New Industrial Revolution: Future Prospects, Technologies and Social Consequences

While some, as Jeremy Rifkin argue that there is no fourth industrial revolution (IR) and that the technological development corresponds simply to the continuity of the third, huge companies as McKinsey or Ericsson claim that we are on the eve of a new industrial revolution. The purpose of this thesis is to understand what are the impact of the development of new technologies and how the society reacts to them. The STEEP framework is used throughout the whole paper to offer a clear, balanced and easily comparable analyze over time and between some technologies (genetically modified organisms, nanotechnology, 3D printing and internet of things). It seems that people react in various ways to technologies in function of the nature of the technologies (technology push - demand pull), of policies developed to frame them, of their implications in the dialogue and of their beliefs.