FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

vice

How Self-Driving Cars Are Ushering in the Third Industrial Revolution

In VICE's latest feature-length documentary, 'The Third Industrial Revolution: A Story for Our Human Family,' social and economic theorist Jeremy Rifkin explains why we must rethink productivity in order to survive.

On Monday, January 9, VICE joined city officials, entrepreneurs, and leaders in the tech and automotive industries for Ford's City of the Future Symposium. The event, held as part of the 2017 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, focused on the future of transportation and our ongoing transition to a carbon-free economy.

At this year's North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Ford unveiled its latest pre-collision assist-equipped F-150 truck, along with an eight-city expansion of its newly acquired ride-sharing service, Chariot. Following the presentation, Ford played host to a day's worth of conversation—from innovators, entrepreneurs, journalists, and city officials—about what exactly the "city of the future" looks like, concluding with a preview of VICE's newest feature-length documentary, The Third Industrial Revolution: A Story for the Human Family. The film, which pulls inspiration from economist Jeremy Rifkin's 2011 book of the same name, features Rifkin laying out both his new economic vision and the means to deploy it. Like the first and second industrial revolutions before it, he explains, the Third Industrial Revolution will unfold when three technologies emerge and converge: new communication, new sources of energy, and new modes of mobility—"a new infrastructure that fundamentally changes the way we manage, power, and move economic life."

Read more on VICE.