OP-ED: The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Hype, interesting intellectual parlour game or malign distraction? By Leonard Gentle
When then Chinese leader, Zhou Enlai, was asked in 1972 by an American delegate in the visiting Nixon’s team what he thought the significance of the French Revolution – of 1789, 200 years earlier – was, he famously replied: “It’s too soon to say.” This quote is often used to show how far-sighted Chinese politicians can be and how much they are wedded to a long view of history.History is like this…. We often have to wait many decades before we can begin to appreciate the impact of events.
But what lifts Schwab’s intervention out of the realms of pure intellectual interest is its capacity to shape the public policies of governments. This is because of his status as the founder of the WEF and its evolution from a billionaires’ jamboree to a necessary stop-off point of governments. This is both because governments are in hock to the billionaires and because of the seductive power of bringing together economic rationality with scientific rationality.
But much of the readiness to uncritically embrace the notion of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is based on a shoddy understanding of human history and a conflation of three very different things:Whereas technological innovations occur all the time, not all are “high tech” and not all are outcomes of new scientific paradigms nor are they necessarily associated with the kind of social changes to earn the title “revolution”.
It would be well worth noting that the inventions such as the spinning jenny, the steam engine and water to coal and steam as the source of energy in production occurred in 1770s England but no-one used the term “Industrial Revolution” until almost 100 years later.
Their collective claim was that developments in Information and Communications Technology had prompted social changes of such proportions that borders were becoming extinct, that information would become the new source of comparative advantage in global competition and that human beings were shifting from national, racial and class identities to global networks.
Well, the reality is that this has been a case of technological innovation meeting the real world of political power. Blockchain undeniably has the innovative capacity to replace conventional money in recording international exchange. But money is not just a means of exchange. It is also a measure and a store of value. And control over these functions by the state – in a very “old technology” kind of way – is as important as a military and economic power.
In each of these categories, South Africa’s statistics are amongst the highest per capita in the world. Mothers and new-born babies in South Africa die at two to three times more than the average for comparable countries and we have almost 1% of the global burden. We have the highest HIV and TB deaths in the world.
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