Ancient traditions describe the Sphinx as a demon of calamity and destruction. In various myths, it is said that it has endured travellers in the mountains and killed them unless they were able to solve a puzzle posed to them by the Sphinx.

Is digitization the new puzzle posed to us by a dangerous-looking sphinx in the present?
And if that’s the case, how do you solve it?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), the philosopher, jurist, statesman and pioneer of modern science, interpreted the encounter of Oedipus with the Sphinx as an allegory of knowledge in his book on “The Knowledge of the Ancients”: Question and answer, puzzle and solution are exemplarily embodied by these two figures.

When the Sphinx asked Oedipus which creature was first fourfooted, then bipedal, then tripod, and finally quadruped again, his answer (which in Francis Bacon’s account also reveals a widely forgotten fundamental meaning of competence) is:

This “applies to human being – in hominem competere“. For, it is human being who, as a child, crawls on all fours, but as an adult he goes on two legs. In old age, however, it seems that a person, when he rests on a stick, stands on three legs, but then, as an old man in the bed, he again stretches all four of himself. After Oedipus solved the puzzle of the Sphinx, the two-winged monster fell to its death.

The answer to the modern demons of the digitization of society and the globalization of markets is human being.

What remains of these ghosts if we remember that of all living beings it is only true for human being to open up with knowledge a resource which does not occur at all in the natural environment as such, but with the help of which he is able, though not to expel the spirits which he himself called, but nevertheless to expel all the spooky from them?

We at MESH® RESEARCH do not just want to know. We also can knowledge.

Acquiring new knowledge is of paramount importance both for increasing human capacity for action (“competence”) and for increasing the adaptability of human behavior to different environments (“agility”). This requires science, through which the cultural value of new knowledge is socially institutionalized. However, this also requires research, in which the way of obtaining a knowledge that is considered secure is methodically monitored.

How should economy and society respond to advancing digitization?

It is better to act rather than react. The formula is:

Knowledge-Learning-Knowledge-Designing

Digitalization is not a demon – people at the time of the industrial revolution liked to believe that machines are demons. Their knowledge was insufficient to understand what was happening.

Those who had a chance to learn have used their new knowledge to redesign life. The others were victims of development and had to adapt to survive.

And yet, with our knowledge of today, the changes at that time were easy to understand.

Handwork (weaving) was replaced, for example, by mechanical solutions (looms) which were faster, more accurate and cheaper than human work. An ingenious invention (steam engine with the destructive power that accompanies innovations (Schumpeter)). The invention led to new possibilities for designing the working world and had effects on all areas of life. Has human work therefore become superfluous? No! Is the development evil? No! It brought prosperity. Everything new creates fear of the future. Only knowledge can overcome fear.

Meanwhile, we have witnessed two more industrial revolutions, and in the first phase of the digital revolution, we are now facing “smart” factories, “smart offices”, “smart” administrations, “smart” cities, etc.

In the second industrial revolution the division of labor/specialization was introduced – in the third the robotization.

In the digital revolution that has just begun, the progress made so far is linked to digital solutions, the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence.

Most of the people at the beginning of the first industrial revolution were uneducated. Their knowledge was rudimentary – there was no compulsory education and only a few engineers. This was the main reason why many new innovations took 30-80 years to implement.

With the increasing knowledge in the population, learning leads to more knowledge and thus to faster implementation/design and thus to shorter innovation cycles.

Knowledge-Learning-Knowledge-Designing

We at MESH® RESEARCH do not just want to know. We also want to learn with you, gain new knowledge and help to design.

Acquiring new knowledge is of paramount importance both for increasing human capacity for action (“competence”) and for increasing the adaptability of human behavior to different environments (“agility”). This requires science, through which the cultural value of new knowledge is socially institutionalized. However, this also requires research, in which the way of obtaining a knowledge that is considered secure is methodically monitored.