The future hasn’t arrived yet but it’s certainly under construction. From voice-activated smart-home assistants to designer babies born without genetic propensities for certain diseases, it’s clear that the times they are a-changing. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is a bid made by the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum to make sense of what these leaps in innovation really mean for startups, societies and citizens.
While the prose occasionally reads like a dry science report, Schwab paints a future that sometimes seems like an episode of the dystopian TV show Black Mirror. Already technology has enabled the military to fight wars 1,000 miles away with drones, hackers to take control of your smart home using the internet of things and could potentially enable terrorists to design biochemical weapons of mass-destruction in the future.
So it’s easy to understand why Schwab urges world leaders to ensure these scientific triumphs are used responsibly. If done properly, he argues that technological achievements can herald the coming of true global society and raise the standard of living for everyone.
A must-read for any entrepreneur remotely interested in what’s to come. 
Portfolio Penguin
£14.99
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