Rhythmic gymnastics is one of the most beautiful and scintillating sport within the Olympic Games. It is a sport in which gymnasts perform on a floor with an apparatus – hoop, ball, clubs, ribbon or rope. The sport combines elements of gymnastics, dance and calisthenics.
Gymnasts must be strong, flexible, agile, dexterous and coordinated.
An individual routine is performed by one gymnast with one apparatus whereas a group routine is performed by six gymnasts with six pieces of apparatus, and both are accompanied by a piano.
In fact, politics has so much in common with rhythmic gymnastics; the originality of routine, the gestures, the facial expressions, fluidity of line and movement. The gymnasts – who are the politicians – do know how to deploy any of the apparatus, be it the hoop, ball, clubs, ribbon or ropes to their advantage at any given period.
On many fronts, politics seems to be an art of rhythmic gymnastics.
They know how to perform to a floor of issues, how to dance to them, and are very agile, dexterous to every issue brought to their attention.
Lastly, they are very coordinated.
Unfortunately, there are certain issues that rhythmic gymnastics can’t be deployed; for example, there is a certain time allocated for it. It does not go on and on.
The nation Ghana cannot afford this rhythmic gymnastics currently ensuing.
This is a great opportune period for us to have a coherent foundation on the industrial revolutions that have taken place before and where we are now.
Trailhead.salesforce.com has simplified all the four industrial revolutions; and it makes a good read.
According to Schwab, industrial revolution is the appearance of new technologies and novel ways of perceiving the world that trigger a profound change in economic and social structures.
Age of mechanical production was where the society was largely agrarian, which is a fancy way of saying that life used to be centred on farming but with steam power, those agrarian societies gave way to urbanisation.
The world began to rely on steam power and machine tools, and railroads helped people get from A to B, helping in setting factories anywhere because labour could easily be carried to it.
With time, advanced industrialisation created a middle class of skilled workers. Cities and industries grew more quickly than ever before and economies grew along with them.
The age of science and mass production made things speed up with a number of key inventions. Think of gasoline engines and airplanes; all inventions that helped us go faster and do more. The scientific principles were brought into the factories, which helped in mass production – Like Henry ford’s Model T cars.
People followed the jobs and saw workers leaving their rural homes behind to move to urban areas and factory jobs.
When you stop and think about it, it was this industrial revolution – the second one – that ushered in the modern world. The stage Ghana finds itself now.
The digital revolution brought in semi-conductors, personal computing and the Internet.
Things that used to be analogue moved to digital technologies – like an old TV you used to tune in with an antenna (analogue) being replaced by an Internet-connected tablet that lets you stream movies (digital).
The move from analogue to digital technology has dramatically disrupted industries.
The fourth industrial revolution is all about the artificial intelligence, quantum physics, just to name a few.
Ghana needs to understand that the rhythmic gymnastics of levies, won’t help us leapfrog from the third industrial revolution to the fourth or digital revolution, unless we begin to appreciate and discover how we can produce within this era of digital revolution, which is powered by cloud, social, mobile, the Internet of things and artificial intelligence to have major societal economic transformation.
