Četvrta industrijska revolucija, 4IR, ili Industrija 4.0,[1] konceptualizira brzu promjenu tehnologije, industrije i društvenih obrazaca i procesa u 21. vijeku zbog sve veće međupovezanosti i pametne automatizacije. Pojam je popularizirao 2015. godine Klaus Schwab, osnivač i izvršni predsjednik Svjetskog ekonomskog foruma, a od tada se koristi u brojnim ekonomskim, političkim i naučnim člancima [2][3][4][5][6] u referencama, do sadašnje ere visoke tehnologije u nastajanju. Schwab tvrdi da su uočene promjene više od samog poboljšanja efikasnosti, već izražavaju značajan pomak u industrijskom kapitalizmu.[7]
^Schwab, Klaus (2016). The Fourth Industrial Revolution. New York: Crown Publishing Group (objavljeno 2017). ISBN9781524758875. Pristupljeno 29. 6. 2017. Digital technologies ... are not new, but in a break with the third industrial revolution, they are becoming more sophisticated and integrated and are, as a result, transforming societies and the global economy.
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Schwab, Klaus. "The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means, how to respond". World Economic Forum. Pristupljeno 29. 6. 2017. The possibilities of billions of people connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge, are unlimited. And these possibilities will be multiplied by emerging technology breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing.