Getting the jargon JITTERS

Long ago, before Covid-19 stole the show, we had the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It’s one of those buzz-phrases beloved of government officials and other chancers who like to brush a thin, with-it varnish over the rickety constructions they pass off as speeches and policy statements, writes Matthew Hattingh

It’s a bit like quantum mechanics and the shysters and flakes who borrow its colourful theoretical language and metaphors to give everything from spirituality to management “science” a certain sheen. But there are only so many empty words you can take on any given day.

So it was refreshing to attend a Durban conference – barely weeks before the pandemic – where “4IR” reared its ugly acronym of a head. However, many of those using the term actually had some idea of what they were talking about.

They explained to guests at the Innovation Festival – in terms most of us could grasp – how our world, including work, was changing in ways big and small. Some of the speakers were experts in their field, or at the very least more than passingly acquainted with the changes afoot.

The audience heard, for example, how robots (the South African usage here, think lights at intersections) were being linked to computers in the cloud as well as to motorist’s smartphones and other onthe-ground sensors.

Gideon Treurnich, of Royal HaskoningDHV, told how the international engineering consulting firm was rolling out just such a smart traffic light system in Cape Town and how it would make calculations in real-time, on the fly. It would cut commuting times and speed things along in that increasingly gridlocked city.

He expected the pilot project would be up and running by the end of the year and confirmed the firm was talking to officials to do the same in Durban.

In the past, said Treurnich, Royal HaskoningDHV sought traditional engineering solutions to congestion problems. But building

The audience heard how robots were being linked to computers in the cloud as well as to motorist’s smartphones and other on-theground sensors

ABOVE: GIDEON TREURNICH OF ROYAL HASKONINGDHV: A SMART TRAFFIC LIGHT SYSTEM WOULD CUT COMMUTING TIMES.

Tshifularo puts much of his own success in developing the transplant down to persistence and trial and error, rather than time spent in halls of higher learning

new roads or expanding existing ones took piles of cash that cities needed for other things. The solutions had to be found elsewhere.

The point was, technology intelligently applied could be used to make things simpler, better and faster, to borrow the old Standard Bank slogan.

Making things better was what medicine was all about, and another impressive speaker was Pretoria doctor, Mashudu Tshifularo. Tshifularo, an ear, nose and throat specialist, told how he teamed up with threedimensional printing people in Gauteng to fashion what last year became the world’s first inner-ear transplant, using 3D-printed replacement bones.

The operation proved a big success and has earned the doctor recognition far and wide.

Tshifularo happens to be a lay preacher and was also head of the otorhinolaryngology department of the University of Pretoria and a chief specialist at the Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University.

We all have innovation in our power, we can all come up with something new, or better

ABOVE: DR MASHUDU TSHIFULARO: LED THE FIRST TEAM IN THE WORLD TO USE 3D-PRINTED BONES FOR RECONSTRUCTIVE MIDDLE EAR IMPLANTS.

You would expect him then to be persuasive and engaging. And indeed he was. But what might have surprised you, was this professor of medicine’s scathing comments on the stultifying effect the academic world has on innovation and how we must look to ourselves to bring our ideas to life.

Tshifularo puts much of his own success in developing the transplant down to persistence and trial and error, rather than time spent in halls of higher learning.

Responding to a question on the role of academia and formal research in innovation – effectively whether you needed to have a qualification to be an innovator – he said: “Academia puts people into little boxes. Innovations must be outside the box. Academia does not teach you how to think. You spend 14 years in school, but nowhere are you taught how to look for a job.”

Earlier he reminded the audience that, “We all have innovation in our power, we can all come up with something new, or better.”

It was a lesson the participants in the final event of the conference would hardly have needed. Ten young men –few were much over 30 and there were no women (a source of comment from the judges) –competed in an innovation pitching competition, styled after TV’s Dragons’ Den.

They took it in turns to take the stage, tell their stories, sell their products and subject themselves to comments from the judges both sage and scathing. The quality of some of the presentations and the innovations was impressive. Many involved applying existing technology in new ways or unveiled novel ideas not quite like anything already on the market. The sheer energy and chutzpah of it all were hugely encouraging.

Sure, many had got help along the way – that was kind of the point of the festival and indeed the raison d’etre for the organisers, not-for-profit company Innovate Durban.

Sure, some of the competitors appeared to be on a competition merry-go-round, attending events like the festival in the hope of winning prize money or unlocking funding in some form. But all in all, the competition and the festival as a whole reminded us that South Africans are an innovative and enterprising lot. We’re out there making things happen and it matters little if the people pontificating about 4IR understand it or not. *