Cement Energy and Environment

Technological Breakthroughs Technology has emerged as one of the biggest disrupting forces. One aspect is that the time it takes to go from break-through technology to mass-market application is collapsing. The impacts of digital disruption are now so pervasive that no business in any sector is immune from them. That is why it is aptly termed: The Fourth Industrial Revolution. It is vital to know what it means and how to respond to it! (see figure 5 & 6) We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before. We do not yet know just how it will unfold, but one thing is clear: the response to it must be integrated and comprehensive, involving all stakeholders of the global polity, from the public and private sectors to academia and civil society. The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production. The Second used electric power to create mass production. The Third used electronics and information technology to automate production. Now a Fourth Industrial Revolution is building on the Third, the digital revolution that has been occur-ring since the middle of the last century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical , digital, and biological spheres. There are three reasons why today's transformations represent not merely a prolongation of the Third Industrial Revolution but rather the arrival of a Fourth and distinct one that embodies in itself: • Velocity • Scope • Systems Impact -,... Put together in an integrated manner the speed of current breakthroughs has no historical precedent. When compared with previous industrial revolutions, the Fourth is evolving at an exponential rather than a linear pace. Moreover, it is disrupting almost every industry in every country. And the breadth and depth of these changes herald the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and governance. To begin with one can start contemplating on what could be the possibilities of billions of people connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge, being unlimited. And these possibilities will be multiplied by emerg ing technology breakthroughs in fields such as artificia l intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing , nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage , and quantum computing. Already, artificial intelligence is all around us, from self-driving cars and drones to virtual assistants and software that translate or invest. Impressive progress has been made in AI in recent years, driven by exponential increases in computing power and by the availability of vast amounts of data, from software used to discover new drugs to algorithms used to predict our cultural interests. Digital fabrication technologies, meanwhile, are interacting with the biological world on a daily basis. Engineers, designers, and architects are combining computational de-sign, additive manufacturing, materials engineering, and synthetic biology to pioneer a symbiosis between microorganisms, our bodies , the products we consume, and even the buildings we inhabit. 31