Page 21 - The Fourth Industrial Revolution

Advances in sensors are enabling robots to understand and respond better to

their environment and to engage in a broader variety of tasks such as
household chores. Contrary to the past when they had to be programmed
through an autonomous unit, robots can now access information remotely via
the cloud and thus connect with a network of other robots. When the next

generation of robots emerges, they will likely reflect an increasing emphasis
on human-machine collaboration. In Chapter Three, I will explore the
ethical and psychological questions raised by human-machine relations.

New materials

With attributes that seemed unimaginable a few years ago, new materials are
coming to market. On the whole, they are lighter, stronger, recyclable and

adaptive. There are now applications for smart materials that are self-
healing or self-cleaning, metals with memory that revert to their original
shapes, ceramics and crystals that turn pressure into energy, and so on.

Like many innovations of the fourth industrial revolution, it is hard to know
where developments in new materials will lead. Take advanced

nanomaterials such as graphene, which is about 200-times stronger than
steel, a million-times thinner than a human hair, and an efficient conductor of
6
heat and electricity. When graphene becomes price competitive (gram for
gram, it is one of the most expensive materials on earth, with a micrometer-
sized flake costing more than $1,000), it could significantly disrupt the

7
manufacturing and infrastructure industries. It could also profoundly affect
countries that are heavily reliant on a particular commodity.

Other new materials could play a major role in mitigating the global risks
we face. New innovations in thermoset plastics, for example, could make
reusable materials that have been considered nearly impossible to recycle

but are used in everything from mobile phones and circuit boards to
aerospace industry parts. The recent discovery of new classes of recyclable
thermosetting polymers called polyhexahydrotriazines (PHTs) is a major
step towards the circular economy, which is regenerative by design and
works by decoupling growth and resource needs. 8

2.1.2 Digital

21