M Ziauddin
Pakistan will regale impressive growth rates within three decades, surpassing developed nations like Canada and Italy to become the world’s 16th biggest economy by 2050, forecasts a top global consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in its latest report.
“The South Asian country’s economy’s GDP at purchasing power parity (PPP) ranked 24, it would score 20th rank, replacing Thailand by 2030 and till 2050 the country’s economy would make its way to 16th position, replacing the current Spain,” PwC’s data shows.
The forecast sounds too good to be true because as of today the country lacks the three most important ingredients - capital, energy and technology - needed for achieving even a modicum of respectable annual average growth rate and sustain it for a reasonable length of time as well.
And while the world is poised on the brink of what is called the Fourth Industrial Revolution Pakistan continues to lack the major driving force propelling this revolution - digitization. We are at present located on the poorer side of the global digital divide.
The pathetic state of affairs in Pakistan’s education sector is perhaps the main reason for the country’s very low global standing in digitization. Pakistan is the second country in the world with the highest number of children who do not go to school. A large number of students who make it to schools, however, drop out by class five. About 72 percent make it to grade five which means a dropout rate of 28 percent. This significant figure further brings down the chunk of the population that makes it to school. Such a large number of students outside school mean that they are deprived of the opportunity to learn and acquire skills for playing a meaningful role in society.
The emphasis in education is still on a general and liberal type of BA or MA degree. The change towards scientific and technical education has still not taken place. The quality of education is low; the teachers are under-paid, under-trained and dispirited. The students are apathetic as they see no relationship between education and higher earnings or status in the society.
Pakistan’s planners continue to allocate insufficient resources for education. Moreover, the money allocated is not effectively spent. The hostility of the feudal and the indifference of the educated elite are responsible for the gross neglect of education in the country.
Pakistan is currently suffering from an acute shortage of both capital, energy and it also lacksthe enabling base (Education) that helps produce a critical mass of technologically savvy manpower. With such a state of affairs there is hardly any hope of Pakistan travelling to other side of digital divide even by 2050.
In order to know the distance that we need to cover to enter the positive side of the digital divide it is essential to know how the economies of those located on the other side of the divide are shaping up.
Like the revolutions that had preceded it, the digitized Fourth Industrial Revolution led by Circular Economy (CE) on the platform of Internet of Things (IoT) is said to possess the potential to raise the global income levels and improve the quality of life for populations the world over. Transportation and communication costs will drop, logistics and supply chains will become more effective, and the cost of trade will diminish, all of which will open new markets and drive global economic growth.
The CE is said to be replacing a large part of the traditional model of the linear economy. The CE, in comparison, which involves resources and capital goods reentering the system for reuse instead of being discarded is said to save on production costs, promote recycling, decrease waste, and enhance social performance.
When CE models are combined with IoT, internet connected devices that gather and relay data to central computers, efficiency is said to skyrocket. As a result of finite resource depletion, the future economy is said to be destined to become more circular. The economic shift toward CE is expected to be hastened by the already ubiquitous presence of IoT, its profitability, and the positive public response it yields.
Unlike the linear economy which is a “take, make, dispose” model, the circular economy is said to be an industrial economy that increases resource productivity with the intention of reducing waste and pollution. The list of main value drivers of CE are said to include (1) extending use cycles’ lengths of an asset (2) increasing utilization of an asset (3) looping/cascading assets through additional use cycles (4) regeneration of nutrients to the biosphere.
The IoT is said to be the inter-networking of physical devices through electronics and sensors used to collect and exchange data. The nexus between CE’s and IoT’s values’ drivers greatly enhances CE. If an institution’s goals are profitability and conservation, IoT enables those goals with big data and analysis. By automatically and remotely monitoring the efficiency of a resource during harvesting, production, and at the end of its use cycle all parts of the value chain is said to become more efficient.
One way to change traditional value chain is said to be the IoT enabled leasing model. Instead of selling an expensive appliance or a vehicle, manufacturers can willingly produce them with the intention of leasing to their customers. By imbedding these assets with IoT manufacturers can monitor the asset’s condition; thereby dynamically repairing the assets at precise times. In theory the quality of the asset will improve, since it’s in the producer’s best interest to make it durable rather than disposable and replaceable.
Even today, many sectors are said to be already benefiting from IoT in resource conservation. In the energy sector, Barcelona is said to have reduced its power grid energy consumption by 33%, while GE is said to have begun using “smart” power meters that reduce customer’s power bills 10–20%. GE is also said to have automated their wind turbines and solar panels; thereby automatically adjusting to the wind and angle of the sun.
In the built environment, cities like Hong Kong have implemented IoT monitoring for preventative maintenance of transportation infrastructure, while Rio de Janeiro is said to monitor traffic patterns and crime at their central operations center. Mexico City is said to have installed fans in the buildings which suck up local smog. In the waste management sector, San Francisco and London have installed solar-powered automated waste bins that alert local authorities to when they are full; creating ideal routes for trash collection and reducing operational costs by 70%.
As the CE expands into different sectors of the economy farmers may remotely monitor their crops and use GPS guided tractors to perfectly plow and harvest, Governments can prevent depleting fish stocks by tracking fishing boats with IoT, energy companies can share their energy production responsibilities by attaching a connectivity-enabled solar panels on city roofs, in the infrastructure sector GPS guided driver-free smart cars can reduce congestion by taking optimal routes, in health care $1.1 trillion a year of value can be created with remote health care in monitoring chronic-disease patients, etc.
Estimates are that the potential profits from institutions adopting CE models could, it is believed, decrease costs by 20%, along with waste. The increase in efficiency combined with the goodwill generated by conservation is said to be a win-win proposition for innovation.
The IoT is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals or people that are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.
A thing, in the Internet of Things, can be a person with a heart monitor implant, a farm animal with a biochip-transponder, an automobile that has built-in sensors to alert the driver when tire pressure is low - or any other natural or man-made object that can be assigned an IP address and provided with the ability to transfer data over a network.
IoT has evolved from the convergence of wireless technologies, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), microservices and the internet. The convergence is said to have helped tear down the silo walls between operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT), allowing unstructured machine-generated data to be analyzed for insights that will drive improvements.
IoT is essentially a system of machines or objects outfitted with data-collecting technologies so that those objects can communicate with one another. The machine-to-machine (M2M) data that is generated is said to have a wide range of uses, but is commonly seen as a way to determine the health and status of things - inanimate or living.
In one case, IoT is being used to stymie deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. A Brazilian location-services company called Cargo Tracck is said to have placed M2M sensors from security company Gemalto in trees in protected areas. When a tree is cut or moved, law enforcement agency receives a message with its GPS location, allowing authorities to track down the illegally removed tree.
For the IoT to work in data centers, platforms from competing vendors need to be able to communicate with one another. This requires standard APIs that all vendors and equipment can plug into, for both the systems interfaces as well as various devices.
Currently, the G20 countries as well as the Netherlands and Belgium are said to be in various stages of IoT development process. And the top ranking countries in acquiring a high level of IoT are: 1. US, 2. South Korea, 3. United Kingdom, 4. Australia and 5. Japan. (Gleaned from Turning the linear circular: The future of global economy—published in the Agenda (World Economic Forum) on May 26, 2017)
