You say you want a revolution?

My latest reading material is the book 'The Third Industrial Revolution' by Jeremy Rifkin. His central thesis is that it is the combination of energy and communication that makes for a true 'Industrial Revoltion'.  The first Revolution was built on coal and railways, the second on oil, electricty and the car and the third, the one we are experiencing now, should, he argues, be based on distributed energy and digital communication. It is an interesting idea and certainly one that seems to make a lot of sense. Revolutions generally do involve a combination of factors and we are certainly seeing a lot of change affecting everything. The book focuses a lot on energy but the communication advances are, if any thing, more dramatic. 

A good summary of Rifkin's views on the current Revolution is as follows. "The Third Industrial Revolution is the last stage of the great industrial saga and the first stage of the emerging collaborative era rolled together. It represents an interregnum between two periods of economic history.....If the industrial era emphasised the values of discipline and hard work, the top down flow of authority, the importance of financial capital, the workings of the marketplace, and private property relations, the collaborative era is more about creative play, peer-to-peer interactivity, social capital, participation in open commons, and access to global networks."

He outlines five pillars of this third industrial revolution including shifting to renewable energy, using the Internet to transform power grids and electric and hybrid transport. I found the chapter on distributed capitalism particularly interesting as we are seeing a lot of innovation around business models. As he says "although we think of entrepreneurship as isolated commercial accomplishments- in the form of new inventions or business ideas- the truly great  entrepreneurial contributions are more systemic in nature. They occur when the business community comes to see how their individual commercial pursuits fit into a broader economic vision." 

Business can be a really positive force for change and innovation in energy and communications is central to that change. Time will tell whether it is a truly historic revolution.