Johan, first the revolutions have not been "industrial", they have been technological. Second there were a great many technological "revolutions" but for simplicity's sake let's agree on 4 major ones - agriculture, industrial, ITS (information technology and services, and now AIR (artificial intelligence and robotics). We can split hairs over categorisation, but let this be a departure point anyway.



The AIR revolution is different from all the rest for the simple reason that there will be no work that (given Moore's law) an intelligent robot will not be able to do better, faster and ultimately cheaper than a human. Given that the dominant paradigm is economic, eventually work that does not require the "human touch" will be performed by AI robots. So the questions are; what work will require humans to perform it to satisfy other humans, and how much of this work (jobs) will there be? Of course governments can legislate to slow the loss of jobs, but this will ultimately fail due to the dominant paradigm of the single bottom line where the social consequences are externalities.



Given that humans have defined themselves by what they do to earn income/livelihood for at least ten thousand years, what we are facing is an existential crisis of a profound and global proportions. The questions will be, "when we no longer define ourselves by job/work/profession, what will I be?" Which leads to the question, what are humans for?



The Chinese curse of "may you live in interesting times", is here for us all.

