The industrial revolution can be divided up into stages but we’ll get onto the stages of the industrial revolution later, here we just want to talk about the Industrial Revolution in general. Its still unfolding as we speak.
We live in an age of rapid technological change and my main interest is to see where we’re going in the near future and the medium term future. In order to do a good job of that forecasting we need to have an understanding of history as well. If we have no idea where we came from we’ll never understand where we’re going.
Here’s a quick analogy for the industrial revolution, we’ll look at just one industry.
Most of the people in the world used to work all day on subsistence agriculture or cottage industry and that was the case up until the 1600’s. They would grow what they could on their little plot of land to feed the family. People had a few chooks, maybe some pigs and the wealthy had a cow or two. You could be a subsistence farmer with very little education. People mainly wanted to grow enough to eat. If there was any produce left over they might sell it or trade it in town for some luxuries like a pair of shoes. But what if the weather was bad or the crops failed for any reason? Everybody at that time knew what it was like to go hungry now and then.
When the industrial revolution began to happen, the equipment on the farms improved which improved the productivity of the farms. With trains the farmers could transport their produce further away to wider markets in bigger cities. As the equipment on the farms was mechanised the productivity was enormously increased and fewer people were needed to labour on the farms. The subsistence farmers and a lot of the farm workers employed on the larger farms weren’t needed so they moved to the cities and found jobs in the factories. Nowadays it isn’t the majority of the population working on subsistence agriculture, only one or two percent of the people work on farms and now there is more than enough food to feed the world.
That’s a radical change in agriculture. It wasn’t too sudden I guess, from 1600 up until today is a 400 year span of time but the change was certainly revolutionary. In our day, the changes in technology are happening more quickly than when agriculture was revolutionised.
The same thing is now happening in manufacturing as happened in agriculture. In the 1800’s most people worked in factories and the people needed a bit more education in order to get a job in the factories than they needed for subsistence agrigulture. Now with increasing automation and improving equipment in the factories far less people are needed and the productivity is increasing dramatically. The people who used to work in the factories aren’t needed and they are free to find work in other areas.
What are those other areas of employment? This is what future engineering is all about. When you know what has happened in recent history you are better placed to understand the future.
Lets make a list of some other areas that have been disrupted by the industrial revolution.
I’m not going to develop these today, but I’ll come back to these one by one in future episodes. Its enough to say that the consequences of the industrial revolution affect every sphere of society from commerce to government to the social sphere.
- Cheap and readily available energy including electricity and petrol means that machinery and transport is universal.
- Computers have changed every industry, spreadsheets have made business smarter.
- With the internet, global commerce has been disrupted. Competition is suddenly global because price information is instantly available everywhere.
- Global communications on the internet happened only twenty years ago.
- Retail is collapsing locally, commerce is moving online.
- There are changes in education, the universities are under threat according to the Chairman of the Vice Chancellors association of Australia.
- Changes in social structures, the nation state is under threat.
That’s a list of spheres that have been changed as a result of the industrial revolution. We live in tumultuous times. Of course there are many other areas that are equally disrupted. Everything is affected.
You need to be aware so that you can avoid wasting time on things that are becoming obsolete. Its no good spending years training for a job that goes the way of the carrier pigeon. For example don’t become a typewriter repairman after computers have been invented. The only place you could get a job then is in a museum. That sounds silly, I know, but robots are coming and they will take over many jobs.
With every revolution there are just as many opportunities as threats. Join me here at Future Engineering where we look into the opportunities coming your way.