I am excited that the Helvetas Eastern European team asked me to write a blog post for their Mosaic newsletter about the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The blog article and many others can be found here.
Regular readers will know that I am not so convinced of one big revolution; rather that there are many smaller disruptions. In this article, I argue that it is hard to imagine what a paradigm shift would look like. I make six arguments of why there are rather several smaller disruptions taking place. The credit for coming up with the image in the article goes to Zenebe Uraguchi from Helvetas. He is also the person that convinced me to write this article, and who guided me when I felt stuck. Thank you, Zenebe! Take a look at some of Zenebe’s posts on the Inclusive Systems blog of Helvetas.
The second half of the article I wrote is about figuring out which social technologies to develop that are needed to make certain technologies usable or beneficial to societies. Many of these social technologies are cultural or organisational, but there are also many public institutions and public goods that are lacking in developing countries.
To me, it feels that we are still just scratching the surface when it comes to helping the meso organisations of developing countries cope with technological change.
However, it is exciting that my research into discontinuous technological change and the necessary social and technological institutions that are required in developing countries is of interest to development organisations and governments.
I am looking forward to your comments, questions, contradictions and ideas!
Best wishes,
Shawn
