Information Unbound: The Third Disruption
This tendency to perpetually innovate as a result of competition, to constantly supplant work performed by humans and maximise productivity, would ultimately lead to a Third Disruption, one whose fullest conclusions are no less dizzying than the two which preceded it.
This Third Disruption has already started, with evidence of its arrival all around us. As with the Second Disruption its basis is a general-purpose technology: the modern transistor and integrated circuit, contemporary analogues to Watt’s steam engine over two centuries ago.
While the Second Disruption was marked by a relative freedom from scarcity in motive power – coal and oil rather than muscle and wind moving wheels, pulleys, ships, people and goods – the defining feature of the Third Disruption is ever-greater abundance in information. For some this signals the completion of the Industrial Revolution, marking an era in which machines are increasingly able to perform cognitive as well as physical tasks.
This new situation of post-scarcity underpins what will be referred to as ‘extreme supply’, something not only limited to information, but – as a consequence of digitisation – labour too. Here, continuous improvements in processor power, in combination with a range of other technologies, means machines will be capable of replicating ever more of what was, until now, uniquely human work.
As with preceding disruptions, this shift represents a transformation in energy as much as work. Just as the First Disruption depended on the energy of domesticated animals, humans and the elements, and the Second was powered by the condensed solar energy of fossil fuels, the Third Disruption sees a move away from hydrocarbons and back to renewable energy – particularly solar. This will partially be a response to the perils of climate change, but as with other features of the Third Disruption its tendency to extreme supply is more profound than the simple pursuit of sustainability. It will spell an end to energy scarcity altogether, as a new technology-energy matrix of ever-smarter machines combined with ever-cheaper and cleaner energy will make resource extraction beyond our world possible, yielding extreme supply in raw materials. This completes a chain that permits humanity to entirely exceed our present limits.
The Three Disruptions
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