Home ›› 16 Jan 2022 ›› Editorial
The recently concluded International Conference on 4th Industrial Revolution and Beyond [IC4IR] organised by the University Grants Commission divulged issues and imperatives on technological evolution and its human interface.
It is interesting to see the sequence and duration of each successive Industrial Revolution and the trend in technology adoption through appropriate educational requirements to tide with the changing environment. It took about 100 years for the transition from the mechanization of production using steam engines in 1780 to the invention of electricity in 1870 helping division of labour and mass production. The third Industrial Revolution commenced in 1970, paving the way for mass production with the integration of Programmable Logistic Controller [PLC] in car manufacturing. The primary reason for designing such a device was to eliminate the large cost involved in replacing the complicated relay-based machine control systems. The 1980s saw an attempt to standardize communications with General Motor’s manufacturing automation protocol (MAP). It was also a time for reducing the size of the PLC and making their software programmable through symbolic programming on personal computers instead of dedicated programming terminals. Thus PLC witnessed phase-wise improvement till 1990. During the next twenty years, technological evolution witnessed phenomenal growth.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution [4IR] includes nanotechnology, biotechnology, and advanced digital production [ADP] technologies. The latter includes 3D printing, human-machine interfaces, the internet of things [IoT], and artificial intelligence [AI]. The ultimate protocol is the convergence and complementarity of emerging technology domains. “It is uniquely marked by a blurring of the boundaries between the biological, the physical, and the digital realms.”
Technological innovation stripped many favorite products from our regular use, for instance Video Cassette Recorder, and surprisingly jobs now performed by a smartphone could not be performed by a mainframe computer in the late seventies. Simple photocopy machine was a luxury in many developing countries during the sixties, students and teachers in those days relied on the Facit machine to perform numerical calculations and clinical devices were rudimentary. Strangely, medical diagnostics and AI are now incorporated in mobile technology for contact tracing and data collection technologies. Current digital tools have shown promising results in managing infectious outbreaks. Thus, the above review of IR by phases shows a distinct time frame in transition but beyond Fourth IR the fleeting technological evolution may obfuscate such a fine distinction.
Thus the continuously evolving technology poses challenges in adoption and may be tamed only through requisite skill and knowledge in succession. Currently, the penetration of 4IR is confined to just four developed economies that hold 77 per cent of ADP-related patents worldwide. UNIDO’s Industrial Report 2020 drew a bleak picture on 4IR adoption in developing countries. However, the “globalized nature of value chains manifests that most parts of the world will be impacted by 4IR sooner or later, directly or indirectly, positively or negatively.” Indeed, the availability and affordability of ADP (Automatic Data Processing) technologies with the right level of and combination of skills and industrial capabilities is the sine qua non in this swift transition.
Therefore, the academic infrastructure needs to be dovetailed to meet such challenges through restructuring and reengineering; otherwise, the skill and knowledge gap in the process may endanger the existence of even a dynamic community and state. Fortunately; Covid-19 in disguise taught us a lesson regarding the resilience of internet protocol in our day-to-day activities spanning from academic to financial and business worlds.
It would be interesting to see how Bangladesh weathers such turbulence with her modest level of preparedness. As a matter of fact many experts believe that Bangladesh’s level of preparedness may not be enough to face future challenges in the technological domain if we do not emphasize restructuring education to meet the burgeoning skill gap between the current level of preparedness in skill and craft and the skill requirement in the spontaneous innovation in technology. “There is clearly a virtuous circle at play: the more technology-and digitally-intensive industries exist in an economy, the faster the diffusion of ADP technologies and the greater the build-up of experience and expertise, which in turn accelerates the process of further digitalisation.”
IC4IR was an eye-opener on Bangladesh's preparedness to face technological innovation in the future. The collaborative drive between industry-academia collaboration translated through the Mujib 100 Industrial Exhibition and Mujib 100 idea contest synchronized the modalities of interface for grooming human capital through Innovative Education Ecosystem [IEE]. It is encouraging to note that future continuous collaboration may usher in a national platform under the guidance of UGC for sustainability and efficiency. The outcome-based education with components such as internship, industry-based projects, and attachment with units could help university students for their skill development. A periodic review of the academic curriculum may provide a sense of direction on the redundancy of topics and the urgency of incorporating new modules in the course curriculum.
Textbook-based education is designed to understand the structure of input-output embedded in technology and helps in the thinking process but attachment provides the real flavour of such theoretical understanding. Unfortunately, the university curriculum in many instances is based on classical ideas and seldom revised to incorporate topical issues. The book that catalogues Mujib 100 Idea Contest is full of gems and demonstrates an excellent understanding of the young entrepreneurs and professionals in this man-machine interface drill. Moreover, the abstract of over 100 papers spanning from tariff-improving Access to Sustainable Electricity to implementation of a Digital Healthcare Service Model for Ensuring Preventive and Primary Healthcare in Rural Bangladesh corroborates depth in understanding and designing a pragmatic and economic solution on many issues pertaining to digital technology.
A grim reality of the 4 IR is the changing nature of jobs that the youth within the next two decades will encounter. The World Economic Forum [WEF] in a report predicted that 65 per cent of the children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new jobs that don't yet exist. It would be quite an interesting exercise to envisage the nature of jobs in the next ten years.
The writer is the Treasurer and a Professor at the School of Business and Economics, United International University. He may be contacted at obaidur@eco.uiu.ac.bd
