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Ahmad Khan

Professor Rudham

ENGL 101 W05

24 July 2020

How Technology Contributes to Revolution

Today, we think of “technology” as electronic devices; a bunch of circuit boards and

robots with all these cool LEDs and whatnot, but technology is actually something much simpler

than that. Technology is really just another term for a new innovation discovered through the

application of knowledge in a certain field. Something as simple as an abacus can be considered

technology for the great value it brought in mathematics and the practical applications of it that

allowed ancient civilizations to evolve. Therefore, technology will always be directly correlated

to innovation, the bettering of life, and will always revolutionize; such is its purpose. In fact, a

technological revolution is happening as we speak. Technology will revolutionize every industry

in the job market and will completely change the way all of us live. It will revolutionize the way

that climate change is handled and our future energy sources; it will simply revolutionize the

world as we know it.

A major part of the technological revolution is how it will revolutionize the entire job

market. Technology is already vastly changing the job market, that being with automation

replacing many jobs, but also the implementation of technology in almost all workplaces. Every

company needs programmers and computer engineers just to function. “While automation will

eliminate very few occupations entirely in the next decade, it will affect portions of almost all

jobs to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the type of work they entail. Automation, now
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going beyond routine manufacturing activities, has the potential, as least with regard to its

technical feasibility, to transform sectors such as healthcare and finance, which involve a

substantial share of knowledge work” (Chui, Manyika, Miremadi 1). As these researches write,

automation will affect almost all sectors of industry, but it will also completely change

healthcare and finance for the better. This report discusses which jobs are likely to be completely

taken over by automation measured by “technical feasibility.” For example, they discuss the

likelihood of retail jobs to be automated, “Occupations in retailing, for example, involve

activities such as collecting or processing data, interacting with customers, and setting up

merchandise displays (which we classify as physical movement in a predictable environment).

Since all of these constituent activities have a different automation potential, we arrive at an

overall estimate for the sector by examining the time workers spend on each of them during the

workweek” (Chui, Manyika, Miremadi 4). Overall, the likelihood of a retail job being automated

is not very high at the moment, but in the nigh future many could potentially be automated.

There are already convenience stores such as Amazon Go that have no cashiers; you simply pick

up your groceries and leave! Jobs that are very likely to be automated soon include welders,

cutters, solderers, and brazers, simply because a robot can do their job much better and more

efficiently once the process is perfected. Many of these jobs have already been automated.

Nonetheless, automation and technology will revolutionize all job markets and industries.
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Figure 1: This is the job of a welder being automated. Most welding jobs are likely to be automated in the future, as robots

already do a great job at it.

Technology will revolutionize our future energy sources and will help us immensely in

tackling the dire issue of climate change. There is already very much we can do with existing

technologies to combat climate change, but a sort of revolution to utilize and expand on these

technologies will need to happen in order to slow it down immensely. “Emissions of CO2 and

other greenhouse gases can be reduced significantly using existing technologies, but stabilizing

concentrations will require a technological revolution--a "revolution" because it will require

fundamental change, achieved within a relatively short period of time (Barett 53).” As Barett

stated, there are existing technologies to slow down climate change, but a sort of revolution will

most definitely be needed in order to make significant changes. Luckily for Barett—and for all of

us--Professor Oreskes at Harvard University has already come up with a plan for how energy

will be dealt with in the future. “We have energy technologies that can power our civilation:

solar, wind, biomass... Maybe the wind is blowing in Denmark; the sun is shining in Germany,

and now you can move that energy through an integrated grid. We can supply energy to anyone
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who needs it; we can supply energy at all times” (Oreskes 5:26). Most of us likely know about

energy grids used to save energy and use it for later, most commonly when people have solar

panels, so that they can almost always rely on solar energy even when it is not sunny. Oreskes

disccusses the creation of a large regional integrated grid to supply energy to countries or areas

in a certain radius, saving the most possible energy creating maximum efficiency. She uses

Denmark and Germany as an example, two neighboring countries, in which Denmark would be

relying on wind power and Germany on solar energy, but when one of those countries is lacking

in energy, the integrated grid can be used to supply energy from the other country. An integrated

grid spanning a radius that far will revolutionize the future of energy and make it so that there

will be no lack of energy virtually anywhere. Additionally, it will immensely decrease the rate at

which climate change is growing, as they will be using all renewable energy sources with no

greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, technology will revolutionize our energy source system

while fully addressing climate change.

Figure 2: The image depicts a hypothetical integrated grid in which there are multiple energy sources and energy is being

supplied everywhere. Oreskes’s vision was at an even larger scale than this, however.

