Abstract

The Fourth Industrial Revolution – what does it mean to our future faculty?

Highlights

  • The future of a country like South Africa is predicated upon policies; whether these policies are effective or ineffective is not primarily an issue

  • If South Africa is to fully prepare itself to take advantage of the wave of technological and industrial change wrought by this technological revolution, it needs to take seriously the full implications of what is afoot, including what is meant by the term ‘revolution’

  • With the expansion of the Internet and other uses of digital technology, the 3IR democratised computer technology for individual and civil industrial usage beyond the hitherto military and big government preserve. Despite this democratisation of technological progress, digital technology rendered obsolete other forms of mechanical production, creating in effect degraded and denuded landscapes and redundant people – workers whose life and culture became ‘backward’ and divorced from the network and circuits of flows created by the emergent technology

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Summary

History and context

The descriptive ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’[2] is certainly not a unique term because it has precedents – that is, it is preceded by the First, Second, and Third Industrial Revolutions[2]. With the expansion of the Internet and other uses of digital technology, the 3IR democratised computer technology for individual and civil industrial usage beyond the hitherto military and big government preserve Despite this democratisation of technological progress, digital technology rendered obsolete other forms of mechanical production, creating in effect degraded and denuded landscapes and redundant people – workers whose life and culture became ‘backward’ and divorced from the network and circuits of flows created by the emergent technology. The 4IR is a platform that seeks to accelerate, at scale, the existing networks of flow for goods and services and to transfer all modes and markers of being into the virtual, using artificial intelligence (AI) as a catalyst What would make this revolution different from the previous? How do we avoid creating losers in the same manner as the previous IRs? Inevitably, what sites and what people is South Africa prepared to sacrifice in order to achieve the 4IR? And once identified, can South Africa be forthright in informing them for them to prepare themselves for the coming revolution?

Reacting and not leading
Getting the basics right
Findings
To what end?
Full Text
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