The Fourth Revolution

How we think about our place in the world has been transformed through various revolutions of ideas from big thinkers such as Galileo, Darwin and Freud. Now, Philosopher Luciano Floridi believes that we are now into a new fourth revolution in the mass age of information and data. Could it be that now that we are regularly being outsmarted by computers that can reason and analyse better than we can. It’s no longer possible hold to the view that humans are better at thinking than everything else.

Narrated by Gillian Anderson. Scripted by Nigel Warburton.

From the BBC Radio 4 series about life's big questions - A History of Ideas.

This project is from the BBC in partnership with The Open University, the animations were created by Cognitive.

[tedmills]

It's a shame that BBC gives credit to the writer and the narrator, but not the artist!!

[jamestown]

0:50

It sounds like Freud was a tad bit self-important.

[gregboi]

Classic Freud to put himself on the level of Copernicus and Darwin. He probably argued his revolution was the most important of the 3 as well

[MrCaesar]

those revolutions are also called "paradigm shifts", if we take into account the book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" T.Kuhn. When a paradigm shift occurs, that involves a radical change in our perception of things...
 

[atomixfang]

I didn't expect a spanish inquisition!

[Cixelated]

Do one to Jurgenson's theory Digital Dualism; the counter-arguement to this.

[amirramezani]

? So what about Genetics where its possible to use it in order to enhance the capacity of human and its brain.

[andersbehringbreivik]

I was expecting the something that succeeds the Industrial Revolution, which is the third "stage" in civilization, with hunting/gathering, and farming preceding it.

[RedPhoneBooth]

So, who is watching this after Zayn left?
(sorry, I had to)

[Ral]

A machine doesn't need to be perfect to replace us, just slightly better than us.

[DSilsbury]

@ atomixfang Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

[monkey]

Why I'm seeing the dramatic destruction and degradation of everything ?

[shamanthjilla]

It has been proved time and again that Hindus had discovered the Heliocentric model millennia before Copernicus. When will we start teaching the right history of science?