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34PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES
УДК 001.891:316.4:316.33
ACHIEVEMENT AND RISKS OF THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN CONDITIONS OF INCREASING OF GLOBALIZATION PROCESSES
Ventsel N.
A lecturer of Communal Enterprise "Zhytomyr Regional Institute of Postgraduate Education"
a post-graduate student of the Department of Philosophy of Zhytomyr State University named after Ivan Franko
Abstract
The article is devoted to the phenomenon of the fourth industrial revolution. Different scientific approaches to defining the essence of Industry 4.0., its impact on enhancing of the non-linearity of the world-system have been investigated. The article substantiates the author's understanding of the influence of the achievements of the fourth industrial revolution on the unevenness and non-linearity of the development of the world-system in general and in certain regions of the world due to unemployment rise and unpredictable migration processes. The study analyzed the relationship between the results of Industry 4.0. and the deepening of extremism and terrorism in the countries of the periphery and the center of the world-system. A qualitative difference in the degree of influence of the fourth industrial revolution on the development of countries of the core of the world-system and the possibility of overcoming the economic backwardness of periphery countries has been established.
Keywords: the fourth industrial revolution, world-system, economic backwardness, society, extremism, terrorism, countries of the "Third and Fourth World".
In the situation of strengthening of the globalization processes, one of the unsolved problems of the development of the countries of "third and fourth world" is the growing socio-economic differentiation of the society. The heterogeneity and non-linearity of the development of the world-system are influenced by the structure of the economy, institutional transformations, and socio-economic policy. The inevitable consequence of the introduction of the results of the fourth industrial revolution is the deepening of nonlinearity and uneven-ness in the development of the poorest countries in the world. The concept of Industry 4.0. was proclaimed at the Hanover Fair in 2011 and supported at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2016. Rapid robotics and digitization captured the main spheres of society's life of the richest countries. At the same time, unlimited information exchange determines the accelerated development of post-industrial society through the deployment of the information infrastructure. No wonder, in the context of the implementation of the results of Industry 4.0., individual countries have got a chance to move on to a path of leading ahead innovative development.
However, on the other hand, the fourth industrial revolution is increasingly showing itself in the lagging of technological and socio-economic development of the poorest countries of the world-system. Some of them only complete the transition to the industrial development period, and for the transition to the post-industrial development they have neither resources nor opportunities. The deepening of the backwardness of these countries has become an important component of the growth of world controversies that affect the vital interests of all humanity - the growth of poverty and hunger, uncontrolled migration flows, the spread of extremism and terrorism, etc. In turn, the increase of the
lifetime and welfare of the population, the improvement of communication and automation as achievements of Industry 4.0. in highly developed countries, cause an increase of the difference in income of different social groups, an increase of health care expenditures, an increase of the ecological crisis and terrorism. Therefore, the phenomenon of the fourth industrial revolution at the present stage of development of the society contains the signs of increasing complexity and contradiction, and requires further systematic philosophical comprehension.
In the modern globalized world, the concept of the fourth industrial revolution is regarded as a special social phenomenon that manifests itself in various spheres of society's life. Attributive signs of Industry 4.0., the possible consequences and risks of its results are widely discussed not only by the scientific community, but also by representatives of socio-economic institutions and the public sector. It should be noted that interest in the problem of studying the impact of new technologies and automation on the development of the society has a long tradition. In his time, K. Marx also noted: "Slavery can not be abolished without the use of a steam engine, tractor and spinning machine, serfdom can not be overcome without improving agriculture ... people can not be free if they can not get food, water, clothes and roof in sufficient quantity and proper quality ..." [1, p.69]. Therefore, a society where machines perform basic and most of the work, and people have plenty of free time, can develop in a fundamentally new way, rather than seek to survive. The American philosopher F. Fukuyama believes: "... One of the main driving forces of the historical process was and remains the development of science and technology. It defines the horizons of productive economic opportunities and structural characteristics of the society. For example, the development of agriculture has led to the
emergence of huge hierarchical societies, in which it was much easier to introduce slavery than in the era of hunting and gathering ... " [2, p.29]. In the middle of the twentieth century, the French philosopher J. Eully in his work "The Other Revolution" said: "Technique surrounds us as a continuous, impassable cocoon, and this makes nature completely submissive, secondary, insignificant and useless" [3, p.147]. In an integrated study, the Ukrainian philosopher V. Cheshko and the Russian geneticist V. Glazko note that "post-industrial science of the twenty-first century - the greatest achievement of human intelligence, which can bring mankind to new brilliant peaks, and destroy it. But how the events will happen, depend on the person, society, and not on science" [4, p.16]. It should be noted, that the further development of technology and the introduction of the latest technologies rigidly raises the problem of using the achievements of the fourth industrial revolution, as global robotics, interference with human DNA, uncontrolled social networks, the development of new weapons, and the difficulty of preventing the negative effects of Industry 4.0. can lead the society to the threat of self-destruction.
