Axe of iron from Swedish Iron Age, found at Gotland, Sweden

A technological revolution is a period in which one or more technologies is replaced by another novel technology in a short amount of time. It is an era of accelerated

technological progress Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

characterized by new

innovation Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed enti ...

s whose rapid

application Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...

and

diffusion Diffusion is the net movement of anything (for example, atoms, ions, molecules, energy) generally from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration. Diffusion is driven by a gradient in Gibbs free energy or chemical ...

typically cause an abrupt change in society.

Description

A technological revolution generally increases productivity and

efficiency Efficiency is the often measurable ability to avoid wasting materials, energy, efforts, money, and time in doing something or in producing a desired result. In a more general sense, it is the ability to do things well, successfully, and without ...

. It may involve material or ideological changes caused by the introduction of a device or system. Some examples of its potential impact are business management, education, social interactions, finance and research methodology; it is not limited strictly to technical aspects. A technological revolution significantly changes the material conditions of human existence and can reshape culture. It can play a role as a trigger of a chain of various and unpredictable changes.

What distinguishes a technological revolution from a random collection of
technology systems Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...
and justifies conceptualizing it as a revolution are two basic features: 1. The strong interconnectedness and interdependence of the participating systems in their technologies and markets. 2. The capacity to transform profoundly the rest of the economy (and eventually society).

The consequences of a technological revolution are not necessarily positive. For example, innovations, such as the use of

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when ...

as an energy source, can have negative environmental impact and cause

technological unemployment Technological unemployment is the loss of jobs caused by technological change. It is a key type of structural unemployment. Technological change typically includes the introduction of labour-saving "mechanical-muscle" machines or more efficie ...

. Joseph Schumpeter described this contradictory nature of technological revolution, creative destruction. The concept of technological revolution is based on the idea that

is not

linear Linearity is the property of a mathematical relationship ('' function'') that can be graphically represented as a straight line. Linearity is closely related to '' proportionality''. Examples in physics include rectilinear motion, the linear ...

but undulatory. Technological revolution can be * Relation revolution (social relations, phones) * Sectoral (more technological changes in one sector, e.g. Green Revolution and Commercial Revolution) * Universal (interconnected radical changes in more sectors, the universal technological revolution can be seen as a complex of several parallel sectoral technological revolutions, e.g.

Second Industrial Revolution The Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the Technological Revolution, was a phase of rapid scientific discovery, standardization, mass production and industrialization from the late 19th century into the early 20th century. The ...

and Renaissance technological revolution) The concept of universal technological revolutions is a key factor in the Neo-Schumpeterian theory of long economic waves/cycles (

Carlota Perez Carlota Perez ( es, Carlota Pérez; born September 20, 1939, in Caracas) is a British-Venezuelan scholar specialized in technology and socio-economic development. She researches the concept of Techno-Economic Paradigm Shifts and the theory of gre ...

, Tessaleno Devezas, Daniel Šmihula and others).

History

The most well-known examples of a technological revolutions were the

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

in the 19th century, the scientific-technical revolution about 1950–1960, the

Neolithic revolution The Neolithic Revolution, or the (First) Agricultural Revolution, was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, making an inc ...

, and the Digital Revolution. It is not easy to define which technological revolutions have been crucial and influenced not only one segment of human activity, but had a universal impact. One universal technological revolution may be composed of several sectoral technological revolutions (in

science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence ...

, industry,

transport Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land ( rail and road), water, cable, pipelin ...

and the like). There are several universal technological revolutions which occurred during the

modern era The term modern period or modern era (sometimes also called modern history or modern times) is the period of history that succeeds the Middle Ages (which ended approximately 1500 AD). This terminology is a historical periodization that is appli ...

Western culture Leonardo da Vinci's ''Vitruvian Man''. Based on the correlations of ideal Body proportions">human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise ''De architectura''. image:Plato Pio-Cle ...

