We just starting the ramping up of the fourth Industrial Revolution, categorized by connectivity, automation and rampant technology. As if any one of these changes were not hard enough to live with, to adapt to, the culmination of these new forces on our lives not only shape the reality around us, they fundamentally require us to think, envision, plan new realities.
Some of what’s already happened like computers, cell phones, connected devices on the cloud can blind us to think that someone else will make the product, we’ll use it and — presto — we’re part of the revolution. And, yes, if all you want to be is an end consumer and continually shocked and amazed at what’s next, go right ahead and roll with the punches you’ll receive. The problem for you and most of the younger generation, is that industry devoid of an uplifting culture as part of the rapid developing world will — in the end — reduce your status to that of an increasingly poorer, punch-drunk, consumer.
It happened at the end of every Industrial Revolution so far. The traditionalist worker, inventor, businessperson got poorer. The industrialists using modern technology prospered. The gap widened.
When I was a kid, the head of GM made 30 times the salary of the assembly worker. Now the head of GM makes 500 times as much. The head of GM is part of the fourth Industrial Revolution and is mapping the future. The assembly worker is, increasingly, a worker waiting to be replaced by a machine.
But there are trends in thinking, in culture, that can map a better future for all of us. As Edward de Bono said, we have to think laterally. Look, reaching for a brilliant future, for that new invention, a brilliant bit of inventive programming may be the future for the brightest of us, but the rest of us just need to get smarter, think around the issues, find commonplace already-invented bits and pieces we can put to better use and start new industries.
So, here’s an example. An Italian middle-aged man knew he was going to lose his job to automation at a factory pouting concrete sleepers (railroad ties they are also called). A friend of his was putting in solar panels on his house. He looked at the square area per kilowatt produced. He looked at the replacement rate for railroad sleepers for 10,000 miles of track in Italy alone. In general, every sleeper has to be replaced every 10-12 years depending on train traffic. Concrete sleepers are noisier than wooden ones.
Then one day he went to the local recycling center and saw piles of tires. Thinking laterally, he thought that they could still pour concrete sleepers, then melt waste tires and coat the sleeper with soundproofing and then, in a stroke of genius (lateral thinking), stick a solar panel surface on top of the non-rail portions, using the rail as the electrical connection when it is installed. He calculated: The new concrete sleeper would be 50% more expensive but would produce electricity for 16 households for every mile installed. The rubber would dampen the vibration for better train travel and wear and tear. Installation methods would not be changed. Ballast would remain the same and, best of all, the normal replacement would be cost free also meaning the price of the sleepers would be amortized at the end of one year or two.
No new technology. Simple lateral thinking making something no one ever thought of before out of already commonplace elements. Here in the USA? We have 137,000 miles of track Eventually that could supply electricity for 2.5% of all households. The sleepers need to be replaced anyway, why not think laterally and make them more useful?
Want more proof? Every great revolutionary product is a combination; making something never tried before. Henry Ford took the British Navy’s line production of sailing pulleys and made a car production line. Thomas Edison took a glowing heater element and adapted it to a carbon filament and made a light bulb. Steve Jobs took a military printed micro circuit and made it into the iPhone. Bill Gates took calculator programming for IBM (DOS) and made it work visually (using Xerox research for NASA). Epoxy glue made for the military is now sticking appliances and cars together. In 1958 Hymen Lipman said we didn’t need a new pencil, we needed a combination of the eraser on the pencil. Known products used in marvelous new ways. NewThink around problems.
Writer Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now resides in New Mexico.
‘Square Quilting painting' by ransomeAlexander Wilburn