The new technological revolution or fourth industrial revolution will also bring huge

change to the future of production. Automation is of course a significant part of it, but another

significant part of it is digitalization and cloud computing. “The digitization of products, big data

and cloud computing make it easier to understand and meet individual customer needs more

accurately” (Moavenzadeh 3). As Moavenzadeh said, cloud computing and digitalization will be

able to use algorithms to determine customers’ needs more accurately, vastly changing the way

production works. Apart from physical automation, AI will take out even more jobs, such as

basic fact-only news articles. “50% of media, entertainment & information strategy officers

agree that by 2025 90% of the news read by the general public will be generated by computers”

(Moavenzadeh 6). Simply imagine a world where the news article you’ve read was written by a
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robot! The revolutions in data and what a computer is able to process well immensely affect all

forms of production.“The 4th industrial revolution will be a scale of computational power

leading to astonishing possibilities of data and intelligent processing scale.” (Skilton, Hovsepian

19.) Additionally, the software side of things will affect automation and the way machinery

handles jobs. “In the near future, intelligent products themselves will become an active

component within automated manufacturing systems” (Neges, Göbel, Christian). Therefore,

cloud computing and digitalization are revolutionizing the future of production.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are another essential part of the fourth

industrial revolution. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning is the utilization of

programming of a software that is now able to adapt to what it observes. Something as simple as

the recommended words that pop up on your phone when you are texting or typing is a form of

machine learning, as it adapts to your texting styles and assumes what you are most likely to type

next after a given word. Artificial intelligence will transform new societies and workplaces in

much larger ways than that, however. “Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are

transforming businesses and will contribute to economic growth via contributions to

productivity” (Manyika, James, and Kevin Sneader 1). Artificial intelligence while of course

being closely related to the computer science and engineering fields, will effect every field of

work and revolutionize all forms of productivity. It is also being used for combatting of climate

change and helping scientists achieve new efficient ways to provide renewable energy. “AI is

also being used in areas ranging from material science to medical research and climate science.

Application of the technologies in these and other disciplines could help tackle societal

“moonshot” challenges” (Manyika, James, and Kevin Sneader 2). Therefore, AI and machine
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learning will revolutionize the future in all forms of job industry, climate change, and simply the

way we live and perceive.

Technology plays a monumental role in revolution, if not the most important factor of it.

Technology has and will shape the future of production, all job industries, and prevent climate

change from being a threat. Technology may completely shift the way the economy functions;

with the growth of things such as the Amazon Go convenience store, there is potential for a near

cashless society. Technology will create a society where you’ll read news articles that weren’t

even written by a human, it might automatically right reports for scientists which would give

them even more time to research and innovate! Technology has the potential to create a world in

which there is complete equity with no poverty or starvation, combined with maximum

efficiency and progress to innovate even further. Technology simply has the power to

revolutionize the world unlike anything else.

Works Cited

Schlick, Jochen. "Cyber-physical systems in factory automation-Towards the 4th industrial

revolution." 2012 9th IEEE International Workshop on Factory Communication Systems. IEEE,

2012.

This article discusses the changes that technology that will bring to the way machinery is

automated and how it will effect the future of our job markets.

Barrett, Scott. "The coming global climate-technology revolution." Journal of Economic

Perspectives 23.2 (2009): 53-75.

This research article discusses the climate-technology revolution, and how technology

is/will be(ing) implemented to slower the effects of climate change.

What Is the Fourth Industrial Revolution? Dir. WorldEconomicForum. N.p., 18 July 2016. Web.

13 July 2020.

This video discusses the fourth industrial revolution, which is ongoing and will continue,

and discusses things such as AI and automation and the huge impact it will make on the world.

Moavenzadeh, John. "The 4th Industrial Revolution: Reshaping the Future of Production." DHL

Global Engineering & Manufacturing Summit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2015): 6-8.

This report with the World Economic Forum discusses how the 4th

industrial/technological revolution will shape the future of production.

Chui, Michael, James Manyika, and Mehdi Miremadi. "Where machines could replace humans

—and where they can’t (yet)." McKinsey Quarterly 30.2 (2016): 1-9.

This report talks about the impact of automation on the future and just how many jobs

will eventually be automated, revolutionizing the job market and overall production.

Skilton, Mark, and Felix Hovsepian. The 4th industrial revolution: Responding to the impact of

artificial intelligence on business. Springer, 2017.

This book discusses the impact that artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotics

will have on the future of business. It also generally discusses the impact that the 4th revolution

will have/is having on our future.

Manyika, James, and Kevin Sneader. "AI, automation, and the future of work: Ten things to

solve for." (2018).

This report by the McKinsey global institute discusses what impact AI and automation

will have on the future as well as ways that we will transition into this sort of society.