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Africa and the Fourth Industrial Revolution
The Need for “Creative Destruction” Beyond Technological Change
FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
In this question and answer interview, Professor Rasigan Maharajh, found- ing Chief Director of the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation at the Tshwane University of Technology, discusses the prospects and potential risks of the Fourth Industrial Revolu- tion.
What is the so-called Fourth Indus- trial Revolution all about?
In 1926, Nikolai Dmitriyevich Kondrati- ev was amongst the first to describe long waves of depressions and recov- eries within capitalist business cycles. The hypothesised cycle-like phenome- na became popularly known as “Kon- dratieff Waves” following the promo- tion of the idea by economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1939. Schumpeter would also establish the idea of “cre- ative destruction”, which occurs when innovation deconstructs long-stand- ing economic structures and frees resources to be deployed elsewhere. Building on this school of thought, later scholars have conceptualised at least
five techno-economic paradigms since the mid-18th century:
• The steam engine (1780 – 1830)
• Railways and steel (1830 – 1880
• Electricity and chemicals (1880 –
1930)
• Automobiles and petro-chemicals
(1930 – 1970)
• Information and communication
technologies (1970 – 2010)
More recently, John Mathews, an hon- orary Professor at Macquarie Universi- ty, proposed the emergence of the sixth Kondratieff Wave, beginning in 2010, which was being driven by the tech- nology surge associated with renew- able energies. Based on such complex systematic and structural technological change that has creatively destroyed hitherto established forms of social, political and economic organisations and established subsequent succes- sor regimes and infrastructures, the idea of the so-called “Fourth Industri- al Revolution” – as promoted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and its
founder Klaus Martin Schwab – does appear to be weakly composed from stylised facts and popular generalisa- tions. While such a perspective may be relevant when looking down at the world from the freezing heights of Da- vos, it does not coincide with perspec- tives of the global South and the global experiences of world systems.
In the WEF’s conceptualisation, the First Industrial Revolution (1760 – 1840) ushered in mechanisation of production; the Second Industrial Revolution (1870 – 1914) established mass production; the Third Industrial Revolution (1960 – continuing) formed around computer and digital technolo- gies; whilst the Fourth Industrial Revo- lution began at the turn of this century and builds on the digital revolution.
It brings a much more ubiquitous and mobile Internet, smaller and more powerful sensors that have become cheaper, and artificial intelligence and machine learning. Such rendition es- chews the processes of mercantilism,
Volume 12 No.3 of 2019 | SERVICE DELIVERY REVIEW 25