On Technology, Society, and the Future of Innovation

We live in an exciting period of time where technology is driving innovation in manufacturing, transportation, energy, medicine and our own lives. We stand on the shoulders of giants owing to the engineers and innovators that brought about the life changing technologies which allowed us to be in the position we are in today. The advances that truly shifted the paradigm of society had such a great impact that they set into motion a new era in time. The earliest example of this is the first industrial revolution, where steam power ushered in a new way of life for people who were unaccustomed to life in factories. The second industrial revolution in the early 20th century was an even more dramatic shift in how society lived due to significant urbanization and socio-economic improvements. The Bessemer process increased the production of steel which was an essential resource that allowed for the mass expansion of railways and made manufactured steel goods like the new automobile affordable to the masses. The third industrial revolution started in the 1960’s with the advent of computer processors which shifted us from an analog age into the digital era. From the early age of computer technology, the size of these processors has followed Moore’s Law which predicts that every 2-3 years the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit double. That means we are able to have more computational power, in a smaller amount of space for less money over time and now as we live in the early phases of the 4th industrial revolution we have seen how these advances from past eras has shaped the new technologies we use today. Our smart phones and smart devices make life easier by linking us all together over the internet and have changed the way we interact with each other as a society. When we look forward at what lies ahead there is uncertainty surrounding how our societies, industries and the environment will be impacted.

An emerging cyber physical system, which is not in full commercial development, that has the potential to be a significant paradigm changer in the years to come for global society could be smart powered exoskeletons. The argument for this being that we are on a trajectory now that would lead us into a future where the environment is at its tipping point and diseases continue to impact populations globally. We have developed more energy dense batteries, efficient electric motors and have practically limitless computing power for all practical purposes. If commercially available suits became available that increased the mobility and strength of humans while also protecting us from the environment and limited the spread of diseases that would be impressive. What would really tip the scales however is the integration of artificial intelligence and leverage the increasing amount of data between us to invent a system that is not far from the iron man suit from the movies. Though we can already get a glimpse into how advanced technologies such as autonomous vehicles and drones are making an impact in how we perceive the future. Factories that have autonomous machines very well may be the industry standard in a few years and the socio-economic and political implications of this shift are still a highly debated subject area. All we know for sure is that technology will continue to follow the upward curve in higher complexity and the demand for more multi-domain expertise in the engineering market will increase with it.

Figure 1. The future milestones for technological revolutions.

Looking forward, there are many challenges that we face that will shape the decisions we make when developing new technologies and how we implement them. We are more connected as a global society than ever, and we all can understand what threats we will encounter if we don’t change the way we live now. Overcoming the climate crisis would require a multinational collaborative effort to use renewable energies, and engineers are working now to reduce the cost and increase the availability of the currently available solutions. There is a gap though in the energy density of renewables compared to non-renewables and finding the solution to fill that gap may denote the beginning of the 5th industrial revolution. We are increasingly aware that the resources we have here are finite and the number of consumers in growing exponentially. Eventually mining asteroids and colonizing other planets in our solar system could be a reality in my lifetime. A huge ideological shift has to occur between nations in order to fund those kinds of efforts because everything comes with a cost. When we can stop waring with each other and become more civilized as a planet, we stand a good chance to see a world were all of society can greatly benefit from the advances we will make and have made over time. We are responsible for taking this opportunity to step forth into a better tomorrow by making the right decisions now, otherwise we would lose the chance of becoming something greater than what we ever could have imagined as a species.