5.0 out of 5 stars What the Fourth Industrial Revolution may mean for us all.

P. · 27 April 2017

(function() { P.when('cr-A', 'ready').execute(function(A) { if(typeof A.toggleExpanderAriaLabel === 'function') { A.toggleExpanderAriaLabel('review_text_read_more', 'Read more of this review', 'Read less of this review'); } }); })(); .review-text-read-more-expander:focus-visible { outline: 2px solid #2162a1; outline-offset: 2px; border-radius: 5px; } Klaus Schwab is the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum. This book is his view of the coming Fourth Industrial Revolution, if you are unsure of what this is or how it may affect us all you really should read this book. I found the book a very clear and concise, a great help in trying to make sense of the forthcoming change and its possible outcomes for us all. Excellent.

4.0 out of 5 stars A chilling read

m. · 8 February 2025

Klaus Schwab and his vision for a one world everything, taking out human out of humanity and merging them with AI to become transhumans. (he thinks humans have no souls). To be completed by 2030. He sees it as 'an opportunity to reset humanity'.Not for me thanks.

5.0 out of 5 stars An extraordinary book that will enable new Business Models, Product and Services in Africa.

M.E. · 13 January 2016

Today, the vision of the Top African CIO’s is to drive their businesses through digital transformation. This book will certainly bring value in their organisations and will also help them maximise impact in their communities. The most exciting thing about this book it that our African women Technologists pushing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects in schools and villages, coders from Dakar to Kampala will have the chance to read it and hopefully have their lives changed.On behalf of all the Women Digital Leaders in Africa, Thank you for the wisdom, creativity and clarity in this book.Marieme Jamme (CEO)

3.0 out of 5 stars Inspiring

P. · 2 March 2016

It's rewarding to review the thoughts of Herr Schwab, the personality leading the Davos Forum. It's normal to see that these thoughts are balanced, explaining trends and their pros and cons. It's encouraging to have a clear picture of tendencies that will reform/revolutionize the social, individual, economic fabrics based on an INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION which is already here and developing extremely fast. I was expecting to see how this REVOLUTION will face the climate change, the billions of people that need food, the political and cultural decline. Descriptive thoughts are useful, commitment lines in order to avoid catastrophes are what is missing.

1.0 out of 5 stars Nowhere Near

J.M. · 16 February 2016

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is really very badly misconceived. And with all respect for Dr. Schwab’s achievements with the World Economic Forum over the years, let’s try to expose below why, sadly, this is so.As he says, there is a much different future coming for all of us, businesses and families alike. But no decision-maker in our midst is going to be left any better equipped to face that future as a result of reading the analyses and prescriptions - or really the lack of both - in this story. In fact, the Fourth Industrial Revolution may well have the impact of diverting energy away from all that ought to be thought and done about our collective socio-economic tomorrow.Now, in a perfectly serviceable (if not awfully readable) way, one is here walked through the list of all the modern and emerging techno-excitements : AI, robotics, wearable computers, blockchain, Big Data, clouds, synthetic biology, etc, etc. But the speech soon becomes a sermon, a dirge of angst about what all the inventiveness of the modern world is doing to good human order. Like too many pastors / preachers before him, Dr. Schwab sees society’s very own 3D-printed, hell-bound handcart waiting in the hard-drive. Hear the incantation start:“…the new technology revolution which entails nothing less than a transformation of humankind”.“Let us together shape a future what works for all by putting people first…”.“We are all in this together and risk being unable to tackle the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution and reap the benefits…unless we collectively develop a sense of shared purpose”.“It is our responsibility to ensure that we establish a set of common values to drive policy choices…”.For like a Billy Graham of the cyber-age, he typically has a vision of the confusions, destructions and pathologies lurking in every corner. Viz:“Our brain, engaged by all the digital instruments that connect us on a 24-hour basis, risks becoming a perpetual-motion machine that puts (sic) in an unremitting frenzy……Decision-makers from all parts of global society seem to be in a state of ever-increasing exhaustion, so deluged by multiple competing demands that they turn from frustration to resignation and despair”.“…individuals, civil society groups, social movements and local communities feel increasingly excluded from meaningful participation in traditional decision-making processes…”.When expert-authors take this tone, one can always tell that precious little evidence in support of any of these claims will be forthcoming. And, so it is the case here. On tiptoe in the pulpit, all one will ever see is the coast of dystopia, un-erodibly nearby.And oh, clichés sweep like whingeing valkyries through the fields of this, well, lightly proofed prose. Let’s not linger on too many examples. Let’s just mention : “Innovation is a complex, social process and not one we should take for granted”. Or : “Academic institutions are often regarded as one of the foremost places to pursue forward-thinking ideas”. Finally : “Companies are no longer able to shirk accountability for poor performance. Brand equity is a prize hard won and easily lost”. Nobody, no matter how distinguished, who writes like this is thinking in a straight line anymore - and certainly not in a creatively curvy one. This is pulp non-fiction.Meanwhile, staff in the better trends agencies and forecasting outfits are taught to use language to, as it were, force them to make intellectual decisions. No junior analysis-maker is every allowed to drive a story into the dead-air signposted by the phrase :" It remains to be seen" or "further research is required". Both such (present here) are really mindless truisms and invariably represent a shirking of the insight-supplier’s responsibility : to actually reveal something new and important and to guide the eyes of the reader to the best available truths. It is a betrayal of the Enlightenment itself to talk of "anecdotal evidence" (here also) when power evidence is available - but often has to be sweatily sifted so that conclusions might, however gingerly, be reached. More, just how often should readers be told about a "paradigm shift"(here) and an "inflection point" (here) in one book, a book which offers itself as a guide to the transformations ahead while using the thought-substituting jargons of the past?There should be little doubt now that a revolution is already being detonated inside global labour and career markets. And Dr. Schwab’s emphasis on this very theme is absolutely correct. But the elimination of income-bearing professions - from Davos to Delhi to Denver - needs urgent analysis of a quality that can lead to practical advice for companies and governments. How actually to preserve lifelong income flows for consumer-citizens? How to adjust universities to cope in utterly radical ways with adults who will, across their lives, need three degrees in order to give themselves a fighting chance of sustainable revenue (as their old skills die faster than species)? How specifically should the language of recruitment now change so that employers and college-leavers alike can share a coherent understanding of how long job contracts (and the commitments they imply) can be expected to last? A negative kind of rapture is busy engulfing the entire culture of career as we have always known it in the West - and we need precision and purpose in the answers we offer. This is no time to waffle or simper or insouciantly understate the scale of the problem on the table. Or write things like:“We should take the opportunity of a transforming economy to redesign labour policies and business practices to ensure that both men and women are empowered to their full extent”. Or:“We can reasonably assume that demand will increase for skills that enable workers to design, build and work alongside technological systems”.This is language which melts into air, into thin air. Well-meaning but un-engaged and un-engaging. Lofty, toothless, trite.And do we think that this muzak of lazy exhortation, fond hoping and nice-people ethics are really going to turn heads towards a new and sharper realisation of the shape of things to come - the heads of Wall Street, the Government of France, Silicon Valley, the Ivy League, the European Central Bank, the US Administration, the Fortune 500, entrepreneurs everywhere…. all those who have to make big decisions about technologies and jobs, investments and retrenchments, spending priorities and new agenda selections? Not a chance.Dr. Schwab writes a book called The Fourth Industrial Revolution, presumably with such leadership audiences in view, the people who will (here we all presumably agree) have big decisions to take about the future of workforces and of the general prosperity on which we all depend. As a summary of the techno-driven changes to come, the book is indeed serviceable. But he must surely have had a higher ambition than that. In the complexity-rapids of the fourth revolution, we do indeed need some pretty rugged intellectual helmsmanship. This book is not close to being on point.

