EECS Seminar: Sustainability and the fourth Industrial Revolution

Abstract: The concentration of the world’s population around cities has resulted from the impact of the three industrial revolutions we have experienced in the past 250 years. The first Industrial Revolution originated in England in the late 18th century and used water and steam power to mechanize production. It resulted in the early rise of the city as a center of activity, when farming became more effective using mechanization and more people turned to cities for work. The second Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century started in the U.S. and used electric power to create mass production, which brought even more people from rural areas and farms to the assembly lines. The third Industrial Revolution also originated in the U.S. in the mid to late 20th century, and used electronics and information technology to automate production, thus forcing people out of the assembly lines and into unemployment.

Now in less than 50 years from the beginning of the previous technological revolution, we stand on the brink of a new one, which may be more powerful and more dangerous than all the previous ones. In its scale, scope and complexity, this transformation may be unlike anything we have experienced before. The fourth Industrial Revolution is building on everything we have discovered, and it is using the internet to connect humans and machines in one task. It may bring technology and culture in a clash of unprecedented proportions resulting in further concentration of population to what we call mega-cities and more social instability. Farm land will be managed by robots, factories will employ robots, and humans will use robots for low-level jobs, leaving us to wonder what role humans will play in this futuristic society.

This presentation will review the outcomes of the third Industrial Revolution with secific focus on space electronic applications and will speculate on the challenges and opportunities of the next one. Considering that cities are a construct of many designed systems, engineering could and should play a key role in addressing many of the possible negatives this new revolution may bring about. In the dawn of the fourth Industrial Revolution, it is imperative that we incorporate sustainability ethics, principles and constraints early in the engineering design process. The merging of sustainability and engineering design should be part of engineering education not as an add-on but as an integral component of educating engineers how to design sustainable systems and how to help build a sustainable future.

Bio: Linda P.B. Katehi (chair) is chancellor emerita of UC Davis. Previously, she served as provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; the John Edwardson Dean of Engineering and professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University; and associate dean for academic affairs and graduate education in the College of Engineering and professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan. Katehi led the effort to establish the Purdue School of Engineering Education, the first department at a U.S. university focused explicitly on engineering education, particularly on K–12 engineering curricula, standards and teacher education. The author or coauthor of 10 book chapters, she has published more than 600 articles in refereed journals and symposia proceedings and owns 16 patents. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), a fellow and board member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, chair of the Nominations Committees for the National Medal of Science and National Medal of Technology and Innovation, and a member of the Kauffman National Panel for Entrepreneurship. She is currently a member of a number of NAE/National Academy of Sciences committees and the Advisory Committee for Harvard Radcliffe College and a member of the Engineering Advisory Committees for Caltech, the University of Washington and UCLA.