Did you see the sign on your way in? We are in the 5th Industrial Revolution.

Now, I'll admit. When I started the idea for this post, it was to declare, "We've entered the 2nd Industrial Revolution!"

Good thing I checked. It's easy for me to get consumed in my own hubris of knowledge, but even easier for me to say, "whoops, let's rethink this."

Reading and learning more about the concept of an "Industrial Revolution" - in terms of it's social, political, economic signifigance has only furthered my position that we have left the 4th, and are busting through the door like the Beastie Boys into the 5th.

As a quick recap - here were the first 4:
First: Coal; moving from agriculture to "industry"
Second: Electricity, Gas, and oil; oh boy, do we love energy, more sources means more means of production and progress
Third: Electronics and Nuclear; I say "Energy" you say, "Hell, yeah!"
Fourth: Internet and Renewable Energy; what's this? Internet? DATA. We are turning production efficiency over to data collection, we have recognized that there is a new kind of "manufacturing," and a way to harvest this new resource....

That leads us to where we are today. We have spend decades harvesting data. Collecting everything about everyone and storing it in nice, clean Tupperware containers - but only the decent ones. You can't find the lids of the good ones, so you use the ones that only-sometimes don't close all the way. Anywhoo, we have this data, and now, we have a means of enabling that data. Making it part of our lives, making it a part of the conversation where even my parents talk about it.

Conversational AI ChatBot.

Fifth: AI; we've amassed the energy and the data to revolutionize the way we work.

And just like the previous revolutions, there is no stopping this one.