13 - Venturing into the Era of the Digital Revolution

Summary

This book has so far described various ways or lines of inquiry to improve productivity and support conservation in Chapters 3 to 12, attempting to answer the three subquestions set in “Scope and Structure” in Chapter 1. Importantly, the chapters also invoked concerns about the immense challenges that come with these strategies, with monitoring and communication as the most prominent ones. This chapter suggests that the digital revolution, also called Industrial Revolution 4.0, may provide new solutions to overcome these challenges, and at the same time bring new options to the table for development planning. While there are studies that touched on the different aspects of the application of digital technologies in Borneo, an overview of the opportunities and impacts brought by the digital transformation of land-based economies of the island remains largely missing. How will the developing, land-relying populations in Borneo fare in their experiences with the digital revolution will be an important question for researchers in the coming years.

This chapter first illustrates the recent trends of digitalization in Borneo. This is followed by an overview of technological vectors in the context of land-based economies. With this basis, the chapter continues to explore how the digital revolution can be practically operationalized in Borneo, using the framework of ten strategies described in previous chapters, populating with cases found across the island or elsewhere but applicable to Borneo collected from literature, through personal communications, and from field observations.

RECENT TRENDS IN BORNEO

The digital revolution has become a major policy focus in Malaysia and Indonesia to ensure the nations survive and evolve in the face of disruptive changes in the global economy. Digital and smart technologies are perceived as key modular building blocks for sustainable development in the next few decades (Sachs et al. 2019). Transformative efforts and initiatives have been made primarily for urban areas, especially on integrating infrastructure and various services via digital platforms, with labels like “smart cities” or “digital cities”; see, e.g., Yau et al. (2016), Jurriëns and Tapsell (2017), and Beschorner et al. (2019).