A well-known Spanish philosopher H. Ortega-i-Gasset noted that despite the significant achievements in the field of science and technology of the twentieth century, the society is in a crisis situation. This is due to the fact that despite the huge opportunities that open to the humanity and an individual, the achievements of science and technology for self-realization and self-improvement, a person, nevertheless, can not use it to the full extent, since its existence and life lose meaning and by virtue of certain conditions become meaningless. It is namely this factor that determines the essence of "man-mass", that is, a person who lives without purpose [5]. At the same time, in the opinion of another well-known contemporary German philosopher A. Huning: "... never before in the history, has such a great responsibility been put on a person as today, because he never had such a significant power that, due to the technology, increased in several times over other natural beings and species, above the environment and even above all living creatures on the Earth. Today, a person on a regional or even global scale can destroy his species and all higher forms of life or, at least, cause great harm" [6, p.372].
At his time, the German-American philosopher G. Marcuse noted that "the suppression of the natural, and then the individual in the man reduces the variety of all his manifestations to only one technocratic parameter" [7, p.11]. According to many modern scholars, the 21st century can become a fatal bifurcation point of human development, and one of the factors influencing such a development is the introduction of the achievements of the fourth industrial revolution. The English scientist, the most famous popularizer of modern science, S. Hawking even spoke of the possible last millennium of the existence of life on the Earth [8, p.207]. In the work "The reflections on the technique" H. Ortega-i-Gasset directly pointed to the role of technology in the society as one of the factors of the survival and satisfaction of human needs: "... the very technology that for man, on the one hand, is an
infinite possibility, and on the other hand - leads to an unprecedented desolation of human life, forcing everyone to live solely in the belief in technology, and only in it. After all, to be a technician, and only a technician, means to have an opportunity to be all and, therefore, nothing. Being infinite in its capabilities, the technique represents an empty, pure form (like the formal logic itself) and, therefore, is not capable of defining the meaning of life. That is why our time - technical as never before - has become meaningless and empty" [9, p.176].In this regard, the results of the implementation of Industry 4.0 achievements are quite controversial.
A special place among the researches of the concept of the fourth industrial revolution takes the work of the founder and president of the World Economic Forum, Professor K. Schwab "The Fourth Industrial Revolution", in which the author conducted a detailed analysis of the research of the world experts in the field of technology and economy. Announcing the launch of Industry 4.0. at the WEF in Davos in 2016, the researcher described the attribute signs of the fourth industrial revolution and revealed the key transformational technologies and the effects of the scientific revolution and the political challenges that it poses to humanity [10, p.12].
The study of the concept of the industrial revolution, in particular the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and its influence on the development of the world, is dealt with by world known scholars E. Brynolsfsson, E. Makafi, G. Marcuse, E. Toffler, A. Turin, M. Heidegger, S. Hawking, J. Habermas, K. Schwab. There are also works and researches of Ukrainian scientists on this issue, including N. Illyashenko, S. Ilyashenko, P. Kalita, N. Kovtun, V. Lobas and others.
Scientists and economists define the fourth industrial revolution, based on the German concept Industry 4.0., predicting an increase of the integration of cyber-physics systems in industrial (factory) processes. To carry out such processes, a global knowledge base and the presence of highly skilled specialists, which will be guided not by the geocultural context, but by the higher interests of human survival and harmonious development of society, are needed. At the same time, due to the comprehensive concept of Industry 4.0. currently there are no generally accepted definitions of terms of its main components, there is no clear list of problems related to the implementation of its results in the world in the whole and in the poorest countries in particular. Besides, detailed recommendations for improving the adaptation of the poorest countries to the new industrial revolution, as a process that many scientists consider irreversible are not developed. Therefore, even the attention of the summits of the World Economic Forum over the last 3-4 years has shifted from geopolitical and economic challenges to the challenges that arise from the rapid development of technologies. In the manifesto of the fourth industrial revolution, which was published at the WEF in 2016, the forum experts advise the governments of the countries that seek to use the results of the revolution to take an example from private entre-
preneurs and act as flexibly as they in the changing conditions of the economic development of the society. In addition, the authors of the document predict that with the further introduction of Industry 4.0. the linearity and the mechanical sequence of state processes and the rigid principles of managing economic processes will go away in the past.