: # Financial-agricultural revolution (1600–1740) #

Industrial revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

(1780–1840) # Technical revolution or

(1870–1920) # Scientific-technical revolution (1940–1970) # Information and telecommunications revolution, also known as the Digital Revolution or Third Industrial Revolution (1975–2021) Attempts to find comparable periods of well defined technological revolutions in the

pre-modern era The term premodern refers to the period in human history immediately preceding the modern era, as well as the conceptual framework in the humanities and social sciences relating to the artistic, literary and philosophical practices which preceded t ...

are highly speculative. Probably one of the most systematic attempts to suggest a timeline of technological revolutions in pre-modern

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

was done by Daniel Šmihula: # Indo-European technological revolution (1900–1100 BC) # Celtic and Greek technological revolution (700–200 BC) # Germano-Slavic technological revolution (300–700 AD) # Medieval technological revolution (930–1200 AD) # Renaissance technological revolution (1340–1470 AD)

Structure of technological revolution

Each revolution comprises the following engines for growth: * New cheap inputs * New products * New processes Every

revolution In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...

utilizes something that is cheap. For instance, the

had cheap coal for iron steam engines which led to production of Iron railways. The same applied in the technological revolution where there was cheap

microelectronics Microelectronics is a subfield of electronics. As the name suggests, microelectronics relates to the study and manufacture (or microfabrication) of very small electronic designs and components. Usually, but not always, this means micrometre- ...

for computers which thus progressed the

internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

. A combination of low-cost input and new infrastructures are at the core of each revolution to achieve their all pervasive impact.

Potential future technological revolutions

After 2000, a popular idea arose, that a sequence of technological revolutions is not over and in the forthcoming future the world will witness the dawn of a new universal technological revolution. The main innovations should develop in the fields of nanotechnologies, alternative fuel and energy systems, biotechnologies,

genetic engineering Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification or genetic manipulation, is the modification and manipulation of an organism's genes using technology. It is a set of technologies used to change the genetic makeup of cells, including ...

, new materials technologies and so on . '' The Second Machine Age'' is the term adopted in a 2014 book by Erik Brynjolfsson and

Andrew McAfee Andrew Paul McAfee (born ), a principal research scientist at MIT, is cofounder and codirector of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He studies how digital technologies are changing the world. Lif ...

. The industrial development plan of

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

began promoting the term Industry 4.0. In 2019, at the

World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental and lobbying organisation based in Cologny, canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German engineer and economist Klaus Schwab. The foundation, ...

meeting in

Davos , neighboring_municipalities= Arosa, Bergün/Bravuogn, Klosters-Serneus, Langwies, S-chanf, Susch , twintowns = } Davos (, ; or ; rm, ; archaic it, Tavate) is an Alps, Alpine resort town and a Municipalities of Switzerland, muni ...

, Japan promoted another round of advancements called Society 5.0. The phrase Fourth Industrial Revolution was first introduced by Klaus Schwab, the executive chairman of the

, in a 2015 article in ''

Foreign Affairs ''Foreign Affairs'' is an American magazine of international relations and U.S. foreign policy published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, membership organization and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy a ...

'', "Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution" was the theme of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2016 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. On October 10, 2016, the Forum announced the opening of its Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

. This was also subject and title of Schwab's 2016 book. Schwab includes in this fourth era technologies that combine hardware,

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...

, and

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary ...

( cyber-physical systems), and emphasizes advances in

communication Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inqui ...

and connectivity. Schwab expects this era to be marked by breakthroughs in emerging technologies in fields such as

robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...

nanotechnology Nanotechnology, also shortened to nanotech, is the use of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale for industrial purposes. The earliest, widespread description of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal ...

quantum computing Quantum computing is a type of computation whose operations can harness the phenomena of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, interference, and entanglement. Devices that perform quantum computations are known as quantum computers. Though ...

biotechnology Biotechnology is the integration of natural sciences and engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms, cells, parts thereof and molecular analogues for products and services. The term ''biotechnology'' was first used ...

