The Skills for Success in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

The skills for success in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Coincident with the rapid advancement of technology and information, no one can deny the fact that we are facing a new type of transition now – the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which could change our whole lifestyle. The Fourth Industrial Revolution, to some extent, is based on the Third Industrial Revolution. But in fact, it has great differences between two kinds of revolution, for example, unprecedented speed, wide scope and profound influence in system, which distinguish the coming Fourth and the passed Third. The new revolution merge lots of technologies together, like digital, computing, physical and so on, to connect all humans by mobile devices, to improve the efficiency of humans’ lives, and to heighten the level of the worldwide income (Schwab 2016). This essay is going to analyze the impacts that the Fourth Industrial Revolution brought and the skills to succeed in such a case.

As the precedent revolutions shown, this new revolution will also bring challenges as well as opportunities to us all. Obviously, continuously improving technology will enlarge the gap in wealth, which means that the rich people will become richer with the process of revolution, and adversely the poor people will become poorer than before. Because during the period of revolution, the advanced countries need more high-tech talent, and meanwhile, their demand for less-educated and low-skill labors will decrease (Schwab 2016). Simultaneously, innovation also bring great opportunities to us. For instance, technology progress diminishes the costs throughout the production and transportation which leads to the result that there is a boom in economic growth. It is, therefore, significant to grasp these opportunities to enhance the quality of our social lives.

In addition, corresponding effects may be brought by this new revolution. Firstly, there are four primary impacts on business – customer expectations, production enhancement, innovative collaboration and forms about organization (Schwab 2016). Developing technology provides an accessible platform to help businesses and individuals to create and accumulate wealth, and customers are becoming more essential in the contemporary economy. Then, the incredible velocity of change that the new revolution caused makes it difficult for governments to cope with. Some high-tech weapons will be easier to gain and use, which will cause a series of panic, but fortunately, high technology can also enable governments agencies to reduce violence to a degree by using new protective methods. Ultimately, the improvement of information will cause a bad effect that our privacies are easily exposed to the public. What’s worse, technology can probably obliterate our human abilities, for example, robots may replace humans to work, and most of us may become jobless or even degenerate.