Talk:Fourth Industrial Revolution

Removed sections

I have removed the following uninformative/empty sections and their meta-comments which are out of place in an encyclopedia article. Articles should not contain random jottings and notes. Do not add a section unless it provides the reader with useful, referenced content.

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What it means for Manufacturing Equipment Manufacturers

GE
Dassault Systèmes
Bosch
Siemens
Mitsubishi
Schneider Electric
DEK Printing Machines

[to be updated]

Current Status of Industry 4.0

[Coming soon]

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Voceditenore (talk) 13:39, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

What is the name of this page?

The name of this as usually seen is Industrie 4.0, which would be the name in German. Is it really necessary to rename this to Industry 4.0 in English? I see that it's called Industrie 4.0 later on in the text. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jlhollin (talk • contribs) 16:16, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

The whole subject should be moved to a new page called 'Smart Manufacturing'. Industry 4.0 is only a translation of the generic German term Industrie 4.0 which rather refers to a national political strategy than the technology itself which is actually meant in the article.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Frei1burger (talk • contribs) 19:55, 2 Januray 2015 (CET)

There is a difference between "Smart manufacturing" and "Industrie 4.0". - "Industrie 4.0" describes the German initiative related to introduction of IoT into industry. This is actually described in the section "Name". - There are some other international initiatives (Austria, Italy, Australia), which have adopted the name. Internationally (globally) the technology development is called "Smart manufacturing", the German name often is used to explicitely reference the German initiative, which contributes to the international development. I vote for moving this page to "Industrie 4.0", focus on the German initiative, and for moving the general content to the existing page smart manufacturing. Thadlich (talk) 12:13, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Having said that, I also vote for removing references to specific manufacturers from the page. E.g. Meggitt PLC. Thadlich (talk) 12:46, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

I would argue that "Industry 4.0" (with a y) is now an accepted and used term in English. The current name should remain, and I also note most descriptions do not refer to the specific German political strategy. Foxdown (talk) 13:53, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Here in North America "Industry 4.0" has gained traction as the overarching name for "digitization of manufacturing" in the manufacturing sector and government sectors of the economy. I vote to keep it. Mkevlar TheKevlar 12:28, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Most people just call this the fourth industrial revolution, we should probably go with that. People would find the page when they googled it.

Requested move 22 June 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: page moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 17:41, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

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Industry 4.0 → Fourth Industrial Revolution – Most people refer to this article as the Fourth Industrial Revolution now. Industry 4.0 is the German strategy. If we changed the title then people will be able to find the fourth industrial revolution and learn how our world is being completely transformed around us. 3DNewEra (talk) 21:42, 22 June 2020 (UTC) —Relisting. (t · c) buidhe 05:37, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

• Support. The move makes sense to me. Rreagan007 (talk) 20:49, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Changes to lead intro + integrating the German section further + predatory journal

I think I have redone the lead intro + tried to lessen the Germany emphasis of this article to remove the multiple issues. If you don't think so, please do add them back on! Further work is always needed.

When publishing, the wiki filter outlines there is a predatory journal, but I can't find the article that is causing this! If anyone can find this that would be grand! Jamzze (talk) 22:37, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm guessing that what is being flagged is ResearchGate. Please see: WP:RSP for the entry on it: "ResearchGate is a social network that hosts a repository of user-generated publications, including preprints. ResearchGate does not perform fact checking or peer reviewing, and is considered a self-published source. Verify whether a paper on ResearchGate is also published in a peer-reviewed academic journal; in these cases, cite the more reliable journal and provide an open access link to the paper (which may be hosted on ResearchGate). " ---Avatar317^(talk) 02:02, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Criticism section?

