5The Enterprise and the Plant of the Future at the Age of the Transition to Digital Technology
Chapter written by Jean-Pierre DAL PONT.
What is commonly known as the transition to digital technology, which we are experiencing today, succeeds to the ecological transition and the energy transition mentioned in Chapter 2 of the first volume. It is the culmination of unparalleled changes in the history of humankind. Let us remember that Napoleon’s armies were moving at the speed of Julius Caesar’s!
We are talking about revolutions, we shall describe them succinctly.
5.1. From one Industrial Revolution to the next Industrial Revolution
The current Industrial Revolution, the Fourth, is part of a long line of technological advances, breakthroughs, new types of organization and a wide range of political systems from royalty to republics, not forgetting dictatorships, economic crises and revolts (Dal Pont 2012).
The Industrial Revolution cannot be separated from the social system (Dal Pont 2012) and from the freedom granted to people, to entrepreneurs to invest in companies that involve capital, and therefore risks. Capitalism in the financial sense plays a fundamental role. It is not always well understood to this day. Joyce Appleby in her masterful book The Relentless Revolution (Appleby 2010), defines it as:
A system based on individual investments to create marketable goods.
Britain left its mark on the 18th and 19th Centuries, followed in this movement by France, Germany and ...
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