
scholarship. The House of Wisdom
increased in use and prestige under al-
Ma’mun’s rule, from 813 to 833. He made
a special effort to recruit famous scholars
to come to the House of Wisdom.
Muslims, Christians, and Jews all
collaborated and worked peacefully there.

Artwork of scholars at an Abbasid library. Seven men sit in front of a

bookshelf; one man is reading from an opened book.
Scholars at an Abbasid library. Image credit: Wikimedia
The translation movement
Caliphs like al-Rashid and al-Ma’mun directly encouraged a translation
movement, a formal translation of scholarly works from Greek into Arabic.
The Abbasid rulers wanted to make Greek texts, such as Aristotle’s works,
available to the Arab world. Their goal was to translate as many of these
famous works as possible in order to have a comprehensive library of
knowledge and to preserve the philosophies and scholarship of Greece. The
Abbasids aimed to have philosophy, science, and medicine texts translated. In
addition to Arab Muslim scholars, Syrian Christians translated Syriac texts
into Arabic as well.

Why were the Abbasids so interested in a massive translation undertaking? In

addition to their desire to have a comprehensive library of knowledge and
the Qur’an’s emphasis on learning as a holy activity, they also had a practical
thirst for medical knowledge. The dynasty was facing a demand for skilled
doctors—so having as much knowledge as possible for them to access was a
must.

One way the Abbasid dynasty was able to spread written knowledge so
quickly was their improvements on printing technology they had obtained
from the Chinese; some historians believe this technology was taken after the
Battle of Talas between the Abbasid Caliphate and the Tang Dynasty in 751.
The Chinese had guarded paper making as a secret, but when the Tang lost
the battle, the Abbasids captured knowledgeable paper makers as prisoners of
war, forcing them to reproduce their craft.
 In China, papermaking was a practice
reserved for elites, but the Arabs learned
how to produce texts on a larger scale,
establishing paper mills which made books
more accessible. In turn, Europeans
eventually learned these papermaking and
producing skills from Arabs.

Bust of Aristotle.
Bust of Aristotle. Image credit: Wikimedia

Abbasid advances
During the Golden Age of Islam, Arab and
Persian scholars—as well as scholars from
other countries—were able to build on the
information they translated from the Greeks
and others during the Abbasid Dynasty and
forge new advances in their fields. Ibn al-
Haythm invented the first camera and was able
to form an explanation of how the eye sees.
Doctor and philosopher Avicenna wrote
the Canon of Medicine, which helped
physicians diagnose dangerous diseases such as cancer. And Al-Khwarizmi, a
Persian mathematician, invented algebra, a word which itself has Arabic
roots.

Portrait of Al-Khwarizmi.
Portrait of Al-Khwarizmi. Image credit: Wikimedia

Summary
Scholars living in Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate contributed to the
preservation of Greek and other existing knowledge about philosophy,
astronomy, medicine, and many other disciplines. In addition to preserving
information, these scholars contributed new insights in their fields and
ultimately passed their discoveries along to Europe.
The Renaissance
The Renaissance was a fervent period of European cultural, artistic, political
and economic “rebirth” following the Middle Ages. Generally described as
taking place from the 14th century to the 17th century, the Renaissance
promoted the rediscovery of classical philosophy, literature and art. Some of
the greatest thinkers, authors, statesmen, scientists and artists in human
history thrived during this era, while global exploration opened up new lands
and cultures to European commerce. The Renaissance is credited with
bridging the gap between the Middle Ages and modern-day civilization.

From Darkness to Light: The Renaissance

Begins
During the Middle Ages, a period that took place between the fall of ancient
Rome in 476 A.D. and the beginning of the 14th century, Europeans made
few advances in science and art.

Also known as the “Dark Ages,” the era is often branded as a time of war,
ignorance, famine and pandemics such as the Black Death.

Some historians, however, believe that such grim depictions of the Middle
Ages were greatly exaggerated, though many agree that there was relatively
little regard for ancient Greek and Roman philosophies and learning at the
time.

READ MORE: 6 Reasons the Dark Ages Weren't So Dark

Humanism
During the 14th century, a cultural movement called humanism began to gain
momentum in Italy. Among its many principles, humanism promoted the idea
that man was the center of his own universe, and people should embrace
human achievements in education, classical arts, literature and science.

In 1450, the invention of the Gutenberg printing press allowed for improved
communication throughout Europe and for ideas to spread more quickly.
 As a result of this advance in communication, little-known texts from early
humanist authors such as those by Francesco Petrarch and Giovanni
Boccaccio, which promoted the renewal of traditional Greek and Roman
culture and values, were printed and distributed to the masses.

Additionally, many scholars believe advances in international finance and

trade impacted culture in Europe and set the stage for the Renaissance.

Medici Family
The Renaissance started in Florence, Italy, a place with a rich cultural history
where wealthy citizens could afford to support budding artists.

Members of the powerful Medici family, which ruled Florence for more than 60
years, were famous backers of the movement.

Great Italian writers, artists, politicians and others declared that they were
participating in an intellectual and artistic revolution that would be much
different from what they experienced during the Dark Ages.

The movement first expanded to other Italian city-states, such as Venice,

Milan, Bologna, Ferrara and Rome. Then, during the 15th century,
Renaissance ideas spread from Italy to France and then throughout western
and northern Europe.

Although other European countries experienced their Renaissance later than

Italy, the impacts were still revolutionary.

Renaissance Geniuses
Some of the most famous and groundbreaking Renaissance intellectuals,
artists, scientists and writers include the likes of:

 Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519): Italian painter, architect, inventor and

“Renaissance man” responsible for painting “The Mona Lisa” and “The Last
Supper.

 Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536): Scholar from Holland who defined the

humanist movement in Northern Europe. Translator of the New Testament
into Greek.
 Rene Descartes (1596–1650): French philosopher and mathematician
regarded as the father of modern philosophy. Famous for stating, “I think;
therefore I am.”

 Galileo (1564-1642): Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer whose

pioneering work with telescopes enabled him to describes the moons of
Jupiter and rings of Saturn. Placed under house arrest for his views of a
heliocentric universe.

 Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543): Mathematician and astronomer who made

first modern scientific argument for the concept of a heliocentric solar system.

 Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679): English philosopher and author of “Leviathan.”

 Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400): English poet and author of “The Canterbury

Tales.”

 Giotto (1266-1337): Italian painter and architect whose more realistic

depictions of human emotions influenced generations of artists. Best known
for his frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua.

 Dante (1265–1321): Italian philosopher, poet, writer and political thinker who
authored “The Divine Comedy.”

 Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527): Italian diplomat and philosopher famous for

writing “The Prince” and “The Discourses on Livy.”

 Titian (1488–1576): Italian painter celebrated for his portraits of Pope Paul III
and Charles I and his later religious and mythical paintings like “Venus and
Adonis” and "Metamorphoses."

 William Tyndale (1494–1536): English biblical translator, humanist and

scholar burned at the stake for translating the Bible into English.

 William Byrd (1539/40–1623): English composer known for his development

of the English madrigal and his religious organ music.

 John Milton (1608–1674): English poet and historian who wrote the epic poem
“Paradise Lost.”
 William Shakespeare (1564–1616): England’s “national poet” and the most
famous playwright of all time, celebrated for his sonnets and plays like
“Romeo and Juliet.”

 Donatello (1386–1466): Italian sculptor celebrated for lifelike sculptures like

“David,” commissioned by the Medici family.

 Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510): Italian painter of “Birth of Venus.”

 Raphael (1483–1520): Italian painter who learned from da Vinci and

Michelangelo. Best known for his paintings of the Madonna and “The School
of Athens.”

 Michelangelo (1475–1564): Italian sculptor, painter and architect who carved

“David” and painted The Sistine Chapel in Rome.

Renaissance Art, Architecture and Science

Art, architecture and science were closely linked during the Renaissance. In
fact, it was a unique time when these fields of study fused together
seamlessly.

For instance, artists like da Vinci incorporated scientific principles, such as

anatomy into their work, so they could recreate the human body with
extraordinary precision.

Architects such as Filippo Brunelleschi studied mathematics to accurately

engineer and design immense buildings with expansive domes.

Scientific discoveries led to major shifts in thinking: Galileo and Descartes

presented a new view of astronomy and mathematics, while Copernicus
proposed that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center of the solar system.

Renaissance art was characterized by realism and naturalism. Artists strived

to depict people and objects in a true-to-life way.

Recommended for you

Renaissance Art

Italian Renaissance
 Leonardo da Vinci

They used techniques, such as perspective, shadows and light to add depth
to their work. Emotion was another quality that artists tried to infuse into their
pieces.

Some of the most famous artistic works that were produced during the
Renaissance include:

 The Mona Lisa (Da Vinci)

 The Last Supper (Da Vinci)
 Statue of David (Michelangelo)
 The Birth of Venus (Botticelli)
 The Creation of Adam (Michelangelo)

Renaissance Exploration
While many artists and thinkers used their talents to express new ideas, some
Europeans took to the seas to learn more about the world around them. In a
period known as the Age of Discovery, several important explorations were
made.

Voyagers launched expeditions to travel the entire globe. They discovered

new shipping routes to the Americas, India and the Far East and explorers
trekked across areas that weren’t fully mapped.
Famous journeys were taken by Ferdinand Magellan, Christopher
Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci (after whom America is named), Marco
Polo, Ponce de Leon, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, Hernando De Soto and other
explorers.

READ MORE: The Age of Exploration

Renaissance Religion
Humanism encouraged Europeans to question the role of the Roman Catholic
church during the Renaissance.

As more people learned how to read, write and interpret ideas, they began to
closely examine and critique religion as they knew it. Also, the printing press
allowed for texts, including the Bible, to be easily reproduced and widely read
by the people, themselves, for the first time.

In the 16th century, Martin Luther, a German monk, led the Protestant
Reformation – a revolutionary movement that caused a split in the Catholic
church. Luther questioned many of the practices of the church and whether
they aligned with the teachings of the Bible.

As a result, a new form of Christianity, known as Protestantism, was created.

End of the Renaissance

Scholars believe the demise of the Renaissance was the result of several
compounding factors.

By the end of the 15th century, numerous wars had plagued the Italian
peninsula. Spanish, French and German invaders battling for Italian territories
caused disruption and instability in the region.

Also, changing trade routes led to a period of economic decline and limited
the amount of money that wealthy contributors could spend on the arts.

Later, in a movement known as the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic church

censored artists and writers in response to the Protestant Reformation. Many
Renaissance thinkers feared being too bold, which stifled creativity.
Furthermore, in 1545, the Council of Trent established the Roman Inquisition,
which made humanism and any views that challenged the Catholic church an
act of heresy punishable by death.

By the early 17th century, the Renaissance movement had died out, giving
way to the Age of Enlightenment.

Debate Over the Renaissance

While many scholars view the Renaissance as a unique and exciting time in
European history, others argue that the period wasn’t much different from the
Middle Ages and that both eras overlapped more than traditional accounts
suggest.

Also, some modern historians believe that the Middle Ages had a cultural
identity that’s been downplayed throughout history and overshadowed by the
Renaissance era.

While the exact timing and overall impact of the Renaissance is sometimes
debated, there’s little dispute that the events of the period ultimately led to
advances that changed the way people understood and interpreted the world
around them.

Sources
The Renaissance, History World International.
The Renaissance – Why it Changed the World, The Telegraph.
Facts About the Renaissance, Biography Online.
Facts About the Renaissance Period, Interestingfacts.org.
What is Humanism? International Humanist and Ethical Union.
Why Did the Italian Renaissance End? Dailyhistory.org.
The Myth of the Renaissance in Europe, BBC.
The Enlightenment
Article written Matthew White
by:
Themes: Language and ideas, Politics and religion
Published: 21 Jun 2018
The Enlightenment's emphasis on reason shaped philosophical, political and
scientific discourse from the late 17th to the early 19th century. Matthew White
traces the Enlightenment back to its roots in the aftermath of the Civil War, and
forward to its effects on the present day.
The Enlightenment – the great ‘Age of Reason’ – is defined as the period of rigorous
scientific, political and philosophical discourse that characterised European society
during the ‘long’ 18th century: from the late 17th century to the ending of the Napoleonic
Wars in 1815. This was a period of huge change in thought and reason, which (in the
words of historian Roy Porter) was ‘decisive in the making of modernity’.[1] Centuries of
custom and tradition were brushed aside in favour of exploration, individualism, tolerance
and scientific endeavour, which, in tandem with developments in industry and politics,
witnessed the emergence of the ‘modern world’.

