The fourth industrial revolution, the one we are living in right now, is about optimization and robotization. The same shapes, the same methods, only faster, cheaper and with less human involvement. The fifth will not be another version of it. It is a complete reversal of the paradigm: it will change what things look like (non-deterministic, organic design) and how they are made (wave-based volumetric manufacturing).
I sketched the whole timeline, from steam to ideas that border on science fiction, in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7… Industrial Revolutions. Here I expand on the fifth, because it is the closest.
🧬 Design: you state the goal, not the drawing
We are moving away from right angles towards quasi-organic structures, that is, seemingly non-deterministic ones, like those in nature. Design will become entirely goal-driven. A human will only define the requirements. To exaggerate a little: “I need a vehicle that will safely carry four people out of the middle of a desert and then cross the sea.” The system will autonomously design the ideal, structurally optimized product.
It is a bit like programming with LLMs today. You describe what should work, and the code appears. Here artificial intelligence is the springboard to the fifth revolution. The level of abstraction changes: from drawing every line, we move to stating the goal. I wrote about this level of abstraction in Next level in product manufacturing and 3D printing.
The first steps are already visible. Topology optimization and generative design cut away material wherever it does no work. A cabin partition designed this way by Airbus came out about 45% lighter than a conventional one, and it looks more like a skeleton than a panel. That is not the fifth revolution yet, because a human still draws the starting shape and production still runs layer by layer. But the direction is clear.
Why the right angle loses
Every sharp corner is a place where stress accumulates. That is where cracks start and where the material fatigues fastest. To compensate, we add thickness, and the structure gets heavy.
Moving away from ubiquitous right angles eliminates stress concentration and makes it possible to create much lighter, yet stronger structures. Something like bone: light elements that are very strong. Plus smooth joints instead of a weld at an angle.
🦴 Flipping the table: nature knows no right angles
Today’s thinking means right angles, symmetry and perfect circles everywhere. Do you see that in nature? As a rule, nature is chaotic, yet out of that chaos emerge beauty and strong structures.
Take bones: light, yet remarkably strong. Their inside is a mesh of tiny struts aligned along the lines of load. Bone rebuilds itself where it works and slims down where it does not have to. Or take the joints in our hands, hips and knees. There is no perfect circle anywhere, unlike in a bearing, and yet, together with muscles, in their seemingly non-deterministic nature, they deliver strength, speed and precision.
The point is not to copy nature one to one. The point is the same principle: material only where the forces flow.
📡 Manufacturing: the whole volume at once, with waves
Today, objects are made by casting, machining, or layer by layer, as in current 3D printing. Each of these methods either needs a mould or works point by point. In the fifth revolution, creation will happen simultaneously throughout the whole volume, using waves: electromagnetic or acoustic.
⚛️ How it works: wave interference
Volumetric manufacturing based on wave interference makes it possible to raise energy locally inside a still unformed material, triggering curing and the forming of structures:
- 🌐 Waves pass through a still unformed material, e.g. a special liquid or powder.
- 💥 Where the waves cross (interfere), there is a local, drastic spike in energy ⚡.
- 💠 The high energy causes instant curing, melting of metal or the forming of a skeleton.
By steering the direction and phase of the waves, we move these points through space. The whole shape is built from them: no layers, no supports, no mould.
I once tested this principle, energy focused where beams cross, on living material. In the organic creator (article in Polish) I lit an aquarium from three sides, and the algae grew where the LED beams crossed. Plants are slow builders, but the geometry is the same.
🔬 The seeds are already in the labs
- Xolography (Nature, 2020): two light beams of different wavelengths cross inside a resin, and it cures only where both meet. The object forms within the volume, not in layers.
- Volumetric printing (Berkeley and Livermore, 2019): a container of resin rotates in a sequence of projected images, and the whole object cures at once, within tens of seconds.
- Printing with sound: focused ultrasound cures a resin at a chosen point inside a container. Acoustic holograms, in turn, can arrange particles into a given shape.
These are still resins, small objects and laboratories. But the physics we need already works.
🌀 A skeleton from waves, a skin from electroplating
Forming with waves, e.g. acoustic ones, makes it possible to arrange a skeleton, for example from carbon fibres. It is then metallized in an electroplating process. The result: a light frame shaped like bone, with a metal coating.
♻️ Reversibility: endless recycling
The electroplating process can be reversible. When the current is reversed, the metal leaves the structure and goes back into the electrolyte, just as in electrorefining of copper. This makes it possible to dissolve the product and reuse the material in a closed loop.
Manufacturing will become semi-autonomous and able to create products that are easy to transform and recycle. Production and recycling in the same tank, at room temperature and at a low DC voltage. I developed this thread in Metalic Free Creation.
🛰️ The paradox: it will be easier in space
Surprisingly, such a process may be easier in space, in zero gravity. The initial structure, still floppy, will not be deformed by gravity. On Earth, a freshly formed skeleton has to be supported or immersed in a dense liquid, while in orbit it stays exactly where the waves placed it.
For a multiplanetary species this is a double argument. Instead of a factory and a supply chain, all you need is a tank of liquid, a wave source and energy.
📊 Fourth versus fifth
| 4th revolution | 5th revolution | |
|---|---|---|
| shape | right angles, symmetry, perfect circles | quasi-organic structures |
| design | humans draw, AI optimizes | humans state the goal, the system designs |
| manufacturing | casting, machining, layer by layer | the whole volume at once, with waves |
| material | solid, with a safety margin | only where the forces flow |
| end of life | lossy recycling | reversing the process, closed loop |
Final word
The fourth revolution teaches machines to do faster what we already know how to do. The fifth will change what we make at all. AI is the springboard, because it shows that we can move from the question “how do I draw this” to “what is it for”. The rest is wave physics and electrochemistry, which we have known for a long time. What is missing is control, and the courage to abandon the right angle.
Thank you for your attention, dear Reader.
Dominik Stępień, Eng.