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Editor's note
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Imagine a future in which your toilet bowl analyses your urine and tells your fridge that your cholesterol is high. Your fridge then adjusts your weekly food order and alerts a health AI. This scenario is not a pie in the sky, according to many industry analysts and think tanks. It’s a future that is accelerating towards us, thanks to the collection of technologies loosely thought to constitute a “fourth industrial revolution”.
Generally, this tech future is viewed positively. Yes, it might cause mass unemployment, but we’d best get used to it, adapt, and retrain. Why is this the narrative? Jamie Morgan takes a look at the forces behind the fourth industrial revolution, and the lack of government engagement with what could turn out to be a very dark future indeed.
Technology has certainly transformed the takeaway market – Just Eat has just been acquired for a whopping £6 billion. And the future could see farming itself relegated to the past, if incendiary
documentary Apocalypse Cow is right.
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Josephine Lethbridge
Interdisciplinary Editor
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Top stories
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Alex Wong/Unsplash
Jamie Morgan, Leeds Beckett University
Scores of jobs could be affected by the fourth industrial revolution – and not enough is being done to guard against this.
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Not hot?
Tetuana Shumbasova
John Colley, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick
This might be the craziest game in venture capitalism.
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Stijn te Strake/Unsplash
Neil Stephens, Brunel University London
George Monbiot’s documentary could delight and frustrate cultured meat lovers in equal measure.
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Health + Medicine
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James Stark, University of Leeds
The age of the Industrial Revolution also saw a fitness revolution in Britain.
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Ara Darzi, Imperial College London
Medical data will need to be treated as precious to our health as drinking water.
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Carys Jones, Bangor University
Research shows it generates future savings for society by lowering demand for health and social care services.
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Stephen MacMahon, University of Oxford
Precision medicine is all the rage, but it may only be effective at treating less common diseases.
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Politics + Society
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Ziqian Wang, University of Sussex
President Tsai Ing-wen is being challenged by populist mayor of Kaohsiung City, Han Kuo-yu, in Taiwan's January 11 elections.
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Steven Greer, University of Bristol
A flawed approach on both sides of the British political divide.
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Benjamin T. Jones, CQUniversity Australia
If Harry and Meghan are seen as separated from the monarchy, or worse yet, victims of it, its long term survival is threatened.
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Environment + Energy
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David Jones, Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Karl Braganza, Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Skie Tobin, Australian Bureau of Meteorology
The Bureau of Meterology says persistent drought and record temperatures were a major driver of Australia's fire activity, and the context for 2019 lies in the past three years of drought.
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Science + Technology
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Ravi Kumar Kopparapu, NASA
NASA scientists have discovered a new planet orbiting around a nearby star that is in a habitable zone. But does this planet have liquid oceans that can support life?
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