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DISCOURSES OF

BRANDING

Companies’ overall

promotional strategies

increasingly centre on

the brand as a whole,

rather than on specific

items.

Brands, rather than

single products,

translate into networks

of associations in the

mind of consumers, linking a brand to certain lifestyles, values, practices, mutual support,

opportunities etc.

Community= a group of people who identify themselves as a group on the basis of some

shared characteristics (ex. Ethnicity, geographical location, occupation, leisure interest,

political or religious beliefs and practices etc.)

Communities of consumption are created on the basis of what people (consistently,

emotionally) consume. Consumption here is seen as an important facet of identity.

This potentially favours brand loyalty: consumers define themselves by the product and

brand. 9

Erika Bruno - Lingua Inglese (prof. Virginia Zorzi)

The way people form and keep communities has evolved because of greater social and

physical mobility and the way in which we connect with each other through technology →

less physically bounded, thinner and more fluid links among people.

MODULE 3: The Fourth Industrial Revolution

According to the MIT Technology Review, these are the breakthrough technologies in

2021:

● Messenger RNA Vaccines: The new Covid vaccines are based on a technology

never before used in therapeutics, and it could transform medicine, leading to

vaccines against various infectious diseases.

● Data trusts: a data trusts is a legal entity that collects and manages people’s

personal data on their behalf. Though the structure and function of these trusts are

still being defined, data trusts are notable for offering a potential solution to

long-standing problems in privacy and security.

● Multi-skilled AI: currently AI with computer vision or audio recognition can sense

things but cannot “talk” using natural-language algorithms. But what if you combined

these abilities in a single AI system? Might these systems begin to gain human-like

intelligence? Might a robot that can see, feel, hear and communicate be a more

productive human assistant?

“Shaping the Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution” →Klaus Schwab: executive

chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The World Economic Forum is the International Organisation for Public-Private

Cooperation. Their purpose is to empower global leaders to shape the future for the better.

In this book Shwab says: “we are at the beginning of a revolution that is fundamentally

changing the way we live, work and relate to one another. In its scale, scope and complexity,

what I consider to be the fourth industrial revolution is unlike anything humankind has

experienced before”.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is a group of impending and ongoing transformations

which affect the systems surrounding us. Is a new chapter in human development, led by

technologies that are emerging now, but are based on past knowledge and systems

(previous industrial revolutions).

It’s an opportunity to engage in public conversations: how can we manage the effects of

these technologies on us and on the world around us?

Systems= “norms, rules, expectations, goals, institutions and incentives that guide our

behaviour every day, as well as the infrastructure and flows of the material and people that

are fundamental to our economic, political and social lives.” 10

Erika Bruno - Lingua Inglese (prof. Virginia Zorzi)

Schwab:”As throughout the history of industrial revolutions, all these things, and many more,

will fundamentally shift as the Fourth Industrial Revolution unfolds.”

“Dominant technologies, industries and institutional developments contributed to measures

of human development”

“The process of technological innovation has been the most powerful driver of wealth and

increased well-being since the beginning of history. Today the average person has a longer

lifespan, better health, more economic security and a far lower chance of dying through

violence than in any prior era.”

The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the future:

“Under ideal circumstances, people around the world will have the opportunity to enjoy

more freedom, better health, higher levels of education and more opportunities to live lives

they value, while suffering less from insecurity and economic uncertainty.”

“We will have to adjust our mindsets and our institutions” and Shwab address three

challenges:

● DISTRIBUTING BENEFITS (tackling inequality)

● MANAGING EXTERNALITIES (dealing with and preventing unintended negative

consequences of the 4th industrial revolution)

● ENSURING A HUMAN-CENTRED FUTURE (prioritising values and empowerment

over financial concerns)

A “new leadership mindset” and substantial institutional change are needed to meet these

challenges. In particular, Schwab lists four key principles defining this mindset and related

changes:

● Systems, not technologies should be our focus

● Empowering, not determining: emphasis on human agency upon technologies

● By design, not by default: intentional planning instead of resignation 11

Erika Bruno - Lingua Inglese (prof. Virginia Zorzi)

● Values as a feature, not a bug: values are embedded in technologies, and we

should acknowledge and discuss this.

