The digital revolution and digitalized network society

Abstract

This lecture discusses technological revolutions and techno-economic paradigms, but with an emphasis on the digital revolution and the digitalization of the economic and society. It draws its inspiration from works of Joseph Schumpeter, Christopher Freeman, and Carlota Perez on long waves of technological development and places the story within the context of global innovation networks. The lecture contends that the digital revolution not only transformed the world we live in but also created new ways to organize networks within it. We are now in second half of the digital (fifth technological) revolution, when the digitalization of the global networked economy prevails, and not at the beginning of Industrie 4.0. On the contrary, this is the period when economic growth drives the use of innovative digital technologies, including ubiquitous computing, robotics, and artificial intelligence, toward a truly digitalized network society.