It can be noted that at the current stage of the development, the countries of "the third and fourth world" are not able to enter the fourth industrial revolution, as most of them are only on the threshold of the third and have not moved to the postindustrial development of the society. In turn, the implementation of the achievements of Industry 4.0., leads to numerous disruptions and difficulties in the economic development of these countries as the agrarian sector is unacceptable for modernization, there is lack of skilled labor force, lack of sufficient demand in the domestic market, and mismanagement or corruption in the state apparatus. The poorest countries of the world with a weak economy, with a strongly expressed polarization of the levels of personal incomes, the clan-criminal and oligarchic state control system, have constructed a primitive model of the raw material economy, which depends on foreign subsidies. The economic destruction that dominates the society, the frustration of the poorest sections of the population, raises the question of the stable development of the society, which affects political and social processes. Such model of the economy and the archaic system of the society connected with it, do not allow the countries of the "third and fourth world" to hope for a deep modernization, the hope for which are given by the achievements of the fourth industrial revolution. To develop the latest technology countries in the periphery of the world-system simply does not have its own resources. The only resources in these countries are the raw materials, market institutions, as well as human capital. Thus, the interconnected problems of effective management of socio-economic processes in these countries, state and environmental safety, education and health care, as well as the issues of their implementation appear in the countries of the "third and fourth world", which strive to change the place of the countries of the periphery to the center, to the foreground. Today, nano- and biotechnologies are priority areas of the technological development in the countries of the world-system, which have already developed a powerful bioindustry associated with solving such global human problems as overcoming hunger, improving health and prolonging human life, protecting the environment, overcoming the energy crisis and strengthening national security. At the same time, the countries of the "third and fourth world", especially the poorest countries of Africa, suffer not only from various epidemics and diseases, but also from numerous tribal armed conflicts and civil wars accompanied by slave trade, terrible cruelty and sometimes by cannibalism. The sovereignty of these countries is nominal, multinational corporations are constantly struggling to establish control over the raw materials that are on their territory. On the other hand, these problems are further exacerbated when mass media shows the poverty of the population
and the huge difference between the center and the periphery, when the latest technologies and significant capital are accumulated only in highly developed countries, which leads to the transference of intellectual potential and highly skilled specialists from the "third and fourth world" to the countries of the "golden billion".
A particular problem in the poorest countries form parallel processes of maintaining a high level of unemployment and a steady reduction of the number of economically active population, which adversely affects the structure of the society and provides it with an easily managed social class of people, who do not have permanent jobs, get insignificant earnings and have no prospects employment, so-called "precariat". The existence of a population that is constantly working hard, but at the same time becomes poorer has become the phenomenon of the society of the poorest countries. In the conditions of absence of the improvement of the real welfare of the main part of the society in the periphery of the country, a stagnant poverty that they can not overcome has formed. This paradox is explained by the fact that the industrial revolution places the most educated and well-off groups of the society in a privileged position, as well as gives a significant impulse to the development of the society with a higher level of culture, science and technology. Hence, the countries of the world-system, which are actively fighting for new technological opportunities and fully using the advantages that they already have, will benefit from the informatization and development of the latest technologies. The development of the latest technology is carried out by the efforts of the minority of people who live mainly in highly developed countries, while the vast majority of the world's population does not create them, but is ready to use the results of the fourth industrial revolution. Under such conditions, more than a third of the world's population living in the countries of the "third and fourth world", can not create not only new technologies, but also use them, they remain cut off from the civilized world, which creates new global world problems and has many negative consequences. Therefore, since new technologies are inaccessible to all, they do not create equality of rights and opportunities in the society. This situation deepens the problem of uncontrolled migration flows. In turn, the relocation and concentration of people with different ideologies in one place of residence, creates the need for freedom of choice for every person. At the same time, such a diversity of people in their cultural traditions and outlook leads to serious conflicts in a closed society. In addition, immigrants rarely achieve career success in the country they moved to and do not get used to it. Based on the foregoing, it should be noted that the acceleration of technological and industrial development, which is accompanied by an increase in inequality and non-linearity of the development of the world-system, changes in the organization of work, does not lead to a general progressive development of the society. For example, access to the Internet indicates the inequality of access to wealth. At the end of 2017, 90% of people who did not have access to the Internet, lived in the countries of the "third and fourth world" [11]. In the
countries of Europe and America, the percentage of Internet users was 74.8 and 65.5 respectively. At the same time in Africa, only 19% of the population has access to the Internet. In India, which ranks the second place in the world in software exports, there is one phone per 100 inhabitants and an Internet access level of is 0.1% [11]. As research shows, the United States uses more computers than all other countries of the world, while Tokyo has as many TVs as in all countries of Africa. More than 90% of all Internet users live in rich countries. In order to buy a computer, a resident of Bangladesh must collect his salary in 3 years, while for a resident of the countries of the "golden billion" the monthly salary is enough to buy a computer.
