Jeremy Rifkin’s thinking about how to build a clean-energy powered, automation-filled future is inspiring major infrastructure plans in Europe and China. Can his new Vice documentary convince American business leaders to buy in?
Putting aside Rifkin’s stance on the Third (vs. Fourth) Industrial Revolution of other pundits, the convergence -- and cycles thereof -- is fascinating:
There have been, according to Rifkin, at least seven major economic paradigm shifts in history, and they all share a common denominator–at a moment in time, three defining technologies emerge and then converge to create an infrastructure that fundamentally changes how we manage, power, and move economic activity across the value chains. First, new communication technology more efficiently manages economic activity. Second, new sources of energy more efficiently power economic activity. And third, new transportation and logistics more efficiently move economic activity.
The first industrial revolution was led in Britain by steam-powered printing, which converged with cheap coal, then the steam engine to move the coal. The second industrial revolution kicked off in the U.S. when centralized communication was introduced by the telephone (later came radio and TV). When the telephone converged with cheap Texas oil, powered by the combustion engine, and the automobile and interstate highways, it created the advancements of the 20th century.
Today, Rifkin says the new paradigm is the convergence of a digital communication internet, a digital renewable energy internet, and a digital automated transportation and logistics internet, to create a super-internet of things infrastructure. The first aspect is already well underway and sitting in your pocket right now in the form of your smartphone. But the second and third elements–a decentralized renewable energy power structure and an automated transportation infrastructure–are still in their infancy.
Rifkin sees decades of potential employment growth in getting them up to speed.
Communication, energy, transportation. Noted.
