If you wanted proof that we are indeed on the cusp of a fourth industrial revolution that will profoundly change our society, look no further than Google’s announcement yesterday that it will split into two companies.
Old Google – essentially a massively successful sales and marketing company – will split and a new company called “Alphabet” will be created. Alphabet will be a cutting-edge research, investment and speculative company that hopes to be at the forefront of the fourth industrial revolution.
A big issue for Dublin and Ireland is whether much of the New Google or Alphabet’s R&D will be based in Dublin or whether Dublin will remain a sales and marketing hub?
Let’s come back to Ireland a bit later after we’ve looked at the big picture – this industrial revolution idea. This fourth industrial revolution is about a groundbreaking series of innovations in genetics, artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology, 3D printing and biotechnology – all connected by billions of smart devices.
Google wants to own this revolution (or at least a big part of it) because the people who run Google realise that the world and the global economy is being restructured before our very eyes.
In time, there may not be any need for doctors, lawyers or accountants. One highly competent doctor with an iPad will be able to scan people’s files, diagnose and deploy medicines in the same way that travel agent software that can identify best prices and options destroyed the travel agent. In a similar vein, Airbnb is changing the hotel landscape.
The fourth industrial revolution will eliminate thousands of less competent doctors at a stroke. This will be creative destruction like we have never seen. Google wants to be on top of these changes.
My own experience with Google has always been positive. I first came across the inner sanctum of Google when I was asked to speak at its Zeitgeist Conference in the US a few years back. This experience allowed me to observe CEO Larry Page up close. He appeared to me to be a sort of phenomenon: part entrepreneur, part engineer – a 21st century hyper-nerd with huge vision – and, most of all, a dreamer who takes big risks. He is the one, it seems, joining up the dots.
And there are a lot of digital dots to join up. For example, every minute last year the world’s internet users – all three billion of us – sent 204 million emails, uploaded 72 hours of YouTube video, undertook 4 million Google searches, shared 2.46 million pieces of Facebook content, published 277,000 tweets, posted 216,000 new photos on Instagram and spent $83,000 on Amazon.
Google is a corporate monster at the centre of all this.
It handles 3.5 billion searches daily and controls up to 90pc of the market in most countries. It was valued at $400bn last year – more than seven times General Motors, which employs nearly four times more people. Google is essentially a huge digital sales and advertising company. And it is advertising that drives revenue.
Its two founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are worth $30bn apiece. But they are not content to be glorified advertising salesmen; these guys are dreamers and they understand that the fourth industrial revolution will have winners, and these winners will take all.
This logic explains Alphabet.
In the same way as the internet has created monopolies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon, which have destroyed the competition and made monopoly-style fortunes for their owners, the fourth industrial revolution, from genetics to 3D printing, will do the same.
Governments should be aware of this and look to get a piece of this industrial action which will provide jobs, extra tax revenue and the hope that a Google operation in the country or the city will be the anchor tenant for a spawning tech business.
As the likes of Google are now central to the broader fourth industrial revolution with its investments in life sciences and genetics, the aim would be to build a fourth industrial revolution platform in Ireland.
Ireland is very small; we need only a tiny piece of the global action to make a big difference.
This brings us to Silicon Dock and Dublin in general.
Despite their ruthless ‘winner takes all’ attitude to business, the ethos of companies of the fourth industrial revolution is cosmopolitan, liberal and driven by a lifestyle that is suited to urban living. These businesses will not locate in the middle of nowhere. They will locate in the middle of everything.
The cities that provide this kind of lifestyle will have the edge in 50/50 investment decisions over those that don’t. And speaking English is essential; not helpful, but essential.
One part of the lifestyle, not just for foreigners but for us too, is to have a liveable, preferably walkable city that sees itself as public amenity for the people who live there. This means, whether we like it or not, dramatically reducing the number of cars in the city centre.
All over the world, getting more cars out of the city rather than more cars into the city is the central plank of urban regeneration. Dublin has got to be the same. We also have to build more apartments and build up so that we can have the population density to nourish a living city. There’s no point in having a car-free city centre if no one can afford to live there.
The city has to be part of Ireland’s sale pitch for the new fourth industrial revolution.
I’m not saying that we should remove cars from the city because Larry Page wants to rollerblade through College Green on a Wednesday afternoon, but reducing cars and ceding space to walkers and cyclists is the future of urban living.
Cars clogging up cities are very much the story of the last industrial revolution, the mechanised revolution of Henry Ford’s day.
The new, urban fourth industrial revolution will walk, not drive.