Porcelain figure of John Wilkes, holding the Bill of Rights and a scroll
inscribed ‘Magna Carta’

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This Derby porcelain figurine of the radical politician John Wilkes poses nonchalantly
among symbols of English liberty. The plinth upon which he leans has two scrolls, one
inscribed ‘Magna Carta’ and the other ‘Bill of Rights’; at his feet a cherub holds a liberty
cap and a treatise on government by John Locke.
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Held by© Trustees of the British Museum

The emergence of ‘reason’

The roots of the Enlightenment can be found in the turmoil of the English Civil Wars.
With the re-establishment of a largely unchanged autocratic monarchy, first with the
restoration of Charles II in 1660 and then the ascendancy of James II in 1685, leading
political thinkers began to reappraise how society and politics could (and should) be
better structured. Movements for political change resulted in the Glorious Revolution of
1688/89, when William and Mary were installed on the throne as part of the new
Protestant settlement.
The Bill of Rights

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The Bill of Rights, signed by William and Mary in February 1689, stated that it was
illegal for the Crown to suspend or dispense with the law, to levy money without
parliamentary assent, or to raise an army in peacetime, and insisted on due process in
criminal trials.
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Held by© Parliamentary Archives, London HL/PO/JO/10/1/1430, membrs. 2–3
The ancient civilisations of Greece and Rome were revered by enlightened thinkers,
who viewed these communities as potential models for how modern society could be
organised.[2] Many commentators of the late 17th century were eager to achieve a clean
break from what they saw as centuries of political tyranny, in favour of personal
freedoms and happiness centred on the individual. Chief among these thinkers was
philosopher and physician John Locke, whose Two Treatises of Government (published
in 1689) advocated a separation of church and state, religious toleration, the right to
property ownership and a contractual obligation on governments to recognise the innate
‘rights’ of the people.

Locke believed that reason and human consciousness were the gateways to
contentment and liberty, and he demolished the notion that human knowledge was
somehow pre-programmed and mystical. Locke’s ideas reflected the earlier but equally
influential works of Thomas Hobbes, which similarly advocated new social contracts
between the state and civil society as the key to unlocking personal happiness for all.

Hobbes's Leviathan

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Published in 1651, Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan helped shape Western political
thinking.
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Concurrent movements for political change also emerged in France during the early
years of the 18th century. The writings of Denis Diderot, for example, linked reason with
the maintenance of virtue and its ability to check potentially destructive human
passions. Similarly, the profoundly influential works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued
that man was born free and rational, but was enslaved by the constraints imposed on
society by governments. True political sovereignty, he argued, always remained in the
hands of the people if the rule of law was properly maintained by a democratically
endorsed government: a radical political philosophy that came to influence revolutionary
movements in France and America later in the century.
The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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Frontispiece with a portrait of the author in the 1895 edition of Rousseau’s The Social
Contract, first published in 1762.
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The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

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On 26 August 1789, the French National Constituent Assembly issued the Déclaration
des droits de l'homme et du citoyen (Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen)
which defined individual and collective rights at the time of the French Revolution.
Painted by the artist Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier (1738–1826), this depiction of
the Déclaration celebrates these rights as a crowning achievement of the French
Revolution.
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Held by© Musée Carnavalet / Roger-Viollet

Scientific revolution

These new enlightened views of the world were also encapsulated in the explosion of
scientific endeavour that occurred during the 18th century. With the rapid expansion
of print culture from around 1700, and increasing levels of literacy, details of
experimentation and discovery were eagerly consumed by the reading public.

Margaret Cavendish's Blazing World

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Cavendish’s ground-breaking proto-novel wove original scientific theories into a fictional
narrative.
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This growth of ‘natural philosophy’ (the term ‘science’ was only coined later in the 18th
century) was underpinned by the application of rational thought and reason to scientific
enquiry; first espoused by Francis Bacon in the early 1600s, this approach built on the
earlier work of Copernicus and Galileo dating from the medieval period. Scientific
experimentation (with instrumentation) was used to shed new light on nature and to
challenge superstitious interpretations of the living world, much of which had been
deduced from uncritical readings of historical texts.
Copernicus' celestial spheres

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First edition of On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (1543), in which Copernicus
argued that the positions of the stars and planetary orbits could be better explained by
the sun being at the centre of the universe with the planets rotating around it in a
circular motion, as shown in this iconic diagram.
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Galileo's sunspot letters

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These letters record astronomical observations made by the Italian physicist and
astronomer Galileo Galilei in 1612.
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At the forefront of the scientific revolution stood Sir Isaac Newton, whose achievements
in mathematics and physics revolutionised the contemporary view of the natural world.
Born in 1643, Newton demonstrated a talent for mathematical theory at Trinity College,
Cambridge, where his astonishingly precocious abilities led to his appointment as
professor of mathematics at the age of just 26. Among Newton’s weighty catalogue of
investigations were his treatises on optics, gravitational forces and mechanics (most
famously encapsulated in his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, first
published in 1687), all grounded in empirical experimentation as a way to demystify the
physical world.

Newton's Principia Mathematica

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Title page of the first edition of Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural
Philosophy (in Latin).
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The discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton were complemented by those of a host of equally
dazzling mathematicians, astronomers, chemists and physicists (Robert Hooke and
Robert Boyle, for example), many of whom were members of the Royal Society
(founded in 1660, and active today). Yet it was Newton’s empirical approach to science
that remained particularly influential. By embarking on purely rational and mathematical
investigations, Newton was able to show that the natural world was ‘amenable to
observations and experiment’, engendering a feeling among the scientific community
that ‘Nature had finally been fathomed’.[3]

Micrographia by Robert Hooke, 1665

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Hooke’s Micrographia was the first important work on microscopy, the study of minute
objects through a microscope.
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The pursuit of rational scientific knowledge was never the preserve of an educated elite.
As well as fertilising a huge trade in published books and pamphlets, scientific
investigation created a buoyant industry in scientific instruments, many of which were
relatively inexpensive to buy and therefore available to the general public.
Manufacturers of telescopes, microscopes, barometers, air pumps and thermometers
prospered during the 18th century, particularly after 1750 when the names of famous
scientific experimenters became household names: Benjamin Franklin, Joseph
Priestley, William Herschel and Sir Joseph Banks, for example.

Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia, 1741

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Encyclopaedias, grammars and dictionaries became something of a craze in this period,
helping to demystify the world in empirical terms. This huge fold-out page contains
carefully labelled illustrations of anatomised human bodies.
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Secularisation and the impact on religion

Religion and personal faith were also subject to the tides of reason evident during the
18th century. Personal judgements on matters of belief were actively debated during the
period, leading to scepticim, if not bold atheism, among an enlightened elite.

An enquiry into the nature of the human soul

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The author, Andrew Baxter argues that all matter is inherently inactive, and that the soul
and an omnipotent divine spirit are the animating principles of all life. In making this
argument, Baxter is rejecting the beliefs of more atheistic and materialist thinkers such
as Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza.
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These new views on religion led to increasing fears among the clergy that the
Enlightenment was ungodly and thus harmful to the moral well-being of an increasingly
secular society. With church attendance in steady decline throughout the 1700s,
evidence of increasing agnosticism (the belief that true knowledge of God could never
be fully gained) and a rejection of some scriptural teachings was close at hand. Distinct
anti-clericalism (the criticism of church ministers and rejection of religious authority) also
emerged in some circles, whipped up by the musings of ‘deist’ writers such as Voltaire,
who argued that God’s influence on the world was minimal and revealed only by one’s
own personal experience of nature.

Though certainly a challenge to accepted religious beliefs, the impulse of reason was
considered by other contemporary observers to be a complement rather than a threat to
spiritual orthodoxy: a means by which (in the words of John Locke) the true meaning of
Scripture could be unlocked and ‘understood in the plain, direct meaning of the words
and phrases’.[4] Though difficult to measure or quantify, Locke believed that ‘rational
religion’ based on personal experience and reflection could nevertheless still operate as
a useful moral compass in the modern age.

New personal freedoms within the orbit of faith were extended to the relationship
between the Church and state. In England, the recognition of dissenting religions was
formalised by legislation, such as the 1689 Act of Toleration which permitted freedom of
worship to Nonconformists (albeit qualified by allegiances to the Crown). Later, political
emancipation for Roman Catholics – who were allowed new property rights – also
reflected an enlightened impulse among the political elite: such measures sometimes
created violent responses from working people. In 1780, for example, London was
convulsed by a week of rioting in response to further freedoms granted to Catholics: a
sign, perhaps, of how the enlightened thinking of politicians could diverge sharply from
the sentiments of the humble poor.

Newspaper report of the Gordon riots, 1780

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The Gordon Riots of June 1780 were in response to legislation passed permitting
Catholics greater freedom in society (such as being allowed to join the Army). The riots
were so bad that 15,000 troops were deployed to quell the disturbances and nearly 300
rioters were shot dead by soldiers.
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First edition of the Letters of the late Ignatius Sancho, an African, 1782

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From his shop in Westminster, Ignatius Sancho witnessed ‘the burnings and
devastations’ of the Gordon Riots. He described the ‘ridiculous confusion’ in a series of
letters, dated 6–9 June 1780.
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Political freedoms, contracts and rights

Public debates about what qualified as the best forms of government were heavily
influenced by enlightened ideals, most notably Rousseau’s and Diderot’s notions of
egalitarian freedom and the ‘social contract’. By the end of the 18th century most
European nations harboured movements calling for political reform, inspired by radical
enlightened ideals which advocated clean breaks from tyranny, monarchy and
absolutism.

Late 18th-century radicals were especially inspired by the writings of Thomas Paine,
whose influence on revolutionary politics was felt in both America and France. Born into
humble beginnings in England in 1737, by the 1770s Paine had arrived in America
where he began agitating for revolution. Paine’s most radical works, The Rights of
Man and later The Age of Reason (both successful best-sellers in Europe), drew
extensively on Rousseau’s notions of the social contract. Paine reserved particular
criticism for the hereditary privileges of ruling elites, whose power over the people, he
believed, was only ever supported through simple historical tradition and the passive
acceptance of the social order among the common people.

Rights of Man by Thomas Paine

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The Rights of Man (1791) was in part a defence of the French Revolution, and was thus
perceived as an attack on the monarchy in Britain.
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Similarly, German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) pointed towards the
‘laziness and Cowardice’ of the people to explain why ‘a large part of mankind gladly
remain minors all their lives’, and spoke of reasoned knowledge gained from sensual
experience as a means of achieving genuine freedom and equality. [5]
Though grounded in a sense of outrage at social and economic injustice, the political
revolutions of both America (1765 to 1783) and France (1789 to 1799) can thus be fairly
judged to have been driven by enlightened political dogma, which criticised despotic
monarchies as acutely incompatible with the ideals of democracy, equality under the rule
of law and the rights to property ownership.[6] These new movements for political reform
argued in favour of protecting certain inalienable natural rights that some enlightened
thinkers believed were innate in all men (though rarely in women as well): in the freedom
of speech and protection from arbitrary arrest, for example, later enshrined in the
American Constitution.

An Enquiry concerning Political Justice

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William Godwin’s major text, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, explored the idea
of dismantling the power of the state in the international context of the French
Revolution.
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However, for other observers (particularly in Britain) the violent extremes of the French
Revolution proved incompatible with enlightened thought. Many saw the extremes of
revolution as a counterpoint to any true notion of ‘reason’. British MP Edmund Burke, for
example, wrote critically of the ‘fury, outrage and insult’ he saw embedded in events
across the Channel, and urged restraint among Britain’s own enlightened political
radicals.[7]

Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke

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First edition (1790) of Burke’s observations and reactions to the French Revolution.
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Political philosopher David Hume also warned of the dangers he perceived in the
headlong pursuit of liberty for all. An ill-educated and ignorant crowd, argued Hume,
was in danger of running into violence and anarchy if a stable framework of government
was not maintained through the consent of the people and strong rule of
law.[8] Governments, he believed, could offer a benign presence in people’s lives only
when moderated by popular support, and he therefore offered the extension of the
franchise as a counterbalance to the strong authority of the state.
Four Dissertations by Enlightenment philosopher David Hume

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David Hume was an 18th-century Scottish philosopher, known for his empiricism and
scepticism. He was a major figure in the Scottish Enlightenment.
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The end of the Enlightenment?

