Automation is a revolutionary concept and technology.
The First Generation of Automation
The first generation of automation is the automation of the heaven-and-earth system — that is, the growth of all things.
Heaven supplies energy as yang, earth takes form as yin; the ancient sages observed this and made use of it. To follow the four seasons and suit the land is called wu wei (无为, non-action). Wu wei is not inaction — it is acting in accordance with nature.
This generation of automation has three elements: heaven, earth and humanity.
The weather reflects the intensity and total supply of solar energy. Its changes divide broadly into the four seasons and finely into the twenty-four solar terms. Terrain differs from place to place, hence adapting to local conditions; and people must sow, water, fertilise and feed at the right time and in the right place, as if playing in concert with heaven and earth — hence the phrase harmony among people.
Heaven and earth are already automated, but from the human point of view one must still take the right action at the right moment for all things to grow according to human wishes.
The Second Generation of Automation
The second generation of automation is machine automation. From this generation onward, automation is man-made.
Machine automation did not begin in modern times; the ancient waterwheel, for example, was an automatic machine driven by water.
But the truly revolutionary change in efficiency came with the modern industrial machines powered by electricity.
Electricity is man-made, originally obtained mainly by burning coal and oil; only then did humanity truly acquire the concept and awareness of energy.
It was also then that humanity began to shift from obeying nature and opening up wasteland to damaging nature and extracting minerals.
As for people, the human body is yin and consciousness is yang. When yang reaches its extreme, yin is born; at the extreme of intelligence, clever artefacts are born.
Coal mines and oil fields burn to generate and supply energy, iron and metals are smelted into form — this is the “heaven and earth” yin and yang of second-generation automation.
Second-generation automation did not replace first-generation automation; rather, it has two main functions.
First, it acts on the products of first-generation automation, reprocessing them;
second, it in turn upgrades first-generation automation, using machines to create small local pockets of nature.
The Third Generation of Automation
The third generation of automation is logic automation. From this generation onward, automation moves from the concrete into the abstract.
The automation of logic is the automation of the capacity to judge, and its product is software.
Likewise, third-generation automation does not replace second-generation automation; it, too, has two main functions.
First, on the basis of second-generation automation’s products (hardware), it builds a vast new world of software;
second, it in turn upgrades second-generation automation — hardware becomes programmable.
In the distinction between form and intent, form is yin and intent is yang. When yin reaches its extreme, yang is born. At the extreme of the material, intelligence and ingenuity are born.
It is also from this generation onward that automation moves from the material into the human, beginning the journey of “creating people”. Second-generation automation replaced human physical labour, whereas third-generation automation has begun to replace human conscious activity itself. Note the two “动” — one is the body’s outward “movement”, the other is the “movement” inside the body.
What Is the Fourth Generation of Automation?
Let’s take another angle: what does the next generation of automation begin to replace in people? It should be human feeling. And taken in order, it should replace people’s “觉” (sense) first.
“感” (feeling) and “觉” (sense) are different: “feeling” only exists where there is “sense”. For example, “觉” includes sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, while “感” includes the sense of space, the feeling of cold and heat, emotion, the feeling of pain, and so on.
“觉” is receiving; “感” is responding.
Among the five senses, taken in order again, the first to be replaced should be people’s “sight”. This is machine vision, a branch of artificial intelligence. Progress on “hearing” is decent too — that is, “speech recognition”. Self-driving cars try to produce “感” on the basis of machine vision; voice assistants, for now, still only give command-style or fuzzy-command responses, and there is still a long way to go before genuine “感”.
It is foreseeable that fully covering the five senses will still take a very long time.
Fully covering the five feelings would mean the birth of “human-like” robots. That will take an even more distant stretch of time.
Back to DevOps
DevOps is also a kind of automation — automation aimed at the entire software lifecycle. It arose out of third-generation automation, and it will also drive humanity more quickly into fourth-generation automation; it can be compared to second-generation automation.
The difference is that one acts on the virtual space of software while the other acts on physical, real space.
A fully formed DevOps platform is, for a software development company, like an internal industrial revolution and efficiency revolution.