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It certainly will be a different world. For such a different world perhaps there should be a review of taxation so that a country benefits from that fourth industrial state. What if we abolished all or most of the taxes (including GST ((VAT is what I think you call it)) and started again. No income tax but no deductions either. Zilch. I would like to see a tax on all deposits in a Bank – a bit like what Prof Tobin reccomended in the 1970s on hot money. The level would be set by Parliament and collected by the Banks… Read more »
What happened to the Third Industrial Revolution? Wasn’t that about creating an Internet-like system for DISTRIBUTING renewable energy? You can’t have the innovative communications you describe without a sustainable renewable energy grid system. That is what the Third Industrial Revolution is all about, decentralizing energy production, just as the Internet decentralized information. Read Jeremy Rifkin’s 2011 book The Third Industrial Revolution, which is still on the New York Times bestseller list. I read it in 2012. Here is an extract: http://www.wermutham.com/pdf/The%20Third%20Industrial%20Revolution.pdf San Diego has eagerly embraced Rifkin’s ideas and is currently working on becoming the first distributed energy city in… Read more »
I am still trying to digest the google announcement. However two points I’d like to make. One the existing business in Ireland is largely the boring google part, admin and sales, though I did chat with some nest guys at the ideal homes exhibition and I think I’ve been convinced to get one. The guys were Israeli, which is my second point, during the recession engineering education slots take up in college were dismal. I graduated from EE in UCC in late 90s with a class size of 60, my most recent figure for 2 years ago, same class, was… Read more »
No need for doctors, lawyers and accountants?
Thats a stretch. Given that the average “web based business” is most likely to employ tech graduates, I think I’ll keep going to the GP.
Lawyers will never be replaced by an app. “Are you representing yourself here today?” “No judge, my iPad has it covered.”
hmmm ….
I’ll give you accountants.
Mike Lucey Because a citystate model like singapore or barcelona or london creates the cosmopolitan conditions and dynamics that are attractive to individuals and business. Dispersing those resources all over the Island is not an efficient use of those taxpayer resources.We have empty IDA ghost estates in remote areas.What’s the sense in building high speed rail links to gweedore or two mile borris at taxpayer expense if business doesn’t want to locate there and has to be bribed again at taxpayer expense? Look at how Shannon stifled Dublin until commonsense prevailed. Enda can welcome all the pilgrims he wants to… Read more »
In other words, Dublin will have to remodel itself to provide the volume and standard of living accommodation that exists currently in Downtown Vancouver. This has been evident now for almost a decade. But the banks and the developers, and especially the corrupt local authorities will not want that. David is 100% correct. In fact we should be doing it regardless of whether or not it suits Google. Certain districts are going to have to embrace building upwards. The district around Rathmines is particular packed at the moment, and is crying out for 8 levels of accommodation plus. And in… Read more »
Pat we don’t have the scale of utilization for MagLev. It is being used in Shanghai, but that is the central coastal region of the most populated coastline in the world. China builds everything to scale, and then uses that scale to generate efficiencies for hundreds of millions of people. If we could get the existing lines to be used for freight it might reduce our cost base, and make us all richer, by reducing the fuel import bill. But Irish Rail are incompetent clowns. Even the existing lines are not running on schedule. In fact, the DART-Underground proposal has… Read more »
I think the problems of regional Ireland and Dublin could be solved together, if the political capital was moved out of Dublin to Portloaise or Athlone. Dublin then concentrate on becoming a San Francisco, or a Sydney – and a Midland town could concentrate on being Canberra or Sacremento. It would liberate Dublin, and would solve the wider problem of economic development in the region. Instead Ireland is going for the Icelandic spatial strategy model. The Childrens hospital decision is another one of the overly centralist decisions that is not made in the context of national requirements. The best location… Read more »
Denser urbanization is the result of a centralized energy supply.
Urban density began with the arrival of steam and coal as energy sources. Horses, which required large quantities of hay, began to fade. The process was accelerated by the petrol driven horseless car. The decentralizing effect of the family farm was over. People moved to the cities. That paradigm has lasted for a century. Now that is over.
The decentralizing effect of renewable energy is about to begin.