The outcomes of the Enlightenment were thus far-reaching and, indeed, revolutionary.
By the early 1800s a new ‘public sphere’ of political debate was evident in European
society, having emerged first in the culture of coffee-houses and later fuelled by an
explosion of books, magazines, pamphlets and newspapers (the new ‘Augustan’ age of
poetry and prose was coined at the same time). Secular science and invention, fertilised
by a spirit of enquiry and discovery, also became the hallmark of modern society, which
in turn propelled the pace of 18th-century industrialisation and economic growth.

Individualism – the personal freedoms celebrated by Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Voltaire
and Kant – became part of the web of modern society that trickled down into 19th-
century notions of independence, self-help and liberalism. Representative government
on behalf of the people was enshrined in new constitutional arrangements,
characterised by the slow march towards universal suffrage in the 1900s.

Photograph of Annie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst

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This photograph shows suffragettes Annie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst holding a
'Votes for Women' placard.
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Held by© Paul Fearn / Alamy Stock Photo
Evidence of the Enlightenment thus remains with us today: in our notions of free
speech, our secular yet religiously tolerant societies, in science, the arts and literature:
all legacies of a profound movement for change that transformed the nature of society
forever.

Footnotes

[1] Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (London, 2001), p. 3.

[2] Porter, Enlightenment, p. 34.

[3] Porter, Enlightenment, p. 142.

[4] John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity (London, 1695), p. 2.

[5] Immanuel Kant, ‘What is Enlightenment’, quoted in Margaret C Jacob, The Enlightenment: A Brief
History with Documents (Boston, 2001), p. 203.

[6] Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1995), p. 110.

[7] Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), quoted in David Williams, (ed.), The
Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1999) p. 516.

[8] Williams, The Enlightenment, p. 26.

Written byMatthew White

Dr Matthew White is Research Fellow in History at the University of Hertfordshire where he specialises in
the social history of London during the 18th and 19th centuries. Matthew’s major research interests
include the history of crime, punishment and policing, and the social impact of urbanisation. His most
recently published work has looked at changing modes of public justice in the 18th and 19th centuries
with particular reference to the part played by crowds at executions and other judicial punishments.
The Industrial Revolution
Fossil Fuels, Steam Power, and the Rise of
Manufacturing
Abundant fossil fuels, and the innovative machines they powered, launched
an era of accelerated change that continues to transform human society.

Smokestacks in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1890s © Bettmann/CORBIS

The Transformation of the World

Try to imagine what your life would be like without any machines working
for you. Make a list of the machines in your household and on your person;
you may arrive at a surprising number.

Now imagine earlier generations during their childhood years. How did they
move from place to place? How did they communicate? What foods did they
eat?

At one time, humans, fueled by the animals and plants they ate and the wood
they burned, or aided by their domesticated animals, provided most of the
energy in use. Windmills and waterwheels captured some extra energy, but
there was little in reserve. All life operated within the fairly immediate flow
of energy from the Sun to Earth.

Everything changed during the Industrial Revolution, which began around

1750. People found an extra source of energy with an incredible capacity for
work. That source was fossil fuels — coal, oil, and natural gas, though coal
led the way — formed underground from the remains of plants and animals
from much earlier geologic times. When these fuels were burned, they
released energy, originally from the Sun, that had been stored for hundreds of
millions of years.

Coal was formed when huge trees from the Carboniferous period (345– 280
million years ago) fell and were covered with water, so that oxygen and
bacteria could not decay them. Instead, the pressure of the weight of
materials above them compressed them into dark, carbonic, ignitable rock.

Most of the Earth’s oil and gas formed over a hundred million years ago from
tiny animal skeletons and plant matter that fell to the bottom of seas or were
buried in sediment. This organic matter was compacted by the weight of
water and soil. Coal, oil, and gas, despite their relative abundance, are not
evenly distributed on Earth; some places have much more than others, due to
geographic factors and the diverse ecosystems that existed long ago.

Early Steam Engines

The story of the Industrial Revolution begins on the small island of Great
Britain. By the early 18th century, people there had used up most of their
trees for building houses and ships and for cooking and heating. In their
search for something else to burn, they turned to the hunks of black stone
(coal) that they found near the surface of the earth. Soon they were digging
deeper to mine it. Their coal mines filled with water that needed to be
removed; horses pulling up bucketfuls proved slow going.

James Watt’s ―Sun and Planet‖ steam engine © Bettmann/CORBIS

To the rescue came James Watt (1736–1819), a Scottish instrument-maker

who in 1776 designed an engine in which burning coal produced steam,
which drove a piston assisted by a partial vacuum. (There had been earlier
 steam engines in Britain, and also in China and in Turkey, where one was
used to turn the spit that roasts a lamb over a fire.) Its first application was to
more quickly and efficiently pump water out of coal mines, to better allow
for extraction of the natural resource, but Watt’s engine worked well enough
to be put to other uses; he became a wealthy man. After his patent ran out in
1800, others improved upon his engine. By 1900 engines burned 10 times
more efficiently than they had a hundred years before.

At the outset of the 19th century, British colonies in North America were
producing lots of cotton, using machines to spin the cotton thread on spindles
and to weave it into cloth on looms. When they attached a steam engine to
these machines, they could easily outproduce India, up until then the world’s
leading producer of cotton cloth. One steam engine could power many
spindles and looms. This meant that people had to leave their homes and
work together in factories.

Early in the 19th century the British also invented steam locomotives and
steamships, which revolutionized travel. In 1851 they held the first world’s
fair, at which they exhibited telegraphs, sewing machines, revolvers, reaping
machines, and steam hammers to demonstrate they that were the world’s
leading manufacturer of machinery. By this time the characteristics of
industrial society — smoke rising from factories, bigger cities and denser
populations, railroads — could be seen in many places in Britain.

