The Fourth Industrial Revolution

Today we find ourselves at the beginning of the fourth industrial revolution, looking forward and, more important, possessing the ability to influence its path.

“And in an age of distraction, nothing is so luxurious as paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is so urgent as sitting still.”

“We may end up with a future in which a fraction of the workforce will do a portfolio of things to generate an income—you could be an Uber driver, an Instacart shopper, an Airbnb host and a TaskRabbit.”

It is up to us.

Above all, this book aims to emphasize the ways in which technology and society coexist. Technology is not an exogenous force over which we have no control.

both companies and countries must be at the frontier of innovation in all its forms, which means that strategies which primarily focus on reducing costs will be less effective than those which are based on offering products and services in more innovative ways.

As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “The future enters into us…in order to transform itself in us long before it happens.”73

Our relationship with our mobile technologies is a case in point. The fact that we are always connected may deprive us of one of our most important assets: the time to pause, reflect and engage in a substantive conversation neither aided by technology nor intermediated by

Two conceptual approaches exist. In the first, everything that is not explicitly forbidden is allowed. In the second, everything that is not explicitly allowed is forbidden.