Agriculture 4.0... and counting

Readers of newspapers and magazines are largely interested in the present. So, publications report on events of the previous day, the previous week, or the previous month. Sometimes they look ahead to the week, month, or year. It is not often that a publication looks at events of the previous century. Or crystal gazes into the century ahead.

It is not surprising, therefore, that technology trends are generally seen, in the short term, as shifts over a few years or, at best, decades. Depending on your vantage point, you could pick trends that last a generation, several generations, or the entire modern age, the word modern itself being a matter of debate.

Where do we start when labelling a revolution? There are clear divisions for industry. Industry 1.0 was the industrial revolution, and industry 2.0 was when electricity enabled the assembly line. The third generation was driven by computers; the fourth by digital technologies including machine learning and artificial intelligence.