The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Higher Education

The Fourth Industrial Revolution (FIR) is a concept widely discussed at venues such as the World Economic Forum at Davos and within business leadership. The FIR as a phrase has its roots in early analysis of the evolution of technology where the First Industrial Revolution arose from harnessing water and steam power toward more systematic and efficient forms of manufacturing. Typical descriptions of the First Industrial Revolution include a mention of steam power, which when applied to the mining in Cornwall, and agriculture, brought about massive increases in scale of manufacturing. The origin of the term Industrial Revolution itself traces to an 1884 work by Arnold Toynbee entitled Lectures on the Industrial Revolution (Weightman 2007). Within Toynbee’s description of the Industrial Revolution, the expansion of power and mechanical production only became a revolution from its coupling with a “political culture which was receptive to change” which included shifts in financial arrangements as well as other social progress