Rahmi AYDEMİR
Business Development Manager Aydemirler
German novelist Marc-Uwe Kling’s book “The Country of Quality” begins with the question: “What can go wrong with the world’s biggest company and best algorithm?” Our short journey to the development in the history of industry and the speed of change of the world can give us a chance to answer this question…
Until the middle of the 18th century, almost 90% of the world’s population lived an agriculture-based life. (Small commercial, service and industrial sectors shared only a portion of 10%.) In the last part of the 20th century, world industrial production has been ninety times larger than it was in 1750, with the increase in raw material consumption and of course with the change in the social life there has been radical changes in energy production and consumption. *
A large part of the world population started to live in cities, and this was one of the most obvious consequences of social transformation. Workforce was now shifting from rural to urban, from agriculture to industry.
But the Industrial Revolution condemned humanity, almost entirely dealing with agriculture, to a life built on the mass production line. I guess the verb “condemned” could contest the thought of many readers, but I think it will be a good expression for readers like me who do not see a proportion between the welfare and the increase in production-consumption rate.
Many factors such as increase in production and consumption amount and diversity, increasing energy use and environmental pollution in parallel brought new professions with it. Now companies are bigger, departments are larger, and the number of employees is as much.
We may need more than the social struggle caused by the results of the industrial revolution
It is not known what the greatest legacy of the 21st century will be, but we are going through a period in which the conventional order has changed rapidly for thousands of years, from industry to technology and social structure. The development of technology and its lack of determinism can pose a great danger in this sense.
There is no doubt that the Industrial Revolution has brought many social problems and struggles in the last 150 years only! Especially the beginning of “alienation” in the production process, the replacement of masterapprentice relations to worker-employer relations, and many social and political problems caused by their relations, unemployment as a result of automation (expected to increase even further with Industry 4.0), again the automation’s decreasing the effectiveness strikes and unions, primitive employment conditions, urbanization and emergence of slum problems, nutritional problems, epidemics and environmental pollution are examples.**
With dark factories’ becoming more widespread with automation (lights out), the most important feature of these factories is that they have almost no need for manpower; It is obvious that it will cause the human to lose its functional position… It is not wrong to say that a greater struggle against robot science is waiting for us nowadays. What will be the position of the person whose talent and workforce are devalued in the future?
In the country of quality, it is necessary to find a way to adapt the employee to the changing world and system and ensure that it remains in the game. We can already take our precaution at the door to future professions such as data detective, cyber city expertise or genetic diversity officer. A society model that can solve various social challenges can be created by including innovations such as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, robot and sharing economy, which are the blessings of Industry 4.0 without getting lost in augmented reality, both in different industries and social life. (Community 5.0) In this way, technology will serve the purpose of making people’s lives more sustainable, not a profit-oriented system. Imagine the gap between producer and consumer, rich and poor in a world where unemployment is rising.