From Industry 4.0 To Society 5.0: What's Next?

The core argument of the?digital age?is that disrupting technologies are changing exponentially while societies evolve at a longer pace.

The rise of mobile devices, smartphones, digital learning, and remote work in the past decade has transformed our lives, becoming more saturated with?digital data.??

Additionally, some research and development products, including Big data analytics, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and Cloud Computing, have become a systematic concern in academia and industry.

Industry 4.0: revolution or evolution??

Even I have already answered this question in a previous article which is still available?here , let us have a quick reminder:

First of all, the origin of the term?Industrial Revolution?itself traces to an 1884 work by Arnold Toynbee entitled?Lectures on the Industrial Revolution .

Additionnaly,?in Industry and Empire: From 1750 to the Present Day's book, ?Eric_Hobsbawm ?said: "?The Industrial Revolution is not merely an acceleration of economic growth, but an acceleration of growth because of, and through, economic and social transformation," which is quite different.

Industry 4.0?is?used to describe the blurring of boundaries between the physical, digital, and biological worlds. 4RI has taken us from an industrial society centered on manufacturing into a?data-driven?society characterized by the massive use of Information & Communication Technologies.

The Japanese Approach

On January 22, 2016,?the Government of Japan ?revealed a new vision of a future human-centric society through the 5th Science and Technology Basic Plan guided by scientific and technological innovation.?

The Cabinet Office (CAO) described?Society 5.0?as: "an initiative merging the physical or real space and cyberspace by leveraging ICTs to its fullest...?

It is about?a 'super-smart society' that will bring wealth to the people. The series of initiatives toward realizing this ideal society is now being further deepened and intensively promoted as 'Society 5.0."

Figure 1. below summarizes the evolution from Society 1.0 to Society 5.0

Source: Cabinet Office (CAO), Tokyo )

Does the question remain about what's new in Society 5.0? And; is the human-centered society a brand new concept?

Going Beyond Germany's Industry 4.0

More than Germany's Industry 4.0, Society 5.0 aims to revolutionize not only the industry through IT integration but also the living spaces and habits of the public.

The government of Japan explicitly said: "We aim at creating a society where we can resolve various social challenges by incorporating the innovations of the fourth industrial revolution (For instance, Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), robot, and the sharing economy) into every industry and social life."

Based on the literature, We easily detect at least five concepts of Society 5.0, that we can describe as:

• A human-centered society
• A hybrid-space society merging cyberspace with physical space
• A technology-based society
• A knowledge-intensive society
• A data-driven society.

The Internet of Humans instead of the Industrial Internet

Industry 4.0 has connected Robots, machines, and critical assets to the Internet, which results in systems of a multitude of connected industrial devices and manufacturing hardware with advanced data analytical software.

This?Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)?network, also known as?Industrial Internet, can monitor, collect, exchange, analyze, and generate valuable new insights and drastically reduce cost.

From its side, the Japanese's vision, instead of relying on an Industrial Internet-based approach, focus more on extending its connectivity to humans and things.?

Moreover, according to the Growth Strategy 2017 , the source of economic value will instead lie in people and data in Society 5.0 wich is of critical importance using technology to improve people's life and gain new economic growth opportunities in addition to avoid the social frictions as experienced in many developed countries.

Data, Data And Data

Data is everywhere. Humans and organizations consume and produce huge amounts of data at the same time. Additionally, we live in a sensor-based economy that turns streams of interlinked data into life-changing decisions generating more opportunities for the World.

Novelty within?Society 5.0?is that instead of going through all information and data retrieval processes stored in the Cloud, Artificial Intelligence will do all the work.?

Big Data gathered by the Internet, sensors, and digital?technology and accumulated in cyberspace will be subject to sophisticated AI-based analysis, turning it into new wisdom, enabling economic?transactions to be conducted across digital platforms.

Moreover, valuable data will also be delivered in different formats to people in their physical space.?

With that said, it's no exaggeration to talk about hybrid space that combines physical objects and digital information-communication networks. Moreover, people and Robots will work together in Hybrid-based Society.

Society 5.0 is supposed to be different from the societies to date, but exactly what?sort of society should it be??

It’s not easy to make predictions about how the future will look like especially within shared environments, digital twins, Decentralized autonomous organization, extended reality systems, geospatial tech, shared and nonmonetary economy to name a few.

The challenge remains about addressing data privacy. For instance, what's about collecting personal data? such as people's images, geo-localization and so on.

One thing is for certain; Society 5.0 would never come to reality without a whole Digital Transformation at all levels and sectors, Higher Education included, to make universities part of the innovation system.