www.quarryonline.co.za
D
o you fear the Fourth Industrial
Revolution (also known as
Industry 4.0) will take your job?
Do Generation Z’ers sound more alien than
human to you? In reality, these aren’t real
‘things’ but tools for marketers to sell us
stuff. After all, how can retailers sell us their
products unless they can pigeonhole us into
convenient categories?
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is
supposed to create disruptive innovations
in every sector, with many of our jobs
being replaced by robots. But is technology
really something to be feared? It bears
similarity to Y2K: a minor glitch relating
to the way microchips processed dates
ending in the digits ‘00’, it was predicted
by some experts to cause a cataclysm,
bringing down financial markets, power
grids and critical national and international
infrastructure. Governmental committees
were formed and enormous fees were
paid to IT consultants to tackle the crisis.
This potential doom coincided with the
millennium, a date fraught with symbolism
and portents – a bit like everyone poised to
lose their jobs through automation. In the
event, Y2K came and went with nothing
remarkable happening.
The first step to getting people to
buy things out of fear, is to create a new
buzzword. And so we have Industry 4.0,
Millennials and Generation Z.
But do these things really exist? One
common myth is that each generation
has a unique set of characteristics
that differentiates it from every other
generation. Certainly the Baby Boomers
had a post-war frugal mindset which was
real. That was a real step change: the rash
of births nine months after tens of millions
of involuntarily-chaste soldiers returned
home after World War II was unique.
Not so the impulse since to similarly try
label each subsequent generation. While
people of a similar age have characteristics
in common, people of other generations
often share those characteristics. For
instance, Generation Z is made out to be
virtually alien, but actual studies show
they share much the same qualities as any
other generation.
They’re just people – but others will
‘box’ and categorise them for their own
marketing purposes, so they can group
them into convenient consumer categories
and market product to them. This is not a
real ‘thing’, but a marketing thing.
The Industrial Revolution was a real
revolution which upended the traditional
life of people (the Second and Third
being mass production followed by
computerisation – but nobody heard of
DEBUNKING MYTHS
OF INDUSTRY 4.0,
MILLENNIALS
AND GEN Z
COMMENT
Eamonn Ryan, editor
[email protected]
those ‘revolutions’ until the Fourth was
packaged and announced as a thing). The
Fourth now postulates work being taken
over by robots. Actually, there’s nothing
sudden or violent about what is happening.
The reality of life is that every time there is
an innovation, that becomes the foundation
for someone else to build on – something
new becomes possible. This is all that is
happening and there is nothing particularly
unusual about it.
With Industry 4.0 we’re led to imagine
there’s some big step change that’s going
to come – along the lines of Uber – when
in fact change is happening all the time. It
has been happening incrementally since
the 17th century, and it is continuing now
albeit at an accelerating pace – but there’s
no imminent revolution that one has to
anticipate or fear. Innovation is constant.
What is happening is Industrial Evolution.
Automation is of course already replacing
many jobs – but those who fear all mankind
will lose their jobs and be replaced by
robots are unaware of the fundamental
nature of mankind. We are problem-solving
machines and will come up with solutions.
AI, automation or machine learning
isn’t why the economy is bad. The threat to
your job or business is not posed by some
robot, but a new competitor opening up.
The way to address that threat still comes
down to the fundamentals of doing business
as efficiently as possible and creating an
amazing customer experience. If anything,
technology is taking us back to a time when
relationships were important and we had to
focus on the fundamentals.
QUARRY SA | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019_1