, the internet of things, the industrial internet of things (IIoT), decentralized consensus, fifth-generation wireless technologies (5G), 3D printing and fully autonomous vehicles. Jeremy Rifkin includes technologies like 5G, autonomous vehicles, Internet of Things, and

renewable energy Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources that are naturally replenished on a human timescale. It includes sources such as sunlight, wind, the movement of water, and geothermal heat. Although most renewable energy ...

in the Third Industrial Revolution. An emerging group of economists do not think that technological growth will continue to the same degree it has in the past. Robert J. Gordon holds the view that today’s inventions are simply not as radical as

electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as describe ...

and the

internal combustion engine An internal combustion engine (ICE or IC engine) is a heat engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer (usually air) in a combustion chamber that is an integral part of the working fluid flow circuit. In an internal co ...

were. He believes that modern technology is not as innovative as others claim, and is far from creating a revolution.

List of intellectual, philosophical and technological revolutions (sectoral or universal)

;Pre-Industrialization * The

Upper Paleolithic Revolution Behavioral modernity is a suite of behavioral and cognitive traits that distinguishes current ''Homo sapiens'' from other anatomically modern humans, hominins, and primates. Most scholars agree that modern human behavior can be characterized by ...

: the emergence of "high culture", new technologies and regionally distinct cultures (50,000–40,000 years ago). * The

Neolithic Revolution The Neolithic Revolution, or the (First) Agricultural Revolution, was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, making an inc ...

(perhaps 13,000 years ago), which formed the basis for human civilization to develop. * The Renaissance technological revolution: the set of inventions during the Renaissance period, roughly the 14th through the 16th century. * The Commercial Revolution: a period of European economic expansion,

colonialism Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose their reli ...

and

mercantilism Mercantilism is an economic policy that is designed to maximize the exports and minimize the imports for an economy. It promotes imperialism, colonialism, tariffs and subsidies on traded goods to achieve that goal. The policy aims to reduce ...

which lasted from approximately the 16th century until the early 18th century. * The Price Revolution: a series of

economic An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with th ...

events from the second half of the 15th century to the first half of the 17th, the price revolution refers most specifically to the high rate of

inflation In economics, inflation is an increase in the general price level of goods and services in an economy. When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services; consequently, inflation corresponds to a reduct ...

that characterized the period across

Western Europe Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...

. * The

Scientific Revolution The Scientific Revolution was a series of events that marked the emergence of modern science during the early modern period, when developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy) and chemistry transforme ...

: a fundamental transformation in scientific ideas around the 16th century. * The

British Agricultural Revolution The British Agricultural Revolution, or Second Agricultural Revolution, was an unprecedented increase in agricultural production in Britain arising from increases in labour and land productivity between the mid-17th and late 19th centuries. Agric ...

(18th century), which spurred urbanization and consequently helped launch the

. ;Industrialization * The First Industrial Revolution: the major shift of technological, socioeconomic and cultural conditions in the late 18th century and early 19th century that began in Britain and spread throughout the world. ** The

Market Revolution The Market Revolution in 19th century United States is a historical model which argues that there was a drastic change of the economy that disoriented and coordinated all aspects of the market economy in line with both nations and the world. Char ...

: a drastic change in the manual labour system originating in the

Southern United States The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...

(and soon moving to the

Northern United States The Northern United States, commonly referred to as the American North, the Northern States, or simply the North, is a geographical or historical region of the United States. History Early history Before the 19th century westward expansion, the "N ...

) and later spreading to the entire world (about 1800–1900). * The

(1871–1914). * The Green Revolution (1945–1975): the use of industrial fertilizers and new crops greatly increased the world's agricultural output. * The Third Industrial Revolution: the sweeping changes brought about by

computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...

and communication technology, starting from circa 1950 with the creation of the first general-purpose electronic computers. * The Information Revolution: the massive economic,

social Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives from ...

and technological changes resulting from the Digital Revolution (after 1960?).

References