Why Britain?
Britain wasn’t the only place that had deposits of coal. So why didn’t the
Industrial Revolution begin in China, or somewhere else that boasted this
natural resource? Did it start in isolation in Britain, or were there global
forces at work that shaped it? Was it geography or cultural institutions that
mattered most? Historians have vigorously debated these questions, amassing
as much evidence as possible for their answers.

Possible reasons why industrialization began in Britain include:

 Shortage of wood and the abundance of convenient coal deposits

 Commercial-minded aristocracy; limited monarchy

 System of free enterprise; limited government involvement

 Government support for commercial projects, for a strong navy to protect
ships

 Cheap cotton produced by slaves in North America

 High literacy rates

 Rule of law; protection of assets

 Valuable immigrants (Dutch, Jews, Huguenots [French Protestants])

Possible reasons why industrialization did not begin in China include:

 Location of China’s coal, which was in the north, while economic activity
was centered in the south

 Rapid growth of population in China, giving less incentive for machines and
more for labor-intensive methods

 Confucian ideals that valued stability and frowned upon experimentation and
change

 Lack of Chinese government support for maritime explorations, thinking its

empire seemed large enough to provide everything needed

 China’s focus on defending self from nomadic attacks from the north and
west

Global forces influencing the development of industrialization in Britain

include:

 Britain’s location on the Atlantic Ocean

 British colonies in North America, which provided land, labor, and markets

 Silver from the Americas, used in trade with China

 Social and ideological conditions in Britain, and new thoughts about the
economy, that encouraged an entrepreneurial spirit

By the way, if you’re wondering what oil and natural gas were doing while
coal was powering the Industrial Revolution, they had been discovered long
before and were in use, but mostly as fuels for lamps and other light sources.
It wasn’t until the mid-20th century that oil caught up — and surpassed —
coal in use.
Calcutta Harbor, c. 1860 © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS

The Spread of the Industrial Revolution

Britain tried to keep secret how its machines were made, but people went
there to learn about them and took the techniques back home. Sometimes
they smuggled the machines out in rowboats to neighboring countries. The
first countries after Britain to develop factories and railroads were Belgium,
Switzerland, France, and the states that became Germany. Building a national
railroad system proved an essential part of industrialization. Belgium began
its railroads in 1834, France in 1842, Switzerland in 1847, and Germany in
the 1850s.

Industrialization began in the United States when Samuel Slater emigrated

from Britain to Rhode Island in 1789 and set up the first textile factory on
U.S soil. He did this from memory, having left Britain without notes or plans
that could have been confiscated by British authorities. Francis Cabot Lowell,
of Massachusetts, visited Britain from 1810 to 1812 and returned to set up the
first power loom and the first factory combining mechanical spinning and
weaving in the States. Railroad construction in America boomed from the
1830s to 1870s. The American Civil War (1861–65) was the first truly
industrial war — the increasingly urbanized and factory-based North fighting
against the agriculture-focused South — and industrialization grew
explosively afterward. By 1900 the United States had overtaken Britain in
manufacturing, producing 24 percent of the world’s output.

After 1870 both Russia and Japan were forced by losing wars to abolish their
feudal systems and to compete in the industrializing world. In Japan, the
monarchy proved flexible enough to survive through early industrialization.
In Russia, a profoundly rural country, the czar and the nobility undertook
industrialization while trying to retain their dominance. Factory workers
often worked 13-hour days without any legal rights. Discontent erupted
repeatedly, and eventually a revolution brought the Communist party to
power in 1917.

Industrialized nations used their strong armies and navies to colonize many
parts of the world that were not industrialized, gaining access to the raw
materials needed for their factories, a practice known as imperialism. In 1800
Europeans occupied or controlled about 34 percent of the land surface of the
world; by 1914 this had risen to 84 percent.

Britain led the 19th-century takeovers and ended the century with the largest
noncontiguous empire the world has ever known. (―The sun never sets on the
British Empire,‖ as the British liked to say.) Britain exerted great influence in
China and the Ottoman Empire without taking over direct rule, while in
India, Southeast Asia, and 60 percent of Africa, it assumed all governmental
functions.

In the last decade of the 19th century most European nations grabbed for a
piece of Africa, and by 1900 the only independent country left on the
continent was Ethiopia. After World War II (1939–1945) Europe’s colonies
demanded their independence, which didn’t always happen immediately or
without conflict but eventually took root. Now, in the early 21st century,
Brazil, China, and India are becoming economic powerhouses, while many
European countries are enduring troubled economic times.

Workers hauling coal near Fengjie, China, 2005 © Bob Sacha/CORBIS

Consequences of the Industrial Revolution
The statistics that reflect the effects of industrialization are staggering. In
1700, before the widespread use of fossil fuels, the world had a population of
670 million people. By 2011 the world’s population had reached 6.7 billion, a
10-fold increase in a mere 300 years. In the 20th century alone, the world’s
economy grew 14-fold, the per capita income grew almost fourfold, and the
use of energy expanded at least 13-fold. This kind of growth has never before
occurred in human history.

Many people around the world today enjoy the benefits of industrialization.
With so much more energy flowing through human systems than ever before,
many of us must do much less hard physical labor than earlier generations
did. People today are able to feed more babies and bring them to adulthood.
Many people vote and participate in modern states, which provide education,
social security, and health benefits. Large numbers of people enjoy levels of
wealth, health, education, travel, and life expectancy unimagined before
industrialization.

The benefits of industrialization, however, have come at great cost. For one
thing, the rate of change (acceleration) is now so rapid that individuals and
social systems struggle to keep up. And strong arguments can be made about
depersonalization in the age of mass production.

The increased complexity of the industrial system has also brought increased
fragility. Industrialization depends on the interaction of many diverse
components, any one of which could fail. We know that many of the essential
components of the industrial system, and the natural resources it depends on,
are being compromised — the soil, the oceans, the atmosphere, the
underground water levels, plants, and animals are all at risk. Will growth
continue unchecked, or are we approaching the end of an unsustainable
industrial era? Whatever the future holds, we’ll be debating — and dealing
with — the consequences of modernization for years to come.

By Cynthia Stokes Brown

For Further Discussion

The innovations of the Industrial Revolution transformed textile production.
Can you think of innovations today in some other industry that are
transforming that industry and changing the way humans live? Share your
answer in the Questions Area below. Then, respond to someone else’s
answer, commenting on the characteristics of that transformation that either
make it similar to or different from what happened in the Industrial
Revolution.

