Abstract
In a time of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), with an anticipated world of much less available work, due diligence requires that people identify what needs of theirs are met via work ideally in a pre-4IR sense and then to revamp their lives based on partial work, complements, and substitutions, to ensure that their needs are completely met. This work uses a six-level version of Maslow's hierarchy of needs focused on what work enables for people, beyond survival needs. This follow-on work explores how the prior research may be applied to mapping an individual's needs, identifying what needs are met via work, and then exploring potential complements and substitutions, in a practical walk-through. The focus is particularly on needs beyond survival ones, and especially on the top two levels of the hierarchy of needs for self-actualization and self-transcendence (both of which enable personal definitions of what those mean).
TopIntroduction
In each era, people as individuals and members of groups live within socio-economic systems, and within these systems, they make their livelihoods and form a sense of personal identities and collective meanings. In the modern era, there are thought to have been three industrial revolutions based on available dominant technologies in the day, set up as the following: “steam, water, mechanical production equipment” (1784), “division of labour, electricity, mass production” (1870), “electronics, IT, automated production” (1969)” (Schwab, Jan. 14, 2016, p. 2). In 2016, in the 46th World Economic Forum, the WEF’s founder and executive chairman, Klaus Schwab posited that a Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) may be in the offering via the advent of “cyber-physical systems” in a context of fast technological advances across a number of fields with likely impacts across all industries.
The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production. The Second used electric power to create mass production. The Third used electronics and information technology to automate production. Now a Fourth Industrial Revolution is building on the Third, the digital revolution that has been occurring since the middle of the last century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres. (Schwab, Jan. 14, 2016, p. 2)
What technologies do these entail? Schwab (2016) points to “artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing” (pp. 2-3), among others. On-ground, these mean artificial intelligence in “self-driving cars and drones to virtual assistants and software that translate or invest.” (Schwab, Jan. 14, 2016, p. 3) There are various types of “digital fabrication technologies,” “additive manufacturing, materials engineering, and synthetic biology” to promote human health and capabilities, improve food, improve buildings for human habitation, and other applications (Schwab, Jan. 14, 2016, p. 3). Some other manifestations of these advancements reveal in buildouts of critical infrastructure like “water management, transportation, manufacturing, and communications,” which inform “smart cities” (Serpanos, March 2018, p. 71). “Smart” factories, as cyber-physical spaces, are run with smart automation and sensor networks, given the advent of the Industrial Internet and the emergence of “Industry 4.0” as part of 4IR. In many ways, the Internet of Things (or Internet of Everything) has already arrived, with smart assistants, smart devices, a sensor-rigged world, and information (0s and 1s) whizzing through various mediums. Here, it is not only humans interconnected socially but the rigging of “a collaborative community” of machines in cyberphysical production systems (Monostori, 2014). Another points to “artificial intelligence and distributed small-scale manufacturing” as elements in the emerging fourth revolution (Daemmrich, 2017, p. 257). The technological innovations result in Joseph Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” (1942).
Such revolutions, historically, are seen to involve “specific inventions, changes to national innovation systems, shifts in workplaces and the organization of labor, and evolving styles of consumption” (Daemmrich, 2017, p. 257). The changes from “4IR” are anticipated to be highly disruptive and will require macro-level coordination in order to address.
We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before. We do not yet know just how it will unfold, but one thing is clear: the response to it must be integrated and comprehensive, involving all stakeholders of the global polity, form the public and private sectors to academia and civil society. (Schwab, Jan. 14, 2016, pp. 1-2)
Key Terms in this Chapter
Prepotent: More powerful or influential than something else, with primacy Scarcity: Shortage, a lack of, something in short supply, something rare.
Vicarious: Experienced indirectly, such as through the human imagination, such as through fictional characters, such as empathically through those of other people.
Self-Transcendence: Caring for others and things beyond the self; achieving a kind of religious understanding (in some cases).
Substitution: Replacement, something used in lieu of something else.
Hierarchy of Needs: A construct of motivating human needs from foundational ones to more complex ones, culminating and self-actualization and self-transcendence for the psychologically healthy.
Complement: Something that works with another factor to enhance a construct.
Self-Actualization: Achieving one’s full potential.
Buffer Effect: The diminishing marginal returns or added value to higher-order goals of any additional resource (once a certain threshold level of need is met).
Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR): An anticipated onset of disruptive change from the advent of cyber-physical systems and new technologies involving physical, digital, and biological systems, as conceptualized by Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum.
Artificial Scarcity: Purposeful limitation of production of particular products (or services) in order to raise prices and / or demand.