The Fourth Industrial Revolution

Unit 7: Modern Global Economy, Challenges to Liberalism, Irrationalism & Modernist Philosophy 

Each unit from now until the Mock EU Council juxtaposes contemporary global current events with their historical antecedents. This unit juxtaposes the global economy of the Second Industrial Revolution with the global economy of today's Fourth Industrial Revolution.  Nation states and individuals are asking how they may compete and innovate, while they confront potential ethnical issues and negative side effects of their choices.  How can we be thoughtful to the long-term impacts of this third (or is it fourth) Industrial Revolution that is unfolding in front of our eyes? 

Interesting current event articles 

Check out the future of automation with privately funded and unmanned spaceships, self-driving vehicles replacing approximately 7 million taxicab drivers and truck drivers, globalization of textile markets with microfiber fabrics (e.g., yoga pants) and plastic bags polluting the oceans, the use of algorithms in international finance, debt crises, the raw materials the developed world uses to create and sell finished products worldwide (e.g., like the cell phone), and the refugee crises caused by decades of war and economic instability. On this day last year came word that "Elon Musk[, t]he billionaire entrepreneur now wants to merge computers with human brains to help people keep up with machines." Bad choices of Late Modernity include manufacturers using radium in consumer goods, leading to radium poisoning.  But are we really so very different? Our culture embraces smartphone technology, despite evidence it has led to depression in half of all teenagers, a crisis in mental health since 2011. And what of the opioid crisis, with the first reported settlement against a pharma company for downplaying the potency, for that matter?