How the Fourth Industrial Revolution Is Shaping Our World

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My Relationship With Technology

My name is Jen Cohen, and I make technology work for business. Organizations hire me to transform and scale teams and processes. Since the 1990s, I have helped companies like Toyota Research Institute (TRI), Cisco, and Birkenstock adopt solutions that drive meaningful business results, including rebooting inefficient operations teams, establishing world-class best practices, and streamlining processes to optimize performance. I have also helped several startups modernize platforms, simplify processes, and scale their operations to prepare for successful acquisitions.

When I started my career, mainframes were larger than my living room and dial-up modems were all the rage. Over the years, tech evolved to machines that are stacked and racked in server rooms, to data centers, to the cloud. And for me at home, I went from connecting to the internet with a 1200-baud modem in the early days to having fiber internet now (which is awesome, by the way). It’s easy to see how far tech can progress in a relatively short period.

The Evolution of Technology

Throughout history, new technologies have simplified and automated our lives and permanently changed how we live. Through four major industrial revolutions, tech is primarily used to increase quality of life.

First Industrial Revolution: Mechanization, Steam, and Water Power

The First Industrial Revolution started in the mid-1700s. It gave us the mechanical loom, steam engines, and water power, which were all used to produce fabrics on a mass scale.

Second Industrial Revolution: Mass Production and Electricity

During the Second Industrial Revolution in the early 1900s, electricity and machine-based mass production became mainstream. Machine-based mass production gave birth to the assembly line, with each worker on the line responsible for one piece of a finished product.

Third Industrial Revolution: Electronic and IT Systems and Automation

Many of us lived through the Third Industrial Revolution, which started in either the late 1950s or early 1960s and ended sometime around 2008 with the birth of the Internet of Things (IoT).

The internet, e-commerce, automation, and my lovely iPhone all came to life in this age. And for a good chunk of my career, my work involved setting up systems, beginning with old-school RS/6000s and AS/400s then using DSL to connect stores back to corporate, then adding e-commerce websites that made more income than our top four stores and finally landing in the current age of automation and instant internet access on our phones.

When we think of computing in the 1980s and how far we have come since then, it’s amazing, especially when compared with the timespan between the other industrial revolutions. It’s like Moore’s Law, but instead of applying to just the CPU, the entire ecosystem is advancing exponentially.

Fourth Industrial Revolution: Cyber-Physical Systems

The Fourth Industrial Revolution introduced cyber-physical systems. In addition to IoT, cyber-physical systems include advanced robotics, big data and analytics, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, 3D printing, machine learning, and cybersecurity.

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, cyber-physical systems comprise interacting digital, analog, physical, and human components engineered for function through integrated physics and logic [that] will bring advances in personalized health care, emergency response, traffic flow management, and electric power generation and delivery.

Cyber-physical systems have radically changed our world since they burst onto the scene, and the possibilities for improving people’s lives are endless and fascinating.

Technology Is Finding Its Purpose

In my current role as vice president of Core Engineering at TRI, I lead five core teams — Data and Infrastructure Engineering, Simulation and Tools, Information Technology, Cybersecurity, and Technical Program Management — in their mission to innovate and increase the robustness and resilience of TRI’s research capabilities.

What gets me excited about the future of tech are the things we are working on at TRI and the company’s vision to amplify humans rather than replace them. When I think of human amplification, I see it as taking our skills and advancing them further with a little bit of help. On a fundamental level, this pursuit is based on a powerful idea: that every person’s life should have meaning and purpose.

In Japan, this is called ikigai (pronounced “EEk-e-gai”). Studies of ikigai show that we feel most fulfilled when we are doing work we love that helps society. Certified Ikigai Coach Kenichirō Mogi explains how ikigai can make a person’s life feel worthwhile: Having a sense of purpose is perhaps the best way to be grateful and give back to those that give our life meaning. When we live with purpose, we are really working for the betterment of others and society. In other words, we find purpose through service to others via our relationships and roles… Once we know who we really are, we can then define our roles and relationships. Doing this gives us the chance to live our lives with purpose, where we can find meaning and self worth in our day-to-day living — we find our ikigai.

TRI’s mission is to enable more people to achieve their ikigai. To realize that, the company is pursuing these new forms of human amplification, or automation with a human touch.

For example, TRI’s CEO, Dr. Gill Pratt, talks about how automated driving can help enhance one’s joy of driving. On a slalom course at a driving track with tight turns and cones, several drivers, including me, drove as fast as we could through it. I couldn’t do 25 mph and not hit the cones. But when I tried again with automated driving assistance, it amplified my skills, and I went through at 30 mph without hitting one cone. The automated driving assistance made those tight turns a breeze, and it was truly fun — it was the joy of driving.

Similarly, robotics can be used to help elderly people age gracefully. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of adults aged 65 and older in the U.S. has grown by more than a third since 2010. And it’s projected that by 2035, adults 65 years of age and older will outnumber children.

The graying of society is all around us and accelerating as we look ahead. In some places, such as Japan, the population is aging rapidly, and there aren’t enough caregivers.

TRI is working on solutions to use robots to help elderly people with activities of daily living. One example is having a robot help someone make a meal, rather than make it for them. This way, the person is included in a process they love while the robot helps with tasks that are now harder for the person to perform.

Old Problem, New Solution

Although new tech makes our lives and our work easier, implementing new tech in a company setting is complex and rarely a smooth process.

As I reflect on my career, I find it interesting that when something goes wrong with these implementations, the problem is rarely the tech. Instead, it’s usually the people, or rather the decisions they make. And whether we truly get the most out of our tech depends on humans and our processes (or sometimes our lack thereof).

Once I started seeing this pattern time and again in my work, I made it my mission to focus on prioritizing people over tech. What do I mean by this? Although choosing the right tech solution and getting the processes right are important, I believe the key to successful change comes down to one thing: the people.

At every company I work for, I follow the same approach. I focus on ensuring that the people and processes are aligned before deciding on the appropriate tech solution. Because doing it the other way around will usually result in a bad outcome. My motto is: “It’s always about the people, and when we value each other and work together, we can accomplish amazing things.”

The Human Side of Technology

The top reason technology projects fail is human nature. As I’m writing this in early 2021, we are hearing almost daily about new critical and impacting cyberattacks taking place. As with all things tech, cybersecurity is about humans as much as — if not more than — it is about tech.

From computers that took up whole rooms to 3D printers that can print medical devices and houses, I have lived to see tech evolve from the Third Industrial Revolution to the Fourth, and I continue to see people make the same mistakes. Several years worth of statistics all say the same thing:

In 1999, Canada’s KPMG Consulting’s Brenda Whittaker published an in-depth report on why IT projects fail.
In 2014, Standish Group researchers found that fewer than one-third of all IT projects were successfully completed on time and on budget.
Results from a 2015 Innotas survey showed that 53% of all IT projects failed.
In 2018, a large European supermarket chain decided to scrap an ineffective three-year-old merchandise management system after spending more than $565 million on it.
The website Why Do Projects Fail? catalogs notable IT project failures from 2006 to the present and can be an eye-opening rabbit hole to go down.

Although I know the best practices for avoiding mistakes that can doom projects to failure, I still make the same mistakes at times. After all, I’m only human.

And because humans are, well, human, technology projects will always be at risk of failing. But if we follow the formula and avoid the pitfalls like being romanced by technology (aka, having shiny object syndrome), then we can succeed and continue to revolutionize our world.