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The withdraw of the United Kingdom from the EuropeanUnion certainly dominated the  NEWS and shocked the World including her financial market for the past week.

Question: How did this happen? What are the long term prospects for the World?

Here are my take on the subject:

1.   For the past two decades, “globalization” has been taken place  relentlessly in the world. Globalization enabled international commerce permitting the free flow of goods, people, and services all over the world; it established instantaneous and wide spread communication so that most people became aware of the“going-on”s in every part of the world; it has benefited the overall economies of the world although unevenly in the sense income equality.

2.   Globalizationalso allowed more free movement of people. The most recent  examples are the Syrian and African refugees crises in the Eurozone.  People only need to get to one of the Eurozone countries such as Greece and  Turkey with more porous borders to be able to move on to Sweden, UK, and other  Middle East hot spots.Also the Eurozone is not the United States of Europe http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1565-904182.html

3.  At the same time, technological advances and breakthroughs  such as “Big Data http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1565-763330.html  http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1565-772512.html  http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1565-782129.html  http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1565-783786.html ”and “Deep Learning http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1565-910916.html “ have made Artificial Intelligence (AI) once more useful and exciting.   Just like automation and the industrial revolution made “mechanical power”  replacing”human muscle power”, AI have begun to replace “brain power” with “computing power”. Many service jobs such as telephone answering, form  processing, and others that used to require human handling are being replaced  and done more efficiently with computing algorithms. http://blog.sciencenet.cn/home.php?mod=space&uid=1565&do=blog&id=983988   Only personal service jobs   such as barbers, restaurant waiters, cleaning crews, etc. remains irreplaceable  at present. Displaced worker particularly those with limited education became permanently unemployable. This is not an “Industrial Revolution” but an “IntelligenceRevolution”

4.  The above facts began to threaten the world of the middle class in  developed countries, such as the US and the UK. Their wages became stagnant  if not decreasing; higher incomes only go to the elites, the highly educated,  the creative, and the entertaining persons of the Society. The ordinary middle class became angry and frustrated. This accounts for the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie  Sanders in the US and the main reason for the UK to withdraw from the  European Union, the so called “Brexit”.

5.  Whilethe identification of the problem is relatively clear, the solution is by no means easy. There are already “remorse and regret” and  talk of a “2^ndReferendum” in the UK. Nor is the withdraw painless for the  UK and the World. Just look at the 2 Trillion dollar loss in the world stock  market in one day and the devaluation of the British pound. Breakup of the UK into England,Scotland, and Northern Ireland, and  withdraws by other EU countries are real possibilities. These are problems  not easily visualized and comprehended by the some 17 million angry  “LEAVE” voters of the UK.

6.  The western mind tend to think that in a disruption (such as the  19^thcentury Industrial Revolution), democracy and order are the default  state  of being for the society. But history certainly proved the contrary.  In fact“violence, brutal chaos, and dictatorship” are more often the default  state. We need to make AI into IA http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1565-414924.html

7.  One may question “how come China has not been effected by all these issues?”. The simple answer is that China is a developing  country. Her population is pyramid shaped without a bulging middle class. While income inequality is becoming a problem, the vast lowerclass (some 350 million plus who used to live in dirt poverty) do see their livelihood improve considerably in the past generation. Thus they are  relatively satisfied and not thinking of another revolution.  But just give it time. TheChinese leadership better be prepared when the  country is “developed”.

8.  This is a real cause to worry for our civilization. Are we in “Future Shock”  and let technology run away from us?

9.  The Industrial Revolution vs TheIntelligence Revolution: On Optimization (IFAC 1999 Plenary Lecture) http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1565-759185.html  worth a look second time even after 17 years.

Note added 6/29/2016. So far comments for this blog artuicle seem to be silent on what I believe to be the root cause of this issue - The Intelligence Revolution brought on by AI which I believe to be in equal importance as the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. . Does everyone agree on this point or not?

I should also add that "immigration" is another cause of middle class anger because immigrants are often willing to take low paying jobs that the middle class refuse to take. Thus immigrants further exacerbate the problem.