Technology: The key and problem of the Industrial Revolution 4.0
When people talk about the fourth industrial revolution, technology is one thing that couldn’t be put aside. In this modern era, the industrial sector is very dependent on the development of technology, and in fact, technology is changing the industry itself. when we talk about this issue, technology is always the main issue or the main part of it. Thus, the definition of technology is covered with uncertainty and multiple explanations in defining the best definition of technology.
“Technology is the application of science, engineering and industrial organization to create a human-build world.” — Richard Rhodes
In other explanations technology can be identified as a combination outcome of technique, skills, knowledge, and process resulted in producing goods or services. Thomas P. Hughes (2004) arguing technology can be seen as an effort to organize the world for problem-solving which goods and services can be invented, developed, produced, and used. On the other hand, technology is one of the main sources of problems when people use it as a tool for fulfilling their desire for something for example hacking another personal bank account or stealing data from the internet
Klaus Schwab the founder of Wolrd Economic arguing the rapid advances in technology is not limited only to providing us with new capabilities but also changing the way we live, work and communicate with each other. This phase of the Industrial revolution is very different from previous phases. What it makes is so different from the previous revolution simply because the changes and development in technology are growing really fast or maybe “too” fast. For example, the innovation of smartphones in the past 10 years always amuse us with new concepts of technology, new design, and another magnificent change.
Technology as a key and problem
Technology already being an integral part of human life. The border-less world is possible with technology, people now can easily check about current issues on international or other countries issues by simply accessing the internet from home or cafe. The accessibility of this advantage is also contributed by the production of smartphones and also with the access to the internet now is easier than before.
Industry can cut their cost of paying the labor and make the producing timeline become more efficient than before and of course with the help of technology. Tom Goodwin wrote an article in a TechCrunch article in March 2015 about Uber, the world’s largest taxi company but didn’t own even a single vehicle and Airbnb the world's largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. In the digital sector, people can do transactions at a cheaper cost because they don’t have to meet each other by just simply chatting and choose which item or service they want. the creation of blockchain-like bitcoin is seeing as a future type of money to use with some upgrade it’s for sure a breakthrough for a modern type to change or maybe an alternative way from using the conservative or traditional use of money. This trend of the industry is leading to the marginal cost of producing each additional product, good or service tends toward zero. In the biological sector, doctors now can easily identify what diseases or illnesses with less error trial and also cutting the research cost for identifying something
However, with all advantages of the technology, it’s also having issues or opposite the benefits of it. For example, many laborers are unemployed because of the phenomenon of technology now being used in every industry which costs them cheaper than paying the salary of labor. These unemployed phenomena lead to poverty, crisis, and increasingly criminal rate because they don’t have a job and on the other side, they didn’t have a proper education to compete with people with education privileges especially in the technology sector. The solution to this issue should be solved by the government in order to make a better living for the citizen.
Another issue is the education of technology in some country still not the main concern of the government itself because they believe there are several issues that is much more serious than technology. But I believe if the government is spending much more money on technology it could be the key of another economy or a social issue to overcome with the advancement of technology. The old generation and youth generation that are lazy to study about new technology is another issue which the government should encourage with using program or seminar about on how important technology in this industrial revolution 4.0 era.
The collaboration between the private sector and the government is compulsory to extract the benefit of technology and to drive the citizen into a modern city with the advancement of technology in a positive way and manner to not only benefiting in money or material but also as a knowledge for the next generation.
