4IR
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
We are at the beginning of 4IR. What is it? Let’s do key words for each so far. Industrial Revolution number:
1. Mechanisation: textile looms, plough, steam
2. Heavy industry: Mines, Oil, Electricity
3. Telecoms: Electronics, Computers, Nuclear, Space
4. Internet: ATMs, Cellphones, Smartphones
Perhaps even more simply, we can trace the developments by travel:
horse (dorp)
steam (city)
jetliner (state, continent)
rocketliner (continent, planet)
Really, rocket? Yes. Elon Musk thinks we can go anywhere on earth in half an hour. Where the Concorde billboards shouted Breakfast in London, Lunch in New York (some added "Luggage in Hong Kong"), Musk believes it can be (for example) Breakfast in London, Tea in Sydney. Since SpaceX is already well into working on getting to Mars, why not just believe him? His “Starship” (looking like a huge, stainless steel beer can, maybe as big as those cylindrical apartment blocks) launched on Tuesday 4th of August, lifted itself 150m, then gently, successfully returned to the the ground.
Only a decade ago, rockets became junk soon after launch. These days, SpaceX returns them into use, though we don’t know whether Starship will be re-used.
What has really changed from revolution to revolution, and what changes will 4IR bring?
The clear changes were in speed. Quicker travel, quicker production, quicker communication. The Postal Economy survived through One thru Three, but has taken a step back, morphing into a mainly courier business. Have letters become too little to send?
4IR speeds are astonishing. Take a nanosecond. A nanosecond is to one second as one second is to 32 years.
The changes in speed also apply to pandemic spread, a lesson learned from the Spanish Flu of 1918. It travelled at the speed of soldiers returning home. In 1918, a soldier took weeks to return to Sydney from London. Putting this in rocketliner terms, COVID–19 could jump from London to Sydney in a half an hour.
It stands to reason that space travel will not be a matter of hopping on the next available rocket - not without a complete set of pandemic precautions, no matter how long they may take. There’s always a securocrat atound to slow travel down!