Technological revolution
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 characterized by new innovations whose rapid application and diffusion typically cause an abrupt change in society. Description. A technological revolution generally increases productivity and efficiency. 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. The  technological revolution rewrites 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 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  as an energy source, can have negative environmental impact and cause technological unemployment. Schumpeter described this contradictory nature of technological revolution, creative destruction. The concept of technological revolution is based on the idea that technological progress is not linear but undulatory. Technological revolution can be The concept of universal technological revolutions is a key factor in the Neo-Schumpeterian theory of long economic waves/cycles (Carlota Perez, Tessaleno Devezas, Daniel Šmihula and others). History. The most well-known example of a technological revolution was the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, the scientific-technical revolution about 1950–1960, the Neolithic revolution , the Digital Revolution and so on. The notion of "technological revolution" is frequently overused, therefore it is not easy to define which technological revolutions having occurred during world history were really crucial and influenced not only one segment of human activity, but had a universal impact. One universal technological revolution should be composed of several sectoral technological revolutions (in science, industry, transport and the like). We can identify several universal technological revolutions which occurred during the modern era in Western culture: Attempts to find comparable periods of well defined technological revolutions in the pre-modern era are highly speculative. Probably  one of the most systematic attempts to suggest a timeline of technological revolutions in pre-modern Europe was done by Daniel Šmihula: Structure of technological revolution. Each revolution comprises the following engines for growth: Every revolution utilizes something that is cheap. For instance, the Industrial Revolution 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 for computers which thus progressed the internet. 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 there became popular the idea that a sequence of technological revolutions is not over and in the forthcoming future we 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, new materials technologies and so on . "The Second Machine Age" is the term adopted in a 2014 book by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. The industrial development plan of Germany began promoting the term Industry 4.0. In 2019, at the World Economic Forum meeting in  Davos, 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 World Economic Forum, in a 2015 article in "Foreign Affairs", "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. This was also subject and title of Schwab's 2016 book. Schwab includes in this fourth era technologies that combine hardware, software, and biology  (cyber-physical systems), and emphasizes advances in communication and connectivity. Schwab expects this era to be marked by breakthroughs in emerging technologies in fields such as robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, biotechnology, 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 in the Third Industrial Revolution. While the standard belief among economists is that the sequence for technological revolutions is not over, an emerging group of economists beg to  differ. Economist Robert Gordon holds the view that today’s inventions are simply not as radical as electricity and the internal combustion engine were. He believes that modern technology is not that innovative, and is far from creating a revolution. Three dimensional (3D) printing won’t affect large-scale manufacturing. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are nothing new. These technologies have been around at least since 2004 and have done nothing for growth which is a prerequisite for revolutions. It is obvious of course that nothing Gordon says foreshadows the possibility that something entirely unexpected, perhaps some previously unimagined combination  of pre-existing technologies, will prove to be transformative. It is just his hunch that it won’t. The hopes of a technological utopia are overblown in many regards. Innovation will only drag economic growth, rather than speed it up. As societies get richer they spend a greater portion of their income in the service industry, such as restaurant meals, in which productivity growth is meagre because automation is hard. Furthermore, the decline in reproduction is causing an ageing population which will result in low productivity and innovation all together. That combined with efforts to halt climate change will lead  to a world where decarbonizing technology will become priority. We are far more likely to have a social revolution fueled by climate change than we are to having a technological one. Relation to "technological revolution" and "technical revolution". Sometimes the notion of "technological revolution" is used for the Second Industrial Revolution in the period about 1900, but in this case, the designation "technical revolution" would be more proper. When the notion of technical revolution is used in more general meaning it is almost identical with the technological revolution, but the technological revolution requires material changes in used tools, machines, energy  sources, production processes. Technical revolution can be restricted to changes in management, organisation and so-called non-material technologies (e.g. a progress in mathematics or accounting).