Steve Case's "The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur's Vision" could not have been better timed. Available in the market just as the World Economic Forum dedicated 2016 to the "Fourth Industrial Revolution" (see my pieces in this newspaper on January 19, 22, and 26, this year) in Davos, many of Case's experiences that led him to found America Online (AOL) in 1991 feed into the motor behind the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
That motor is rooted in elevating the information revolution that began in the late 1960s to more sophisticated levels where artificial intelligence, robots, drones, and self-driven automobiles dominate society.
That the Internet plays a crucial role in all of these developments was both experienced first-hand by Case even before he graduated in 1980, and its future was envisioned by him when he began experimenting with Pizza Hut-influenced home-delivery opportunities in the early 1980s.
This was when the Internet began shedding its punch-card origin, based on heavy print-out equipment, embodied, at first, in the personal computer, then any hand-held contraption, like the smart-phone, to push-button variations like drones and robots capable of generating artificial intelligence today.
Whereas the "first" Internet wave established its infrastructure, the "second" commenced with the dotcom revolution at the start of this century and evident in just how easily corporations and the media have all embraced the emergent worldwide web (www). Â
Case did not invent the "third wave" label, in fact, he directly borrowed it from the man who did, Alvin Toffler, whose "The Third Wave," written in 1980, utilised an entirely different trajectory: his "first" wave represented a mature agricultural society, thus spanning the ten-thousand-year duration of the Neolithic Revolution; then the 1970s, where after the "second" wave picked up as an industrial society fulfilled its potential; thus leaving for the "third" to herald an "information" age, thus following the "post-industrial" frontiers that Daniel Bell began exploring in the 1960s.
From Case's "first" Internet wave to the "third" was highlighted by the fame and fortune of the trend-setters: Apple and IBM representing the "first," among others; Google, Amazon, and the like widening the Internet doors in the "second;" while in the "third" we should move beyond contraptions (that is, any commodity that carries a physical manifestation) to sensors, for example.
We should be able to push-button our grocery orders, or any other order, programme the self-driven car to take us anywhere, educate ourselves in our own homes or in the woods rather than in classes, medicate many of our illnesses through the magic contraption in our hand, and tailor-make our spousal partner, children, vacations, and translations to put an icing to the cake.
It will mark an age characterised by the battle for talents, not just within the country (any country), but from outside as well, meaning, for instance, shedding the immigration fears many politicians and people invoke to either get elected or ring the nationalistic alarm-bells.
In fact, the crucial battle will be less for talents than for the cosmopolitan frontiersmen in any society quashing the nationalism-flouting politician in any democratic election.
Once we see this latter battle underway in any society, we will know that country is in the birth-pangs of Case's "third" wave (or the Fourth Industrial Revolution).
Judging by those terms, the United States might be aborting its own "third" wave baby that found insemination during Barack Obama's administration: none of the current presidential candidates have overcome their nationalistic moorings to explore the "third" wave or "fourth" IR frontiers, with businessman Donald Trump being the farthest away from any possibility, carpetbagger Ted Cruz slightly behind in line, socialist Bernie Sanders more committed to society's egalitarian call than business's frontier-probing journeys, and gung-ho Hillary Clinton introverting her political outlook when business extroversion is the rule of the day.
It may, therefore, not be by choice that U.S. corporations have been shifting abroad, even to authoritarian or poverty-plagued countries: business circumstances have become a lot more inviting, encouraging, and likely to shift to segmented "third" wave institutionalisation.
China and India may be leading this "third" wave transformation, but since just about every country is angling in that direction, the tip-off boils down to how market-friendly reforms have been irreversibly installed.
Japan is trying hard with Abenomics but continues to be falling short (as it has since the 1989 recession); facing exogenous constraints, such as the tsunami and earthquakes in the process.
The European Union may have met its Achilles heel, pushing Germany's economic strides and European hopes to the back-burner with the Syrian migration crisis and its unpopular Turkey (visa-free) payoff. Greece is free-falling, not from refugee influxes as much as by the resistance market reforms face. Britain may need more than Barack Obama's intervention to not jump the European ship (that is, reject "Brexit").
Meanwhile, France, Italy, and Spain desperately hope to land on two-feet from whatever crisis they be in (and each faces plenty in 2016).
Finally, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have been slipping from bad to worse, with the exception of China moving mountains to stay afloat and India rallying its economic resources to keep mounting political divisions at bay:
Brazil has become a laughing stock in frontier-market discussions, and with Vladimir Putin's Russia becoming harder to distinguish from, say, Leonid Brezhnev's Soviet Union, backward-strides have become all too plentiful in today's global economy to easily open new windows.
Ultimately, it will be emerging countries like Bangladesh and a host of others in Southeast Asia, perhaps a Mexico or two thrown in for good measure, and entrepôt economies across the Baltic and Panama, with security-laced Djibouti's current maritime eminence, and the like where the "saving grace" may emanate. That is, if, and only if, these countries seriously take moving up the pecking-order with the right kinds of reforms in a full-fledged rather than half-hearted gear.
For Bangladesh, the challenge will be double-duty: reforming its policies to open business windows and lateral business mobility further, on the one hand, while on the other, balancing the enormously unequal social "third" wave playground.
The commitment to digitalise Bangladesh is loud and clear; but how social equity, business openness, green commitments, and political roadblocks get handled will determine if we make the most hay (relative upward climb) while the sun shines (developed countries falling more formidable obstacles along each of these fronts).
Dr Imtiaz A Hussain is Professor, International Relations, formerly Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City.
inv198@hotmail.com
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