Impact of The Fourth Industrial Revolution on My Future

Suppose you are sitting in your office and then suddenly the job you are doing right now is being done twice as faster and a lot cheaper by something that has zero human qualities. The fourth industrial revolution is already happening and it is my job to make sure I have the necessary skill required to survive the fourth industrial revolution. But how will that be done? According to Thulani Guliwe, people living in developing countries are at high risk of not being able to survive the coming of the fourth revolution due to economic and other sort of crisis. So how will I survive? What measures will I have to put into place to ensure I am ready to tackle the coming of the fourth revolution?

The career I wish to pursuit is Nuclear physics. Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nucleus and how they behave and interact. If you take a look back into Nuclear physics, it all started off with simple experimenting and writing down answers on what your observations were. Experiments such as Rutherford’s gold foil experiment is a prime example of what nuclear physics was like in the olden days, however this is not the case in the modern era of science. Since the start of the fourth industrial revolution, people are not just doing live experiments and drawing up conclusions. Instead of jumping directly in to experimentation, there are prior pilot studies being done before anyone’s finger falls onto the button that starts off experiments. These pilot studies include “real life” simulation, a complete model of what to expect the end result should be plus any other complications that could possibly occur when doing nuclear experiments. When experimentations are eventually done, there are tons of data that is usually captured.

To work with them by use of a pen and paper will take a person forever to finish and it will be expensive to do. So this is another place where the fourth industrial revolution made a change to my future career. To do data capturing in today’s time is much easier as using super computers will be much more productive. Not only the pilot research and post research are being changed, but the experimentation itself is becoming a lot more complex since the dawn of the fourth industrial revolution. We can look at experiments done at CERN compared to that of Rutherford. More complex things are being done and it is clear and obvious nuclear physics has changed and will still continue to change during the period of the fourth industrial revolution. So how will I as a person adapt to the sudden change in how things are done in the world of nuclear physics? What are the skills that will be required to ensure I do not fall behind? What are the necessary perspectives and practices I need to have a good look at to become a world class nuclear physicist?

Taking into account that all of the fourth industrial revolution involves some sort of computer, the most basic skill required is to become computer literate. Now when I say computer literate I am not talking about the ability to work on Microsoft excel or PowerPoint as although useful, these two things can become obsolete in the next few years. When I say computer literate I am referring to being able to use a computer in a more complex way. Complex as in the ability to program a computer where by a million things can be done by just a simple push of a button. But how will this skill be obtained? To become computer literate is really not rocket science. To become computer literate, all you have to do is keep up to date on how to work programs. Also repartition and a lot of practice is also required to master the skill of becoming computer literate.

To be computer literate is easy, however to use it in my future career is the problem at hand. The practice required to be successful is the ability to use a computer to model any sort of situation that is needed in my career. As said before, modern nuclear physics involves a lot of computational modeling as well as a very big pool of data that needs to be captured. So, the idea of computational modeling plays a vital role in my future career.

In conclusion, the fourth industrial revolution has a massive impact on my future career as computer simulations and modeling the best and cheapest tool that is used in the career I wish to pursuit in.

References

1. http://smarterware.org/2017/06/excel-become-obsolete-2025/
2. Rutherford’s experiment: http://smarterware.org/2017/06/excel-become-obsolete-2025/
3. Is Microsoft excel becoming obsolete? http://smarterware.org/2017/06/excel-become-obsolete-2025/