Abstract
Emerging technologies such as machine learning, the cloud, the internet of things (IoT), social web, mobility, robotics, and blockchain, among others, are powering a technological revolution in such a way that are transforming all human activities. These new technologies have generated creative ways of offering goods and services. Today's consumers demand in addition to quality, innovation, a real-time and ubiquitous service. In this context, what is the challenge that academy faces? What is the effect of these new technologies on the universities mission? What are people's expectations about academy in this new era? This chapter tries to get answers to these questions and explain how these emerging technologies are converting universities to lead society transformation to the digital age. Under this new paradigm, there are only two roads: innovate or perish. As might be expected universities are embracing these technologies for innovating themselves.
TopThe 4Ir And The Future Of Higher Education
The first industrial revolution occurred when man used steam to power machines. Electricity and power machines gave way to mass production of goods which was known as the second industrial revolution. Then, the development of supercomputers according to Moore's law, the invention of the internet, process automation between others gave way to the third industrial revolution. Today, technologies derived from supercomputers, the internet and artificial intelligence, robotics to name a few, are enabling humanity to automate knowledge. But, what does automation of knowledge mean? To get a good idea of it, thinking about that certain complex human skills could be executed by machines or computers. For example, driving a car is a human ability that has been developed in many hours of training and practice. Now, think about to transfer this skill to an object that executes it without human intervention. In this case, a smart object has been created where the knowledge to do something is replicated automatically. Nowadays, Google’s Waymo project is almost a reality, in this project, a human ability has been transferred to a self-driving vehicle. The human know-how 'to drive' is being replaced by hardware with artificial intelligence. With the 4IR technologies, Knowledge automation is now possible, and just like these projects, there are many other emerging solutions in different areas that are changing our world.
The 4IR begins with this declaration: we are at the beginning of a revolution that is fundamentally changing the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope and complexity, what I consider to be the fourth industrial revolution is unlike anything humankind has experienced before (Schwab, 2016). This digital revolution is also known as the digital age is reshaping all institutions and government systems like education, health care, transport, and communication among others. This phenomenon is global, has no limits, it is occurring exponentially, and its impact will be profound mainly on the behavior of human production and consumption.
Indeed, 4IR is causing several impacts in many areas. Their effects will be in the major or minor grades depending on industry and geography. It is a global consensus and concern that emerging technologies sustain a significant impact on jobs. The history tells us that the implantation of new technologies always had provoked employment lost or jobs shift. But new technologies also generate new jobs that require new expertise, sometimes expertise not seen before. Then, what people have to do to get unfired? The answer is only one: acquire this new expertise or develop these new skills. Regardless of whether you are prepared or not, it is a condition of living and everybody has to assume their role.
Key Terms in this Chapter
ESPOL: “Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral,” a public Polytechnic university ranked number one in Ecuador.
MOOC: Stands for massive open online course. An academic course offered via the internet to anybody interested. it has no restrictions on the number of participants.
WCU: Stands for world-class university, a set of exclusive universities with high standards in education, research, and knowledge production.
ICT: Stands for information and communications technology, a set of related technologies that allow the interchange of information through the internet.
Digital Life: A set of digital documents and interactions that resembles the life on someone, but maybe it is a not likely reality.
WWW: Stands for world wide web, or just the web. An information system where digital documents may be interlinked and interchanged over the internet.
Digital Document: Any kind of data and information (audio-visual) that has a representation into a computer, therefore it can be manipulated by a computer system.