Why Only Web 3.0 Completes Industry 4.0

I think you will agree with me when I say: The cloud has falsely become an expected rite of passage when Industry 4.0 is talked about. You hear all the time how businesses that don't adopt cloud based services will be left behind when the great train of industrial revolution takes off. You hear that your business risks being completely forgotten if it doesn't leverage cloud based technologies and so forth.

With so much "cloud" and "hosting" in the air, you can't help but breathe it in. Don't inhale. The fact that big and influential companies find it convenient to market cloud computing as a key Industry 4.0 enabler has nothing to do with the industrial revolution. I'ts just that, marketing. Over the last 2 decades, technology giants have invested a lot in building centralised cloud platforms and they would want, rightfully so, to continue enjoying dominance. Its their job to paint a perfect picture in order to avoid becoming obsolete. Best selling author, Seth Godin puts it beautifully in the following quote:

"No one enjoys watching their house burn down. Revolutions do that. They destroy the perfect, disrupt the status quo, and change everything. And then they enable the impossible."

Don't get me wrong, I do not denigrate centralised platforms, they have played a pivotal role in industry and they still do. However, they are not a prerequisite for Industry 4.0. If anything, they impact its advancement due to the silo mentality with which these systems are built. They reduce integration among data systems and may contribute to the ineffectiveness of the Industry 4.0 model.

From the way I look at it, Industry 4.0 can be fully realised from the concepts of Web 3.0, whose core lies in the democratisation of data storage, computing, bandwidth and the capacity for Cyber Physical systems and things to autonomously act based on the knowledge they have. Centralised platform providers do make an effort to make web services available for these kinds of interactions between computer systems. However, in the context of Web 3.0, they take centre stage.Think about it, the challenge that exists with presenting information in industry 4.0 systems is providing context to the data. So by combining Industry 4.0 standards such as OPC UA that are rich in semantic markup and web services, Web 3.0 promises the potential for Cyber Physical systems and Industrial "things" that can speak directly to each other.

Essentially, Industry 4.0 as a model is an attempt to turn each and every factory into a computer that is made up of modular processes within, in the form of Cyber Physical systems. Web 3.0 concepts will enable decentralised peer to peer networking of these factories via Industrial IoT, similar to how bitcoin works. Further, decision making regarding factory production processes will be autonomously enabled by Cyber Physical systems.

Whats more, No one else should own or have access to your data. That's just fundamental. It is your data, generated by your machines at your own cost. Sadly though, true owenrship and control of your organisation's information using a system that has central authority is a big ask. On the other hand, Web 3.0 technologies such as the Interplanetary File System used in conjuction with decentralised consensus can enable smart factories and Cyber Physical systems to become nodes for decentralised data storage. Your data is not stored in one big server farm, it is instead stored in computers scattered across the globe, but only you can access it. After all, data is the new currency right?

And it doesn't stop there, Web 3.0 also solves the problem of data permanence. As it turns out, the web as we know it is filled with dead links and this practice of deleting or retiring information that one deems irrelevant should not be carried over into the Industry 4.0 era. Once data is generated and stored it must be forever. What's worse is that most of the startups offering cloud based solutions today will not be in in existence in less than a decade from now. What will happen to your data you have so patiently collected from your machines to facilitate predictive maintenance and artificial intelligence?

Web 3.0 concepts solve that problem in that each time a piece of information is accessed, it is replicated and stored. No resource can be deleted or updated, only a new version of it is generated. So essentially, an entity such as a smart factory or Cyber Physical system can have a complete digital life of its own with a permanent trail. The bottom lie is that our relationship with data storage and security should no longer be based on trust. Bitcoin has proven that trust can be taken out of the equation.

Further, centralised systems unnecessarily waste expensive bandwith. Here's why. Suppose there are two Smart Factories A and B, if a system in Factory A accesses a resource in factory B and stores it. Another system from factory A shouldn't have to use bandwidth to download the same recource because it is sitting right there on a machine next to it. But then with centralised systems there is no way of knowing that because they use location based addressing, meaning that to access a resource its internet address and directory location must be specified. Ideally, Industry 4.0 systems need not rely on the internet if they can. Web 3.0 technologies allow systems to simply name the resource and it will be fetched from the nearest node that has previously accessed it and has it stored. 

Conclusion

At the present moment, Web 3.0 concepts may suffer from quite a number of limitations while centralised platforms seem to promise a pain-free way for organisations to become Industry 4.0 compliant. However, it is important to look at these concepts as ongoing endeavors that will soon grow exponentially until a tipping point is reached. And the proponents of centralised platforms will look back at the squandered opportunities not through ignorance but because it was easier to avoid commitment to a new way of building reliable systems.