This study has compared the technological regimes of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and the Third Industrial Revolution (3IR) technologies. If we limit the comparison based on absolute values representing diverse elements of the technological regime, 4IR technologies are more original and science-based and have a longer technological cycle time (TCT). However, all these differences turn insignificant or reversed when the comparison is made using normalized values of variables reflecting over-time trends. Moreover, 4IR technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), have an impact on subsequent innovations in less wide fields (lower degree of generality) compared with 3IR, which means that they may not be counted as a new general-purpose technology. Furthermore, a longer TCT of 4IR technologies, including AI, means that they tend to keep citing 3IR technologies or older. In this sense, 4IR technologies are not much a radical break from past technologies but tend to be evolutionary, whereas 3IR technologies correspond to a more radical break from the past technologies because they have a shorter TCT and rely less on old technologies. At the aggregate level, technologies in the 21st century heavily rely on science, combining knowledge from more diverse fields (higher originality) and becoming longer cycled but having impact on less diverse fields (lower generality), which is true not just in a few technologies commonly associated with the so-called 4IR but across the board of technologies. Finally, although five representative 4IR technologies do not command radically different technological regimes compared with 3IR technologies, they are still outstanding, that is, they have higher originality, generality, and shorter TCT compared with the average technologies in the 2010s.

中文翻译：

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第四次工业革命是第三次工业革命的延续还是太阳底下的新事物？使用美国专利数据分析技术体制

本研究比较了第四次工业革命 (4IR) 和第三次工业革命 (3IR) 技术的技术体制。如果我们基于代表技术体系不同元素的绝对值来限制比较，那么 4IR 技术更具原创性和科学性，并且具有更长的技术周期时间 (TCT)。然而，当使用反映随时间变化趋势的变量的标准化值进行比较时，所有这些差异都变得微不足道或逆转。而且，与3IR相比，包括人工智能（AI）在内的4IR技术对后续创新的影响范围更小（通用性较低），这意味着它们可能不能算作一种新的通用技术。此外，包括人工智能在内的 4IR 技术的更长 TCT，意味着他们倾向于继续引用 3IR 技术或更旧的技术。从这个意义上说，4IR 技术与过去的技术相比没有太大的突破，而是趋于进化，而 3IR 技术对应于对过去技术的更彻底的突破，因为它们的 TCT 较短，对旧技术的依赖较少。从总体上看，21世纪的技术高度依赖科学，结合了更多不同领域的知识（更高的原创性），周期更长，但对多样性较少的领域（通用性较低）产生了影响，这不仅仅是少数技术的真实情况通常与所谓的 4IR 相关，但涉及所有技术。最后，尽管与 3IR 技术相比，五种具有代表性的 4IR 技术并没有完全不同的技术体制，