Sources
Allen, Robert C. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Marks, Robert B. The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and

Ecological Narrative. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.

Strayer, Robert W. Ways of the World: A Brief Global History. Vol. II: Since
1500, Ch. 18: ―Revolutions of Industrialization, 1750–1914.‖ Boston and
New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009.

Uglow, Jenny. The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the
World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.
 The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means,
how to respond

We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way
we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the
transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before. We do not
yet know just how it will unfold, but one thing is clear: the response to it must be
integrated and comprehensive, involving all stakeholders of the global polity, from the
public and private sectors to academia and civil society.

The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production.
The Second used electric power to create mass production. The Third used electronics
and information technology to automate production. Now a Fourth Industrial Revolution
is building on the Third, the digital revolution that has been occurring since the middle of
the last century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines
between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.

There are three reasons why today’s transformations represent not merely a
prolongation of the Third Industrial Revolution but rather the arrival of a Fourth and
distinct one: velocity, scope, and systems impact. The speed of current breakthroughs
has no historical precedent. When compared with previous industrial revolutions, the
Fourth is evolving at an exponential rather than a linear pace. Moreover, it is disrupting
almost every industry in every country. And the breadth and depth of these changes
herald the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and
governance.

The possibilities of billions of people connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented

processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge, are unlimited. And these
possibilities will be multiplied by emerging technology breakthroughs in fields such as
artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing,
nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum
computing.

Already, artificial intelligence is all around us, from self-driving cars and drones to virtual
assistants and software that translate or invest. Impressive progress has been made in
AI in recent years, driven by exponential increases in computing power and by the
availability of vast amounts of data, from software used to discover new drugs to
algorithms used to predict our cultural interests. Digital fabrication technologies,
meanwhile, are interacting with the biological world on a daily basis. Engineers,
designers, and architects are combining computational design, additive manufacturing,
materials engineering, and synthetic biology to pioneer a symbiosis between
microorganisms, our bodies, the products we consume, and even the buildings we
inhabit.

Challenges and opportunities

Like the revolutions that preceded it, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has the potential to
raise global income levels and improve the quality of life for populations around the
world. To date, those who have gained the most from it have been consumers able to
afford and access the digital world; technology has made possible new products and
services that increase the efficiency and pleasure of our personal lives. Ordering a cab,
booking a flight, buying a product, making a payment, listening to music, watching a
film, or playing a game—any of these can now be done remotely.

In the future, technological innovation will also lead to a supply-side miracle, with long-
term gains in efficiency and productivity. Transportation and communication costs will
drop, logistics and global supply chains will become more effective, and the cost of
trade will diminish, all of which will open new markets and drive economic growth.

At the same time, as the economists Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee have
pointed out, the revolution could yield greater inequality, particularly in its potential to
disrupt labor markets. As automation substitutes for labor across the entire economy,
the net displacement of workers by machines might exacerbate the gap between
returns to capital and returns to labor. On the other hand, it is also possible that the
displacement of workers by technology will, in aggregate, result in a net increase in safe
and rewarding jobs.

We cannot foresee at this point which scenario is likely to emerge, and history suggests
that the outcome is likely to be some combination of the two. However, I am convinced
of one thing—that in the future, talent, more than capital, will represent the critical factor
of production. This will give rise to a job market increasingly segregated into “low-
skill/low-pay” and “high-skill/high-pay” segments, which in turn will lead to an increase in
social tensions.

In addition to being a key economic concern, inequality represents the greatest societal
concern associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The largest beneficiaries of
innovation tend to be the providers of intellectual and physical capital—the innovators,
shareholders, and investors—which explains the rising gap in wealth between those
dependent on capital versus labor. Technology is therefore one of the main reasons
why incomes have stagnated, or even decreased, for a majority of the population in
high-income countries: the demand for highly skilled workers has increased while the
demand for workers with less education and lower skills has decreased. The result is a
job market with a strong demand at the high and low ends, but a hollowing out of the
middle.

This helps explain why so many workers are disillusioned and fearful that their own real
incomes and those of their children will continue to stagnate. It also helps explain why
middle classes around the world are increasingly experiencing a pervasive sense of
dissatisfaction and unfairness. A winner-takes-all economy that offers only limited
access to the middle class is a recipe for democratic malaise and dereliction.

Discontent can also be fueled by the pervasiveness of digital technologies and the
dynamics of information sharing typified by social media. More than 30 percent of the
global population now uses social media platforms to connect, learn, and share
information. In an ideal world, these interactions would provide an opportunity for cross-
cultural understanding and cohesion. However, they can also create and propagate
unrealistic expectations as to what constitutes success for an individual or a group, as
well as offer opportunities for extreme ideas and ideologies to spread.

The impact on business

An underlying theme in my conversations with global CEOs and senior business

executives is that the acceleration of innovation and the velocity of disruption are hard
to comprehend or anticipate and that these drivers constitute a source of constant
surprise, even for the best connected and most well informed. Indeed, across all
industries, there is clear evidence that the technologies that underpin the Fourth
Industrial Revolution are having a major impact on businesses.

On the supply side, many industries are seeing the introduction of new technologies that
create entirely new ways of serving existing needs and significantly disrupt existing
industry value chains. Disruption is also flowing from agile, innovative competitors who,
thanks to access to global digital platforms for research, development, marketing, sales,
and distribution, can oust well-established incumbents faster than ever by improving the
quality, speed, or price at which value is delivered.

Major shifts on the demand side are also occurring, as growing transparency, consumer
engagement, and new patterns of consumer behavior (increasingly built upon access to
mobile networks and data) force companies to adapt the way they design, market, and
deliver products and services.

A key trend is the development of technology-enabled platforms that combine both

demand and supply to disrupt existing industry structures, such as those we see within
the “sharing” or “on demand” economy. These technology platforms, rendered easy to
use by the smartphone, convene people, assets, and data—thus creating entirely new
ways of consuming goods and services in the process. In addition, they lower the
barriers for businesses and individuals to create wealth, altering the personal and
professional environments of workers. These new platform businesses are rapidly
multiplying into many new services, ranging from laundry to shopping, from chores to
parking, from massages to travel.

