Fourth Industrial Revolution

The fourth Industrial Revolution as coined by Klaus Schwab, the executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, in a 2015 article in Foreign Affairs, also known through its subset "Industry 4.0", gave emphasis to burgeoning technologies such as cloud computing and a cybernetted society, where major aspects of society are interconnected, and use of robotics, autonomous vehicles, the internet of things, 5G connectivity and social media are brought to greater prominence.

It further evolved from developments made by previous eras especially in the field of computing, and how emerging industries in the 2000s and 2010s have become an integral part of society, where individuals and organizations alike use them to convey and control various things. Companies such as Elon Musk's Tesla popularized the fully-electric car and autonomous driving, factories and homes alike adopted the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) and manufacturing processes such as nanotechnology and 3D printing, and offices and companies relied on cloud computing and artificial intelligence powered by server clusters and general-purpose graphics processors (GPGPU) to store, retrieve and process data. The likes of Amazon, Facebook, Google and Wikipedia brought further developents to the World Wide Web, connecting people even further through social media and messaging, where everyone can express themselves freely and have a say on things. This is further driven by smart device technologies spearhered by Google's Android and Apple's iOS operating systems, displacing traditional computing in the consumer front, and replacing phyisical media such as CDs and DVDs with fully-digital, cloud based media services.

Sources cited:
Schwab, Klaus (2015, December 12). "The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Retrieved from https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-12-12/fourth-industrial-revolution/
Sniderman, Brenna; Mahto, Monika; Cotteleer, Mark J. "Industry 4.0 and manufacturing ecosystems Exploring the world of connected enterprises" (PDF). Deloitte. Retrieved 25 June 2019.
Jeremy Rifkin (2011). The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World.