Such sharp differentiation of the countries into wealthy and strong, poor and weak, led to the emergence of modern religious-political extremism and terrorism. The participants of extremist and terrorist groups, which are unable to apply legitimate means of combating the world order, choose terror and cover their criminal activities by the need to protect national and religious values.
The first industrial revolutions in Europe led to a significant social stratification and made a large number of people not needed in the society, which caused a strong protest against the rich, numerous social protests and as consequences of the revolution. At the beginning of the 21st century, a dangerous break in the socio-economic situation between countries of the periphery and the center of world-system creates the basis for increasing the level of extremism and international terrorism. By the beginning of the third industrial (informational) revolution, three quarters of the world's population living in constant poverty, did not imagine how people live in rich highly developed countries. This situation changed dramatically with the beginning of the information revolution, when, due to television, the poor population learned about the existence of enormous wealth and saw the size of the gap between the poorest and industrially, economically developed countries. Today, one of the main factors influencing the character of modern extremism and terrorism is the protest of poor countries against lifestyle and industrial revolutions, the fruits of which they can not use. In addition, it is the resistance against the pressure of transnational corporations, that actively promote the implementation of the results of the third and fourth industrial revolutions, but not in the periphery countries, which for them are bases of only cheap labor and raw materials. Such aggravation of contradictions between the countries of the periphery and the center of the world-system activates the criminal activity of nationalist structures, which use only methods of terror. As an example, let us look at Somalia, a country that is the most problematic region of East Africa and the least developed country on the territory of which there is no single statehood today. The biggest problem of this country is the expansion of local radical Islamists towards other countries. In 2015, militants from the Somali As-Shabash group attacked one of the colleges in the Kenyan city of Garissa, killing 147 people. At the same time, the armed group uses modern network technologies, music,
the Internet access in its work, which promotes its activity and recruits new members. The development of the latest technologically dangerous means, biological and chemical weapons in particular, and the possibility of their entry to unscrupulous, immoral people put the entire society and its further development into dependence on a single person. Today, no state or political system guarantees the perfect morality and security from crime in the society.
Thus, the fourth industrial revolution, which drastically changes the world economy and influences the development of the society, has both positive and negative consequences. At the same time, deepening of the latter can lead to a socio-economic crisis. The new world-system development paradigm involves the participation of all countries in the process of modernization, but the countries of the world's core system are leaders, and often the initiators of the technological processes of Industry 4.0. At the same time, the further implementation of its results is a situation when countries with agrarian and industrial economies are not able to move to the post-industrial stage of the development, and the attempt to equalize the existing imbalance through direct support of peripheral countries by the richest countries of the world has failed. In addition, in the conditions of constant development of the new technologies, the consumer function of the broad versts of the society is becoming widely spread, which, on the one hand, leads to a comprehensive consumerism in the richest countries, and on the other hand, to the deepening of extremist manifestations in the poorest countries. Consequently, the problems connected with the effective management of technological and socio-economic processes in these countries, the maintenance of the national security, as well as the issues of their implementation go first in the countries of the "third and fourth world", who seek to take advantage of the achievements of the fourth industrial revolution. In order to solve these problems, the periphery countries must realize that the increasing inequality and non-linearity of the development and the absence of the concrete measures to weaken them, lead to a socio-economic crisis and decline. Overcoming of such problems is possible if the countries get rid of monopolization in socioeconomic and public life, civil fragmentation, corruption and irrational use of both their own funds and international subsidies, provide real social protection of the poor, development of entrepreneurial competition, radical change of administrative pressure on business, budget and economic processes, improvement of the level of development of science and quality of education.
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