Rather than viewing it as a “fourth industrial revolution (4IR)”, as Sipho Maseko does (“Summit starts imagining all facets of SA’s future in the digital economy”, July 9), we should view contemporary times as the fourth phase of the industrial revolution, the first having been the coming of mechanical power (water and steam), the second the arrival of Big Science (machines and high-voltage), and the third brought on by computers (electronics and microchips).
Thus seen, it is apparent that the fourth phase, being the information age (artificial intelligence and big-data), arises chronologically from the foregoing periods. You cannot have the fourth without the others: the phases are compounding and concurrent. Yet SA has been deindustrialising as mineral extraction shifts from corporates to zama zamas and formal manufacturing comes down to 13% of GDP. In fact, without electricity or Eskom we would be set back to phase one...
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