Tech for Good – the foundation of the 4th Industrial Revolution
Tech for Good – the foundation of the 4th Industrial Revolution
Many of the world's current problems have been caused by previous innovations; air pollution from the industrial revolution, environmental pollution from recyclable and non-recyclable materials, water pollution from waste and oil spills.
Even as Big Tech – Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft et al commit to using 100% renewable energy and being carbon net zero by 2030 or earlier, concern about the carbon profile and energy use by infrastructure which increasingly drives commerce and digital behaviour is rising.
People and governments are becoming increasingly reliant on technology to offset and solve local and global issues. The evident negative consequences of human actions has ignited many in the digital space to seek solutions using the newest technologies.
Tech for Good ranges from:
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Improving access to tech for vulnerable groups
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recycling old tech
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Using scalable AI to improve waste clearance and recycling efficiency
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Using AI and gamification to improve education and customer services
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Building new platforms to simplify and humanise money management and charity
“leaps in technological innovation in AI,
cloud computing and software robotics
allow organisations to scale processes
faster than ever before”
The origin story of many successful tech for good projects is start-up or side projects that gained funding and are now operating nonprofits. Tech for good is not intrinsically money or power motivated, it is solution driven.
A World in Need of Tech Talent
A recent Forbes magazine article on the democratisation of technology acknowledges how leaps in technological innovation in AI, cloud computing and software robotics allow organisations to scale processes faster than ever before.
Lean startups are delivering better experiences for their users by making use of AI.
A great example of this is The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit organisation started in 2013 by then 18 year old Dutch inventor Boyan Slat.
Slat dropped out of his studies in aerospace engineering to develop and scale smart technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic.
The Ocean Cleanup uses computer modelling to target plastic and the models will steadily improve with the field data allowing for continually smarter operations and more focused cleanup. The aim, on their website is “to put ourselves out of business once the oceans are clean.”
A Cleaner Tech Based Revolution
We are currently in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (dubbed Industry 4). It is the trend towards automation, cloud computing, cognitive computing, and artificial intelligence.
PwC recently stated that Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as the defining technology of our age, with many industries already utilising AI or Machine Learning in some form.
Globally there is a huge recruitment drive for these skills. Using Glassdoor, Indeed and Government statistics Coding Dojo very recently released a report on the tech jobs most in-demand in 2022.
The top 5 are:
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Information Security Engineer
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Full-Stack Engineer
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Data Scientist
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Machine Learning Engineer
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Java Developer
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, so the saying goes but Industry 4 moves us closer to the Imagination Age (the current Information Age’s successor) where creativity and imagination become the primary creators of economic value.
The emergence of tech for good confirms this.