Genesis of the Revolutionary Transition to Industry 4.0 in the 21st Century and Overview of Previous Industrial Revolutions

Genesis of the revolutionary transition to Industry 4.0 in the 21st century is was formed in the conditions of past industrial revolutions in the 19–20th centuries, which were accompanied by rise of production powers and deep transformation of the whole system of public production. Over the last three decades of the 19th century, the volume of global industrial production grew by three times. Modern history and economics distinguish three large qualitative leaps in the history of humanity—three revolutions in productive powers of society and structures of society. However, technologies change very quickly, creating new challenges in distribution of inter-sectorial and inter-country connections, as well as in the structure of labor resources and education, which stimulates emergence and formation of a new revolutionary stage of transition of countries to “Industry 4.0”. The authors analyze historical and economic tendencies of development of the modern economic society, related to “digitization” of economy and society, including development of clever services, clever data, cloud technologies, digital networks, digital science, digital education, and digital environment for living, in view of previous industrial revolutions on the path of the revolutionary transition to Industry 4.0 in the 21st century.