Implications: Conservative world erupting wildly everywhere

Each previous industrial revolution has transformed society, rattled policies, and, while raising the plateau of both expectations and consummation, also sowed the seeds of the next revolution. What does the 4th industrial revolution (IR) entail, particularly for a country far from the frontier of innovation as Bangladesh?
One must first acknowledge the absence of any fixed starting point or location: in short, we do not know if and when it will start, or even if it is already underway. All we are going by seem to be the symptoms of sputtering change in the contraptions we use and their composite projections on the drawing board. For example, we have, for quite some time, seen operative robots, heard of the wonderful results drones can bring, and read about automobile producers diverting investment to self-driven cars, but without any dramatic social changes (should they surface in the next few years, today will have to be revisited to specify cause and time).
What we can do is to start deducing layers of impact, three of them: the first layer encompassing the very communities/countries where these innovations have been emerging; then, by logic, a layer consisting of the major and dominant trading partners of the innovating countries which have the potential research/development (R/D) infrastructure to reproduce these innovations and market the resultant products from the invented commodity; and finally, a third layer comprising countries where the innovations eventually trickle down to, given their extant R/D limitations and/or desired market-access paucity. The key issue is the time-lag: between innovation and mass-production, mass-production and market-access, as well as market-access and saturation. In other words, by the time the invention trickles down to the third layer, it becomes second- or third-hand, eventually reaching obsolescence.
Societies will be changing dramatically and visibly all across the board. Manual workers will be displaced at a greater rate and at all strata, not just low-wage, but also high-wage, in all three layers. As new contraptions expose even deeper intellectual skills, societies will become more unequal on this front, threatening the underpinnings of democracy and a functional government. Information imperialism, to which we will return, will become more explicit and strident a social feature. This approximate global overview will then distinguish countries less by established boundaries and more by like-minded classes, with the elites creating networks across state jurisdictions.
Bangladesh's place needs to be examined, beginning with where it is now. First of all, we note its stock-exchanges, though not exactly vibrant, have not been as shaken by the Shanghai or New York rumblings: we have not yet become a "hot potato" for brokers and credit-holders, but in two weeks this year, both the DSEX (Dhaka Stock Exchange Prime Index) and  CSCX (Chittagong Stock Exchange Selective Categories Index) posted aggregate gains. Second, we look at the fate of our dominant exporters: RMG manufacturers have often mentioned they have contracts to keep them busy for the next few years, again, insulating our chief foreign exchange source from not only market volatility, but also disruptive innovation, since the low-wage market remains too huge to be instantly disrupted by market tremors. Third, we examine our other dominant source of foreign exchange, remittances, and find that they, by and large, originate from expatriates whose jobs are unlikely to be impacted, at least initially, from market disruption. Fourth, with oil prices being slashed, as an importer, we have lots of marginal gains to make, at the least, should the government reduce retail prices. Finally, we look at all the development projects on our wish list, and wonder if we can get the foreign funding to complete them: here we note that, since the Taka has only just entered the global bond market (IFC), we open windows for reluctant and impatient investors rather than close them for our own producers; we also observe the diverse sources of the foreign investment funds, since both private firms and multilateral agencies in the west (the World Bank) and in the east (China's Asian Investment and Infrastructure Bank; Japan's almost-zero loans; and so forth), have finalised commitments; and finally, almost all the foreign credit we seek is through the government, which is as secure an actor for repayment purposes as any (something nervous foreign investors might find assuring).
That borrowings within Bangladesh have increasingly sought funds abroad, as opposed to from domestic banks, carries many messages, the most relevant ones being that we are establishing credentials in the global market, a must under any 4th IR dynamics, and private foreign borrowing reducing our bank interest rates. This marks a significant shift from our savings culture to the investment culture dominating the west, a kind of global streamlining that cannot but function in the 4th IR: to get on board means to prepare for 4th IR dynamics; to ignore it would be like, well, watching the "Titanic" ship sink.
Evidently, any 4th IR will not disrupt our economy as much as other countries. As a third-layer country, our impacts will be indirect and too dilute to have any prolonging effect. If the direct effects are expected to be diluted, what other indirect arena must we keep an eye on?
Clearly the 4th IR is just too elitist for democratic societies: only those with ample intellectual skills and training will be initially motivated; by the time they train others in society, each innovation will become obsolete, while more than a majority of the population will simply not be cognizant of the original innovation, or even benefit from it in any direct, tangible way. When the gap between the "haves" and "have-nots" widens in our country, more political instability is predicted than if we were in the second or third layer countries (owing to the weaker institutions).
It also requires the diversion of ample resources just to lay the infrastructures which could plausibly have been used to reduce the income gap. Finally, it requires (a) reemphasising post-graduate education and specialised training at a time of diminishing public interest in learning (the exponential amount of time spent on the smartphone, for example, means time being diverted from elsewhere, with onerous education as a prime casualty); (b) replenishing diminishing resources given the economic skewing already underway; and (c) adjusting to free-riders milking the system with fake intellectual credentials (cybercrime is set to explode, just as spurious varsity degrees will expose the superficial education received).
These are not sudden dynamics: they have been around from the time the 3rd IR unleashed itself. Johann Galtung's "Structural theory of imperialism" presciently noted in 1971 that future global configurations would involve alliances between social elites across the world (not in terms of state boundaries), and that the kind of imperialism we already know, that is, military, political, economic, and cultural, would culminate in a communications format, much like the intellectual information being discussed here which can be created, destroyed, and withheld from anyone arbitrarily. In 1995, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor of President Jimmy Carter, utilised the term "tititainment" to refer to how the media had shifted from informing to titillating. Some have interpreted the "tit" referring to a woman's breast, "tainment" to entertainment, evoking how workers had become as dependent upon work as babies on breast milk to survive, with the sexual reference incorporating entertainment, by which workers would be dissuaded from rebelling, much like the Internet, especially Facebook, is already doing.
Little wonder the conservative world is erupting wildly everywhere, with the Tea Party in one nook of the world, Wahhabis in another, and far-right fringe groups, ISIS, and every other illegal stripe one can think of, in the various corners of the world. Today's stock-exchange turbulence may indeed be a "correction" rather than structural change, but given the water flowing under the many bridges and from the growing pie at stake, we cannot be too far from that "shake, rattle, and roll" the previous three industrial revolutions heralded. By summer 2016, we should know if the corrections are working; if not, voila 4th IR!
Dr. Imtiaz A. Hussain is Professor of International Relations, formerly in Universidad Iberoamerica, Mexico City.
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