Engineering Revolution

Revolution Terminology

Historians have identified a number of previous significant changes to civilisation's progress which are worthy of the title of "revolution".

Relatively recently there have been the "neolithic revolution" and the "industrial revolution".

More recently, some other revolutions have been proposed - to describe what is happening now:

"Digital revolution" is a term which has been used to describe the widespread shift from analog to digial signal storage and processing. This revolution continues today - since the human brain has not yet "gone digital".
"Information revolution" is a term which has been used to refer to an economic shift away from production and manufacturing - and towards the manipulation of information. The manipulation of bits represents an increasing fraction of the economy.

These revolutions are relatively well established. They have their own wikipaedia pages, and much has been written about them.

Some other revolutions have been proposed. Among those, the "engineering revolution" seems to be one of the more significant.

This term describes the ongoing shift from designoid entities - ones that have been produced by natural selection - to designed entities - ones that have been produced by engineers.

It could perhaps also be referred to as the "intelligent design revolution".

The "engineering revolution" can be thought of as being composed of several other revolutions:

A "genetic revolution" represents the ongoing shift of heritable information away from nucleic acids, and towards the range of new, writable, random access storage media which engineers have produced.
A "phenotypic revolution" represents the shift of processing, sensors, actuators, structural and metabolic processes away from organic systems and towards engineered entities - computers, cameras, microphones, hydraulics, pneumatics, motors batteries, and so on.

A "nanotechnology revolution" represents the culmination of the existing minaturisation trend. This can be thought of as underlying the latter stages of both the genetic and phenotypic revolutions.

The "phenotypic revolution" could itself be subdivided as follows:

An "intelligence revolution" represents the ongoing shift of information processing away from brains, and into engineered entities - such as computers.
A "robotics revolution" represents the shift away from designoid bodies and towards engineered sensors, actuators, structural and metabolic systems.

That is quite a few partially-overlapping revolutions coming down the line.

Alternative terminology

It is not clear that future historians will recognise all these revolutions in the way that I have described them. After all, there were communal living, writing and printing revolutions in the past. Historians rarely mention those - or they describe in other terms.

Another issue is the "revolution" terminology itself. In the light of recent history, "revolution" seems like the most obvious term to use - but there are precidents for other terms being used to describe such dramatic changes in the biosphere.

The last time the genetic substrate changed radically, the event was referred to as a "genetic takeover". This "takeover" terminology seems appropriate when new creatures completely replace the old ones. There are strong indictions that that will happen with the engineering revolution - so maybe it should be called the "engineering takeover", the "machine takeover" - or something like that.

Some changes are referred to by what was lost - in which case, "extinction" or "catastrophe" are often the terms used.

Other changes are referred to by what is created - in which case a term like "intelligenesis" might be used.

Enjoy,

References

Tim Tyler | Contact | http://alife.co.uk/