Where’s the “industry” of this industrial revolution within the digital realm? Surely traditional industry involves large physical machines with people huddled around them pulling levers and hoping nobody will notice that their job will only last until somebody invents a machine to allow a donkey walking around in a circle to do it instead. Google has never been an industrial company. Its a digital company. Mark Andreesen has been talking about this for a decade and more – that software will eat the world – but this has as much to do with industrial revolutions ad Karl Marx had to… Read more »
In typical American nomenclature, it is, apparently, called Industry 4.O
http://www.apriso.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/4th-industrial-revolution-is-coming.png
Peter
When I read about Alphabet, the first thing that came to mind was Jeff Skilling at Enron, about 15 or 16 years ago. He was describing, in one of the big weekly newsmagazines, how he saw Enron developing. Listening to him describing this great and glorious future all based upon utilising the Internet, was quite startlingly similar to the descriptions of Google Alphabet. Ofcourse, Enron, didn’t have an income stream equivalent to Google Search to fund all this stuff, instead, they used Wall Street expertise to hide their losses, and energy trading to make earn income. All the major US… Read more »
Very interesting article. The only point not touched is the future of energy, it would appear it too is undergoing an industrial revolution. Insightful and brave article by Paul Guilding on this very topic, main points; The fossil fuel energy industry is now entering terminal decline. Competing energy products of renewables and batteries, in a system with electric vehicles, will behave as a disruptive technology always does, delivering ever lower prices and ever higher quality in a decades’ long period of innovation and deployment, which fossil fuels can’t match. Because of the nature of this transformation, there will be a… Read more »
A critique of the Google to Alphabet move. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/googles-alphabet-reorganization-is-only-a-shell-game-2015-08-11?mod=MW_story_recommended_tab&Link=obnetwork [ CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (MarketWatch) — Investors’ reaction to Google’s reorganization plan is yet another sign of an overvalued stock market. That’s because the reorganization, along with the market’s exuberant reaction to it, is something often seen near the end of bull markets. It represents a triumph of financial engineering over substance. ] I suspect that Google have done this because, they have looked at a previous giant, Microsoft, and have started to get concerned about themselves becoming internally complacent. In other words, Google became the earlier version of Microsoft, with… Read more »
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One for you TONY ALLEN – thoughts?
“Mathematical Certainty:Market Collapse Will Occur During The Super Shemitah” [Sept 24 2014 – Sept 13 2015]
“….energies which will guarantee the fundamental transformation of the Global Economic & Financial System (GE&FS), after its complete breakdown.”
“The word Shemitah refers to Sabbath year observed in ancient Israel, when all working of the land ceased, the land rested. This took place every seventh year. On the last day of that year, all debts were wiped away, all credit was nullified, the financial accounts of the nation were, in effect, wiped clean”
http://cosmicconvergence.org/?p=10851
Peter
In order to make Dublin a more liveable city, the royal and grand canals which are obsolete transport infrastructure, should be drained and converted into cycleways. This would separate a lot of cyclists from motorists which increases safety. The canals are also close to train and bus stations. Granted this proposal would be objected to, but I think that it would be great for the city, and relatively cheap to construct. Imagine being able to cycle from Clondalkin to the docks or from dolphins barn to the city centre safely and quickly.
Check out Valencia – because of repeated flooding they drained and diverted the river around the city and used the river bed for cycle lanes, paths, football pitches, museums, meeting places, beautiful gardens, music, min golf and so on. Brings a great feel to the city and supports the higher density apartment buildings that line the old river bed. Now, if only we had their climate – Valencia was founded as a retirement home for Roman soldiers! Oh, and they invented paella
Peter
In the meantime all are in debt and the economy renting its money from the bankers. The rent payment is called interest and hundreds of billions are syphoned out of the productive economy and granted to the bankster elites and their fascist accomplices, the governments. This interest alone if returned to the people would fund all required infrastructure. Unfortunately there will be no change as there is a resistance to examining this problem. Not until there is a catastrophic event will it be looked at and of course none of the economists will have seen it coming. Now is another… Read more »
I don’t know what everyone is on about. Would a life-size 3D printout of Dublin do the job?
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/the-great-china-ponzi-an-economic-and-financial-trainwreck-which-will-rattle-the-world/
“People interested in gold and silver, including myself, spend much of our time examining the markets for clues when the old monetary metals and their miners will resume their bull market. But looking exclusively at the markets provides only a superficial understanding of what is actually going on in our world. The big picture for the market today is that the Western elite controlling our media, educational system, finance and politics have resorted to totalitarianism. This is a world view in which government (controlled by these same elite) expands far beyond what it should be, while everyone else are reduced… Read more »
Chicago. Jobs emigrating because of economics. People emigrating because of climate and demographics. Chicago debt downgraded to junk. Pension funds underfunded by billions. Chicago is bankrupt but the state law says it is not permissible and so like the rest of the western world denies reality.
https://www.rt.com/shows/keiser-report/312522-episode-max-keiser-797/
Exactly how profitable is Google.. ?
What are supposed to do when the machines take over ?
Driverless trucks, planes that have pilots just to make passengers feel comfortable.
Tractors now ploughing fields with G.P.S
Drones
A McDonald’s in Lyon with almost no staff…totally electronic
The fourth industrial revolution ….could it reverse evolution ?