Convergence of the Technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Systematic Consequences for the Economies and Societies (Part 1)

Abstract

The article applies a systematic and political approach in exploring the convergent nature of the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the related exponential, synergistic and emergent changes that occur at all levels of the surrounding world. This approach is driven by the understanding that nothing today can be separated into separate logics, fields, theories, because everything around us is becoming more interconnected, and this is the driving mechanism of the synergistic and emergent changes in technologies and, through them, in economy and societies. The enormous volume of this type of research is the reason it has been divided into two parts in order to broadly cover the object of the research, which is related to the convergent nature of modern technologies, as well as its subject, related to the disclosure of the scale of the ongoing changes. In order to achieve these goals, the first part focuses on the various technological revolutions and the growth of interconnection, because interconnectivity itself is inseparable from technological development. It also analyzes the convergent nature of several types of technologies – digital, nano-, bio- and cogni-, which interact with each other and this leads to emergent and exponential characteristics of change.