The "fourth industrial revolution" reads off like a series of buzzwords and modest improvements in internet related technology. If you remove all the screens from any modern apartment, it would look virtually the same today as it did 50 years ago. Calling this a "revolution" based on the words of some intelegencia in Davos seems absurd. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.156.229.134 (talk) 00:13, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Agreed 71.61.225.28 (talk) 07:40, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

agreed 78.22.97.224 (talk) 23:01, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Research Process and Methodology - SU22 - Sect 202 - Tue

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation–supported course assignment, between 4 July 2022 and 16 August 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ninamn7 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Ninamn7 (talk) 18:33, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Power and human rights

With high electricity prices and probably child labor lithium-ion batteries, perhaps human exploitation Chinese factories this would not be very social? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.195.1.209 (talk) 21:31, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Internet of Things (IoT).png

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 05:55, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Missing Citations

Hi, reference 11 is dead. "It was excluded from the way back machine." (I'm new at this and couldn't find a replacement source)

"Industrie 4.0: Mit dem Internet der Dinge auf dem Weg zur 4. industrial Revolution - vdi-nachrichten.com". 4 March 2013. Archived from the original on 4 March 2013. Retrieved 25 January 2021.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130304101009/http://www.vdi-nachrichten.com/artikel/Industrie-4-0-Mit-dem-Internet-der-Dinge-auf-dem-Weg-zur-4-industriellen-Revolution/52570/1

http://www.vdi-nachrichten.com/artikel/Industrie-4-0-Mit-dem-Internet-der-Dinge-auf-dem-Weg-zur-4-industriellen-Revolution/52570/1 HoorahHenrar (talk) 15:37, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Research Process and Methodology - SU24 - Sect 200 - Thu

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation–supported course assignment, between 22 May 2024 and 24 August 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Zq2197 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Zq2197 (talk) 04:30, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Factual accuracy

I removed the template "Disputed" at the top of the article, but feel free to explain here the potential issues in terms of accuracy. If it is a dispute about whether it is really an industrial revolution, we could add a sentence in the lead that mentions the skepticism. Alenoach (talk) 02:03, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Research Process and Methodology - FA24 - Sect 200 - Thu

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation–supported course assignment, between 5 September 2024 and 13 December 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): MyeonD (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by MyeonD (talk) 17:01, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Outdated article

This article appears to be outdated and does not reflect recent breakthroughs in the AI field, particularly those from the past couple of months. It would benefit from a disclaimer or flag indicating its current lack of up-to-date information, as it mainly discusses concepts relevant to the time of the release of GPT-3. Mypossiblepasts (talk) 21:06, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

It seems to almost miss AI altogether. The upcoming (or just starting) AI revolution will dwarf Industry 4.0 and mark a much sharper step up from the third industrial revolution. The step from humans programming machines to speed up intellectual/clerical work, to machines learning to do almost *all* tasks that previously required humans. Elias (talk) 16:24, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

What classifies as a New Industrial Revolution as a whole

Hello I was browsing through all of the Wikipedia articles relating to Industrial Revolutions 1-4. Now I figured that the talk section in this article would be the best place to talk about this. Is there a chance that we are still in the third Industrial Revolution and that articles about 3 and 4 could be grouped together into 1 article. And this event could be considered ongoing until the future of technology becomes clearer. All I am trying to say is that we could still be in the third Industrial Revolution it’s just not easy to see until it is retrospective. And even on the Third Industrial Revolution article it lists the date as 1947-Present which could be seen as a discontinuity itself since this article is saying that there is a fourth. So all I am trying to ask is what is the best solution to this. ~2025-40709-35 (talk) 12:48, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

Hi! I think there is a lot of fuzziness as to whether we're in the third or fourth industrial revolution, and as to what the fourth industrial revolution exactly is. And maybe the term "Fourth industrial revolution" will in retrospect be defined very differently. But I don't think we can group the two articles, because Wikipedia articles aim to synthesize what the literature says, and the literature seems to distinguish both. The topic of a "Fourth industrial revolution" is sufficiently notable that it deserves its own article. And in principle, there can be multiple industrial revolutions that overlap, so having an ongoing third industrial revolution does not necessarily rule out also having a fourth one at the same time. Alenoach (talk) 15:53, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

Skepticism undercovered

I removed the "Criticism" section which was WP:SYNTH, but the current version undercovers the skepticism, particularly about whether this constitutes a separate industrial revolution or is a continuation of the third one. Alenoach (talk) 23:30, 12 June 2026 (UTC)