On the whole, there are four main effects that the Fourth Industrial Revolution has on
business—on customer expectations, on product enhancement, on collaborative
innovation, and on organizational forms. Whether consumers or businesses, customers
are increasingly at the epicenter of the economy, which is all about improving how
customers are served. Physical products and services, moreover, can now be
enhanced with digital capabilities that increase their value. New technologies make
assets more durable and resilient, while data and analytics are transforming how they
are maintained. A world of customer experiences, data-based services, and asset
performance through analytics, meanwhile, requires new forms of collaboration,
particularly given the speed at which innovation and disruption are taking place. And the
emergence of global platforms and other new business models, finally, means that
talent, culture, and organizational forms will have to be rethought.

Overall, the inexorable shift from simple digitization (the Third Industrial Revolution) to
innovation based on combinations of technologies (the Fourth Industrial Revolution) is
forcing companies to reexamine the way they do business. The bottom line, however, is
the same: business leaders and senior executives need to understand their changing
environment, challenge the assumptions of their operating teams, and relentlessly and
continuously innovate.

The impact on government

As the physical, digital, and biological worlds continue to converge, new technologies
and platforms will increasingly enable citizens to engage with governments, voice their
opinions, coordinate their efforts, and even circumvent the supervision of public
authorities. Simultaneously, governments will gain new technological powers to
increase their control over populations, based on pervasive surveillance systems and
the ability to control digital infrastructure. On the whole, however, governments will
increasingly face pressure to change their current approach to public engagement and
policymaking, as their central role of conducting policy diminishes owing to new sources
of competition and the redistribution and decentralization of power that new
technologies make possible.

Ultimately, the ability of government systems and public authorities to adapt will
determine their survival. If they prove capable of embracing a world of disruptive
change, subjecting their structures to the levels of transparency and efficiency that will
enable them to maintain their competitive edge, they will endure. If they cannot evolve,
they will face increasing trouble.

This will be particularly true in the realm of regulation. Current systems of public policy
and decision-making evolved alongside the Second Industrial Revolution, when
decision-makers had time to study a specific issue and develop the necessary response
or appropriate regulatory framework. The whole process was designed to be linear and
mechanistic, following a strict “top down” approach.

But such an approach is no longer feasible. Given the Fourth Industrial Revolution’s
rapid pace of change and broad impacts, legislators and regulators are being
challenged to an unprecedented degree and for the most part are proving unable to
cope.

How, then, can they preserve the interest of the consumers and the public at large while
continuing to support innovation and technological development? By embracing “agile”
governance, just as the private sector has increasingly adopted agile responses to
software development and business operations more generally. This means regulators
must continuously adapt to a new, fast-changing environment, reinventing themselves
so they can truly understand what it is they are regulating. To do so, governments and
regulatory agencies will need to collaborate closely with business and civil society.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution will also profoundly impact the nature of national and
international security, affecting both the probability and the nature of conflict. The history
of warfare and international security is the history of technological innovation, and today
is no exception. Modern conflicts involving states are increasingly “hybrid” in nature,
combining traditional battlefield techniques with elements previously associated with
nonstate actors. The distinction between war and peace, combatant and noncombatant,
and even violence and nonviolence (think cyberwarfare) is becoming uncomfortably
blurry.

As this process takes place and new technologies such as autonomous or biological
weapons become easier to use, individuals and small groups will increasingly join states
in being capable of causing mass harm. This new vulnerability will lead to new fears.
But at the same time, advances in technology will create the potential to reduce the
scale or impact of violence, through the development of new modes of protection, for
example, or greater precision in targeting.

The impact on people

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, finally, will change not only what we do but also who
we are. It will affect our identity and all the issues associated with it: our sense of
privacy, our notions of ownership, our consumption patterns, the time we devote to work
and leisure, and how we develop our careers, cultivate our skills, meet people, and
nurture relationships. It is already changing our health and leading to a “quantified” self,
and sooner than we think it may lead to human augmentation. The list is endless
because it is bound only by our imagination.

I am a great enthusiast and early adopter of technology, but sometimes I wonder

whether the inexorable integration of technology in our lives could diminish some of our
quintessential human capacities, such as compassion and cooperation. Our relationship
with our smartphones is a case in point. Constant connection may deprive us of one of
life’s most important assets: the time to pause, reflect, and engage in meaningful
conversation.

One of the greatest individual challenges posed by new information technologies is

privacy. We instinctively understand why it is so essential, yet the tracking and sharing
of information about us is a crucial part of the new connectivity. Debates about
fundamental issues such as the impact on our inner lives of the loss of control over our
data will only intensify in the years ahead. Similarly, the revolutions occurring in
biotechnology and AI, which are redefining what it means to be human by pushing back
the current thresholds of life span, health, cognition, and capabilities, will compel us to
redefine our moral and ethical boundaries.

Shaping the future

Neither technology nor the disruption that comes with it is an exogenous force over
which humans have no control. All of us are responsible for guiding its evolution, in the
decisions we make on a daily basis as citizens, consumers, and investors. We should
thus grasp the opportunity and power we have to shape the Fourth Industrial Revolution
and direct it toward a future that reflects our common objectives and values.

To do this, however, we must develop a comprehensive and globally shared view of

how technology is affecting our lives and reshaping our economic, social, cultural, and
human environments. There has never been a time of greater promise, or one of
greater potential peril. Today’s decision-makers, however, are too often trapped in
traditional, linear thinking, or too absorbed by the multiple crises demanding their
attention, to think strategically about the forces of disruption and innovation shaping our
future.

In the end, it all comes down to people and values. We need to shape a future that
works for all of us by putting people first and empowering them. In its most pessimistic,
dehumanized form, the Fourth Industrial Revolution may indeed have the potential to
“robotize” humanity and thus to deprive us of our heart and soul. But as a complement
to the best parts of human nature—creativity, empathy, stewardship—it can also lift
humanity into a new collective and moral consciousness based on a shared sense of
destiny. It is incumbent on us all to make sure the latter prevails.

This article was first published in Foreign Affairs

Author: Klaus Schwab is Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic
Forum

Image: An Aeronavics drone sits in a paddock near the town of Raglan, New Zealand,
July 6, 2015. REUTERS/Naomi Tajitsu