Basic information technologies and “industrial revolutions”: What is their relationship?

Based on the informatics-cybernetic model of the self-controlling hierarchical-network system of humankind, it was stated that: (a) the first industrial revolution (IR) by K. Schwab (1760–1840) is an IR in the generally accepted sense of this term and at the same time, system initiated by basic information technology (BIT) of the replication of texts, revolution (1806) of production and social infrastructure technologies; (b) the second IR according to K. Schwab (end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries) does not fit into the model diagram of the dating of system technology revolutions in the history of humankind in its entirety. It, in the absence of an appropriate initiating BIT, should be interpreted as the second phase (marking the beginning of the “century of electricity”) of the first IR (marking the beginning of the “century of steam”). The totality of the first and second IR determines the formation of “the world of power machines” in the self-controlling system of humankind; (c) the third IR according to K. Schwab (1960s) is a systemic, initiated by BIT of local computers, revolution (1970) of production and social infrastructure technologies; and (d) the fourth IR according to K. Schwab (“the frontier of the new millennium”) is a system revolution initiated by BIT of telecommunications (2003) of production and socioinfrastructural technologies. The combination of the third and fourth IR determines the formation of “the world of intelligent machines” or “the world of artificial intelligence.” Thus, the indicated relationship between BIT and IR is that the former initiates the latter with some inertia.