Make new revolution work for us
Challenge of mammoth changes
MPs are back in the Commons this week debating how the UK can make the most of the fourth industrial revolution.
I confess to ignorance here. I know about the industrial revolution 200 years ago which harnessed steam power and gave us the railways and cheap textiles.
In the second industrial revolution of the early 20th century car magnate Henry Ford mastered assembly lines to invent mass production.
But I must be a couple of revolutions short of a full cycle as I had to look up the other two.
The third industrial revolution was the development of personal computers and digital technology and is still going on.
The fourth industrial revolution is around the corner with smart robots, driverless cars and 3D printing, which will soon make anything from a new garage to an African village.
Stuck in the Sahara in need of an airport? Just download one from your laptop. No screwing together or welding of parts required.
Industrial revolutions always cost jobs yet make more work. The agricultural revolution of 10,000 years ago started the trend.
Before that our ancestors were hunter- gatherers. Anthroplogists calculate they worked 30-hour weeks. The job was full of variety – downing mammoths, picking berries, dodging sabre-tooth tigers. Then we fell in love with wheat, and wheat was the dominant partner in the relationship.
Wheat made us look after it and created more work.
Fields had to be ploughed, seeds sown, furrows weeded, and crops harvested. Hard repetitive work, bent double half the time, which is when our back problems began.
Something new always seems to bring more work with it. Emails were meant to free us from laborious letter writing. I used to get half- a- dozen letters a week. Now I get 100 emails a day which all need attention and take ten times longer to get through than letters ever did.
There’s also a political revolution going on with voters rejecting traditional politics. That explains t he popularity of Donald Trump in America and Jeremy Corbyn here.
They would be even more popular if they could break with industrial tradition and find a way to create more jobs involving less work.