INTRODUCTION
The world is going through testing times. Global challenges are everywhere. Poverty is persistent. Income inequality is widespread. Environmental degradation is stinging. Migration and security concerns are rampant. Global warming is unabated. We are all experiencing that sinking feeling. The old world is going down. It is however taking such a long time for it to be buried once and for all. This is mainly due to the absence of a rising “brave new world“. Ideas that would shape the forthcoming new world is nowhere to be seen. We are obviously in between the two worlds. One is refusing to go and disappear into the past one is refusing to be born. One of the difficulties imposed upon the analysts of social change today relates to the determination of harbingers of underlying elements and circumstances upon which forthcoming “new world“ might rise.
We readily accept that the new world will be rising upon the existing embryonic formations of certain set of developments. At the highest stage of analytical abstraction, we identify these components to be the segments of technological advances, specifically in the form of digital revolution. Hence, this piece hereby aims to explore these primary drivers dominating the change in the modern world. We have particularly used the background of post-conflict societies. This we expect would enable us to explore what would ensue after a society is destroyed akin to the destruction of our global social and natural environment. Although this may be an extreme statement it is safe to assume for argument’s sake that what is befalling upon us is hammering us to extinction globally.
This paper proceeds by first looking at the digital transformation as we experience in recent years. We particularly refer to the so called 4th Industrial Revolution as its use is widely accepted, though keeping certain disclaimers about the concept.
I. DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND THE 4TH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
The 4th industrial revolution was first spelled out in 2011, by the German government. The concept highlights that the use of digital technologies now will fundamentally change the way production is done since the original Industrial Revolution of the 18th century. Industry 4.0 accordingly will also change businesses, markets and the global economy. Since it portrays a new industrial era, it will have a major impact upon how contemporary societies live. Information and information technologies being the main drivers of change will re-define social and institutional existence of human beings by imposing upon them new hierarchical governance structures and decision-making mechanisms. Underlying fundamental advancement that will make this possible is characterized by hyper-connectivity.
It is a curious phenomenon. Although some fundamental changes were introduced with the 4th Industrial revolution, it did not specify as to what extent individual lives would be affected and altered. Hence this was not the end of the story, that everyone lived happily ever after. In the 10th anniversary of the 4th Industrial Revolution, in 2021 the European Union announced its Industry 5.0 strategy. This strategy singled out sustainability and human-centered advancements of digital transformation. Accordingly, these were harmonized with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), accepted in 2015. The SDG’s stated that “… seventeen interlinked objectives designed to serve as a ‘shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future’“. These harmonized targets would aim to commit governments to tackle with the problems they are sharing with the international community while helping to the rise of new world. Hence, we talk about a dual process interlinked, i.e. burying the old world while helping the birth of the new.
Put it differently, there has been an implicit agreement that the drivers of the rising new world will be generated from within the digital sphere. The new technologies revolutionize the way in which social relations are formed which will be pro-poor, environmentally friendly, gender bolstering, education specific, democratic and market driven. Although, it has been carrying in itself some weaknesses such strategies have been accepted to be better than nothing. Now we shall examine whether such policy measures help us to produce much needed guiding principles to sort out some of the problem areas that we are facing today. critical setbacks that may come about with these applications.
The world is going through testing times. Global challenges are everywhere. Poverty is persistent. Income inequality is widespread. Environmental degradation is stinging. Migration and security concerns are rampant. Global warming is unabated. We are all experiencing that sinking feeling. The old world is going down. It is however taking such a long time for it to be buried once and for all. This is mainly due to the absence of a rising “brave new world“. Ideas that would shape the forthcoming new world is nowhere to be seen. We are obviously in between the two worlds. One is refusing to go and disappear into the past one is refusing to be born. One of the difficulties imposed upon the analysts of social change today relates to the determination of harbingers of underlying elements and circumstances upon which forthcoming “new world“ might rise.
We readily accept that the new world will be rising upon the existing embryonic formations of certain set of developments. At the highest stage of analytical abstraction, we identify these components to be the segments of technological advances, specifically in the form of digital revolution. Hence, this piece hereby aims to explore these primary drivers dominating the change in the modern world. We have particularly used the background of post-conflict societies. This we expect would enable us to explore what would ensue after a society is destroyed akin to the destruction of our global social and natural environment. Although this may be an extreme statement it is safe to assume for argument’s sake that what is befalling upon us is hammering us to extinction globally.
This paper proceeds by first looking at the digital transformation as we experience in recent years. We particularly refer to the so called 4th Industrial Revolution as its use is widely accepted, though keeping certain disclaimers about the concept.
I. DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND THE 4TH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
The 4th industrial revolution was first spelled out in 2011, by the German government. The concept highlights that the use of digital technologies now will fundamentally change the way production is done since the original Industrial Revolution of the 18th century. Industry 4.0 accordingly will also change businesses, markets and the global economy. Since it portrays a new industrial era, it will have a major impact upon how contemporary societies live. Information and information technologies being the main drivers of change will re-define social and institutional existence of human beings by imposing upon them new hierarchical governance structures and decision-making mechanisms. Underlying fundamental advancement that will make this possible is characterized by hyper-connectivity.
It is a curious phenomenon. Although some fundamental changes were introduced with the 4th Industrial revolution, it did not specify as to what extent individual lives would be affected and altered. Hence this was not the end of the story, that everyone lived happily ever after. In the 10th anniversary of the 4th Industrial Revolution, in 2021 the European Union announced its Industry 5.0 strategy. This strategy singled out sustainability and human-centered advancements of digital transformation. Accordingly, these were harmonized with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), accepted in 2015. The SDG’s stated that “… seventeen interlinked objectives designed to serve as a ‘shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future’“. These harmonized targets would aim to commit governments to tackle with the problems they are sharing with the international community while helping to the rise of new world. Hence, we talk about a dual process interlinked, i.e. burying the old world while helping the birth of the new.
Put it differently, there has been an implicit agreement that the drivers of the rising new world will be generated from within the digital sphere. The new technologies revolutionize the way in which social relations are formed which will be pro-poor, environmentally friendly, gender bolstering, education specific, democratic and market driven. Although, it has been carrying in itself some weaknesses such strategies have been accepted to be better than nothing. Now we shall examine whether such policy measures help us to produce much needed guiding principles to sort out some of the problem areas that we are facing today. critical setbacks that may come about with these applications.
- DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: A FRIEND OR A FOE
It is possible to interpret digital transformation, Industry 4.0 & 5.0 as the upgrading of means of production. Users of these new production tools ought to develop new skills. On the other hand, digitally informed production practice is labor intensive. In other words, the use of digital technologies is not necessarily going to provide extra leisure time for workers to improve their abilities. Workers as we are more frequently witnessing more recently are much more readily at the disposal of their bosses. End result is automation and prolonging of working day and this is not necessarily worker friendly. Add to this another fact: an important new phenomenon known as precarious job practice that came about much more robustly with digitalization and robotics. As a result working people are now experiencing more and more severe job insecurity and them developing a sense of worthlessness. Adopting to and mitigating of the negative effects of these new occurrences will take much time for the working people.
Automation, which develops with digital technologies, directly concerns employees. In 2018, 71 percent of the effort made in doing a job came from people and 29 percent from machines. By 2022, the share of humans is expected to decrease to 58 percent, and the share of machinery to 42 percent. (WEF Future of Jobs) We need transformation for human and automation to add value together. Digitization needs to be blended with human skills. With digitalization and automation, some jobs will be lost and reduced. On the other hand, new jobs will emerge. Such as digital ethics officer, industrial big data scientist, robotics expert, digital mentor. By 2030, the most sought-after profiles in the manufacturing industry are; They will be robotic engineers, big data experts, artificial intelligence programmers, IOT experts, multi-channel software developers and cyber security experts.
New working methods such as rotational work, invoice-based work, collaborative work, and on-call work are emerging. For the first time in business life, there are 4-5 different generations at the same time. A multi-generational workforce (with Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z working together) increases productivity. Artificial intelligence is added to human intelligence. With artificial intelligence-based systems, faster execution, operational capability and accuracy are achieved. Before the pandemic, 65 percent of businesses thought existing skills needed to change. Now this rate has increased to 94 percent. 1 billion people will join the labor market in the next 10 years.
As individuals and societies, we are now under pressure to change our role (up-skilling) and gain competencies (re-skilling) in order to acquire new professions. For instance, 23 percent of the workforce in Turkey, 27 percent in Japan, and 20 percent in China have to do some kind of up-skilling and re-skilling. According to McKinsey (2020) report for Turkey, 7.6 million jobs will be eliminated if we reach 20-25% automation level in production processes by 2030. On the other hand, it is stated that 8.9 million new jobs will be created. Digitization will also bring with it 1.8 million jobs that did not exist before.
On the other hand, some of the new companies are preparing long-term business plans to limit the use of polluting materials such as plastic, and to zero their carbon footprint by 2050. During the epidemic, 85% of the companies accelerated their digitalization, 67% automation and artificial intelligence studies. For instance, digital transformation rate of businesses is around 60 percent. Now, digital transformation of industry and working life is not a choice; has become a necessity.
With the epidemic accelerated and irreversible digital transformation and technologies such as groundbreaking artificial intelligence and the internet of things, production is also transforming. The future of production is shaped by these dynamics with an unprecedented speed. Robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data have become a part of our business life. It is estimated that by 2025, approximately 75 billion devices will be communicating with each other. (Approximately 10 times the human population).
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