5.0 out of 5 stars We're already here- predictions and outcomes

B.B. · 30 December 2024

I read this prior to Covid, and saw Professor Schwab outline a future in which he said that we should leave no-one behind this time. He was prophesising when he wrote the book. Covid pushed us into the 4th Industrial revolution as we had the requirement to work from home. Although IT had been the forunner of global support, there had been some serious resistance from upper management.Now with AI a world of possibilities have opened up and it is even more critical that we leave no-one behind this time.

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting

P.K. · 7 January 2025

Very useful for getting inside the mind of this deranged megalomaniac.

5.0 out of 5 stars It should be called Dangerous Musings of a Maniac

a.v. · 20 March 2021

If you want to know where the human race is potentially headed then read this because the World Economic Forum is driving many of today’s agendas.Klaus Schwab comes across as a typical male that dreams of science fiction futures and can’t help himself from wanting to open the box of toys and play with them regardless of their dangers to humanity. He speaks of a matrix smart grid and human augmentation through artificial intelligence as a given with no regard for potential downsides. He doesn’t mention anything about wars or say how the last industrial revolutions and the people that drove them have brought us to a point of a sick planet and a dis-functional human race. He ignores the fact that consumerism propelled by industries need to sell goods is the fatal flaw in any industrial revolution.The five star rating is to hopefully get you to read this book, because if you have any concerns about how technocrats are marching forward with Frankenstein experiments on us all then this should bring you down on one side or the other.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution

T.J.D. · 4 July 2020

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Good book

A.E. · 20 April 2017

Fairly short and well written, this book offers a good introduction to what the fourth industrial revolution is and what to expect from it.

Essential read

D.N.P. · 24 February 2016

Written for the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in 2016, this served as the briefing document for the conference. It's an excellent review of the current and projected states of robotics and automation and their possible social and economic consequences. Regarding the disruptions that will be caused by the advances of robotics and automation over the next 5-10 years: "The [coming] changes are so profound that, from the perspective of human history, there has never been a time of greater promise or potential peril. My concern, however, is that decision-makers are too often caught in traditional, linear (and non-disruptive) thinking or too absorbed by immediate concerns to think strategically about the forces of disruption and innovation shaping our future," (Kindle Loc. 63). I have been spending time studying this over the past few years and largely agree with the conclusions he draws. It's a short and timely book that should be widely read, especially among politicians and policy makers.

Great book

C.K. · 8 March 2017

Great book. When I first heard about it I already had good expectations, but it turns out to be even better. The author managed to write about a quite complex and recent issue in a simple language, accessible for most people. It is very open minded and I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in understanding the world we are living in.

Una visión del futuro

M. · 30 May 2018

Excelente lectura, una visión del futuro clara y basada en estudios y casos reales. Para todo amante o curioso de las tecnologías emergentes y los retos del S. XXI es un must read