One of the pattern of profitability and corruption is caused by the ability of humans to systemize the capitalism while ignoring the facts that the world is changing and everything is sort of, in Buddha’s words, never the same. When systems are the recognized tools to boost up the revenue, ironically it is recommended not just to keep an eye on them but to always seek for the ways to let them be and grow on their own. But once “the unwanted growth” of the resources, supposedly not changing much as long as they are plugged into the larger and the greater mechanism of generating wealth, begins to be identified and measured, as you may see in the change in attitude of organizations about structures, digitalization, logistics and so on, which are not often designed just to make a few cycles of transformations but to keep on evolving with the sense of consistent adaptation to the new norm and the societal changes, we can finally get out of the deadly loop of economical disasters coming right at the peak of the bubbles.
If this is what the digitalization has given to us, it might be better to incorporate it as one of the essence industrial revolutions can provide to us, humans. Then the fuel for the repeated revolutions are, on top of that the world’s impermanence, life itself that grows, ascends and evolves moment to moment, day to day basis. And that “life” might be the next “gift” from the universe. When we start putting lives into everything matters, the new imbalance will begin to buzz around.
Marketing, as the method o connect the sellers to the people in the target market, though undoubtedly being one of the core business disciplines, angled not just outward but elsewhere to communicate the important essence to them, is another system of wealth creation (not just “selling) and it is considered to be important to effectively roll out leaving a room within the strategy for something ground up and artistic aiming to cut through and rise above the current “unnatural” systems of businesses around the world. “Wealth creation”- here, it does not just mean the amount of revenue or saved money getting increased or generated even more, but also the humans and the society tapping into the new level of abundance in life to the extent that they no longer experience any scarcity of what they need and want. Well, does it sound like a yoga meditation lecture? In short, marketing is the way to advance the existing economical system, in my opinion, and to keep that in mind of marketers can make a big difference.
Back to the topic, here are the summaries of the upfront and the hidden "trends" of the industry revolutions:
| time | essence of revolutions | Impact to the society | Downside | Driver to the next |
Industry 1.0 | 18th- early 19th | Factories, steam power, higher productivity, slaves and labors | Payment in cash, new status, culture, politics, civil war, slaves and factory girls. | Abuse to the physics, harsh labor condition and higher profit | Drive to the better health and wellbeing |
Industry 2.0 | 19th - 20th | Electricity and assemble lines. Faster and better productivity. | Wage cut, new culture, new relationships between capitalists and workers, | Group and ethical abuse affecting the virtue, morality, relationships | Drive to the better social relationships and community wellbeing. |
Industry 3.0 | '70s - beginning of 21st | Partial automation and memory system. No-human environment. Robots. Know-hows. | Great Depression, collapse of financial systems, inflation, confusion. | Mass confusion, financial abuse to the intelligence Great Depression, financial crisis | Drive to the better intelligence as a whole to the greater level of the society |
Industry 4.0 | 21st century - present | Information technology, communication revolution and digital innovation. Internet | fraud, misinformation,misunderstandings and privacy abuse | Abuse to the emotions, crossing the borderlines, privacy abuse and power of abuse | Drive to the higher quality of life, mental and emotional wellbeing, peace making and philanthropy |
Industry 5.0 | next | Artificial intelligence | ? | Abuse to the core values of humans? | identity, heart and soul..?? Humanity? |
Hope is that the revolution is the upward spiral movement that does not always induce zero-sum games. There will be the win-win relationships and always the beneficiaries while some have to put everything into the battle for themselves. However, as you may see in the chart, the profitable system revolutions make happen always come with the quite violent downside. It can be said that violence is one of the elements that can never fit into the economical viewpoint, e.g., the supply-demand chart never takes in the forcible purchase with robbery, like, John has to buy a gift to Mary and robs Peter to make Jane go gift shopping for him to buy it under his name which Jeff steals and gives it back to Peter who gives it to Mary under Jane's name, charging John for the debt payment which John fulfills by robbing Mary to make enough money for it...., (Well, this is the trendy shopping that many people do in this country! What does the chart say? ) it might be fair to conclude that our revolutions do have blind spots and yet with them, we move onto the next phase of the human economic history.
I hate to be uncertain about what talk about but the more I think about it, the more it begins to seem to me that the next industrial revolution and the collapse of it will occur first as the abuse to identity, psychical invasion and mental abuse by artificial intelligence that will be shed light upon as the superhero bringing about the revolution itself. Then the recovery as well as the escape from it also to cause the following revolution will the about that - the damage to the invisible assets within their mental and etherial territories that are hardly been admitted to be so as their belongings or properties. When those are broken, we lose the miracle power of our brains - we will have to be robotic in some ways completely obedient to what the biological reactions will collectively create within each one of us. If this is the most profitable strategy for the robots and are the fatal disasters for humans as a whole, knowingly or not, the next phase is not even imaginable, but I guess that is how it should be. Compared to the physics, one’s owned psyche (or shared if broken) feels so close to ourselves and more dangerous. But if we are to repeat the history, there has to be some sort of new frustration that should then drive forth the new revolution.