“There is a window of opportunity for citizens and leaders from all sectors to work together to

shape the systems of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We must seize that opportunity.”

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ROBOTICS

AI and Robots:

● AI will have a major impact on society, the planet and economy.

● As it is employed for tasks involving greater and greater responsibilities, the

amount of trust we put into AI becomes a central topic of debate.

● As AI becomes more and more part of people’s daily life, it will also affect the way

we interact with the world.

● This raises concerns over possible negative consequences of its applications (ex:

weaponization by states or other actors).

● Recognizing the importance of such issues, leading corporations joined in the

Partnership of AI.

Hurdles of AI:

● The functionality of machine learning models may be compromised by even

slight changes to input signals.

● “While researchers were aware that in an AI system, knowledge would have to be

explicitly represented, they did not anticipate the vast amount of implicit knowledge

we all share about the world and ourselves.” → AI cannot yet be taught common

sense knowledge.

● AI cannot replicate human awareness of contexts and situations

● AI cannot generalise, unless it is trained on impossibly vast data pools

● Technologies such as quantum computing may help solve these issues

“Even without such breakthroughs, progress is quick and hopes are high”.

Some examples:

● Humanoid robot being prepared to travel to Mars

● AI advancing into knowledge-based professions

● Industrial robots advancing in the automotive sector

Automation → job losses + new jobs may arise

The ramifications of the use of AI and robotics for the global economy and societies are

“immense and unpredictable” → collaboration and compromise among stakeholders is

necessary.

Challenges of AI:

● Security vulnerabilities: AI may be tricked, hacked or confused

● Opaqueness of AI decisions: “the ways in which machine-learning algorithms make

decisions often remain opaque to their human creators”

● Bias: sometimes “algorithms show bias after examining datasets that reflect human

bias” 12

Erika Bruno - Lingua Inglese (prof. Virginia Zorzi)

AI pressing issues:

1. Ethical standards

2. AI and robotics governance

3. Conflict resolution

“Thinking ahead and assembling a wide range of perspectives on the impact of AI and

robotics are critical for anticipating potential outcomes and encouraging diverse points of

view”

10 things everyone should know about AI today:

● Artificial Intelligence changes over time

● Artificial General Intelligence doesn’t exist, but we are already surrounded by

“narrow AI”.

● AI, robots and humans work better when they work together.

● AI systems need our help in setting goals

● Many of today’s AI systems act as black boxes

● AI resources are open and available today

● Using AI requires individuals to get their data in order

● Even the smartest AI systems can be biased and fallible

● AI and robotics will transform tasks rather than make humans obsolete

● The impact of AI and robotics depends on how we adopt them

Module 3C: Thinking in Systems

The Slinky: Suppose I hold the upper part of the Slinky with one hand and leave the lower

part resting on my other hand…And then pull my bottom hand away.

What made the Slinky drop and bounce? The hand releases some behaviour that is latent

within the structure of the Slinky.

It is largely the structure of the Slinky which determines its behaviour.

Doing the same action with another object (characterised by a different structure) will result

in a different behaviour by that object.

About the author: Donatella Meadows(1941 - 2011): she’s an American environmental

scientist and systems scientist, educator, and writer. Member of the Club of Rome. She is

best known as lead author of the books “The Limits of Growth” and “Thinking in Systems: A

Primer”.

Robert Pirsig: “If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing,

then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a

government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left

intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves…There’s so much talk about the systems

and so little understanding.” 13

Erika Bruno - Lingua Inglese (prof. Virginia Zorzi)

The System lens:

As the Slinky example shows, it is important to understand the relationship between

structure and behaviour.

This relationship is important also in other systems, which are far more complex than a

Slinky.

System=”a set of things interconnected in such a way that they reproduce their own pattern

of behaviour over time”.

The structure of a system is important in determining the behaviour of a system.

This can help us see the behaviours of systems in a different light.

Let’s consider, for example, some long-standing issues (we can see them as behaviours

that we consider negative) that characterise systems of which we are part:

● Economic recessions

● Oil-prices rising

● Drug addiction

Recession = a difficult time when there is less trade and business activity in a country than

usual.

On the other hand, this awareness is unsettling. This is not the way in which we learnt to

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