Will the fourth revolutionary wave overwhelm mankind? (by Ilaria Bifarini)

There are man-made innovations whose effects on the socio-economic system are so powerful that they are likened to shockwaves of revolutionary scope. This is what happened with the discovery of the steam engine in the 19th century, with that of electricity which revolutionized the 20th century and, lastly, the recent advent of the internet , which most of us have witnessed, except the digital natives for whom it is the only imaginable reality. But if the revolutionary waves of the past seemed to respect a centennial cadence, which allowed society and the human being to adapt to the new habitat , in times of precariousness and vaunted resilience (now a sort of linguistic wildcard, able to obtain unanimous approval ) the world has changed gears. Here we are faced with a new subversion of the organizational and value model of the company, while we were still looking for a phase of adjustment. It is the new revolutionary wave, which in fact looks more like a tsunami, triggered by the earthquake of the advent of the Internet: the digitization and automation on a wide range of the economy, which thanks to Covid and the social distancing adopted by governments it had that propulsive charge necessary for its explosion. As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella enthusiastically stated:

"We have seen two years of digital transformation in two months"

The driving force of the lockdown

Forced to stay at home during the lockdown, workers have resorted to smartworking (or rather, homeworking) , meetings through virtual platforms have become the new mode of interaction, children and teenagers have switched from classroom to remote teaching and consumers have completely abandoned purchases in physical stores in favor of online ones, with the sole exception of basic necessities.

So it happened that platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom and the Chinese virtual games site Tencent have become the meeting place for millions of people, offering a preview of what will be the much anticipated "new normal". Twitter, an icon company and visionary of innovation, has promptly declared that it offers all employees who want to continue working from home the opportunity to do so. So many other companies have been enthusiastic about remote working: millions of workers around the world will never return to offices.

The current trend is to dematerialize the employment relationship, with a preference for automation, in which the human contribution is reduced or even eliminated. Even in the service sector, where up to now an innate predilection for human contact persisted, with the coronavirus every taboo has been broken and the process of automation and digitization has accelerated. The repercussions on unemployment , in a dangerous context of falling demand and supply generated by the Covid containment measures, will be unprecedented.

Already in 2013, two Oxford economists in their study ( The Future of Employment: how susceptible are jobs to computerization?, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne) predicted that half of existing jobs will be destroyed by 2033 . With the driving force induced by the management of the pandemic, the ominous prophecy could come true sooner, with a further increase in inequality, in a world in which the digital divide will be increasingly discriminatory and the concentration of wealth ever greater in the face of widespread poverty.

Considering that the bugbear of technological unemployment is certainly not a new topic – the far-sighted and too long forgotten JM Keynes already spoke of it – and rejecting any Luddite suggestion, we must ask ourselves two crucial questions. If it is true that through technological progress we have reached a level of well-being and productivity that no longer requires the mass labor contribution, who will keep the population inactive? and through which tools? A guaranteed universal income would appear to be looming from multiple voices as the most viable solution, but it would open up a number of issues around the working class's acceptance of contributing through higher taxation – in our current economy the only possible source.

Furthermore, a fundamental question from the social and anthropological point of view: can man live without working, despite having an economic sustenance? What alternative activities will be able to occupy one's life and place it in a recognized context of sharing and human exchange? It is difficult to give an answer in an increasingly digital world, in which sociability, aggregation and live relationships seem to be expelled in the name of social distancing for health purposes. The risk is that in order not to incur the sense of uselessness and loneliness, one seeks refuge in virtual reality, in an increasingly close and difficult to define man-machine relationship.

from Ilariabifarini.com

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The article Will the fourth revolutionary wave overwhelm man? (by Ilaria Bifarini) comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/la-quarta-onda-rivoluzionaria-travolgera-luomo-di-ilaria-bifarini/ on Wed, 09 Sep 2020 17:11:56 +0000.