We missed the fourth one as well, alas

Let me tell a story from 35 years ago.

We will understand more easily why we also missed the 4th Industrial Revolution.

As we all know well, because we missed the first industrial revolution with steam power in 1750 and the second industrial revolution with electric power in 1850, the great empire collapsed.

Ancestral lands like the Balkans were lost, we retreated back to Anatolian lands, and millions of our people became destitute.

Our race faced the danger of extinction.

Ankara, which struggled quite a bit to catch up with the third industrial revolution with computers in 1960, unfortunately lost all its brains from the last 50 years to industrialized countries, primarily America, never to return, so we also missed the fourth industrial revolution with artificial intelligence in 2000.

The issue here is how we let these brains slip through our fingers.

Let's start the story so the topic doesn't drag on and scatter.

In 1990, we had taken the exams known at the time as ÖSS and ÖYS.

In those days, there were many students, but universities were high-quality and few. They were the years when those who marked "a" for everything or those with negative net scores could not enter university, unlike today.

In the system of the 1990s, one would go to private tutoring centers, make choices before the exam, and then take the exam.

To make our choices, we would usually head to the tutoring centers and try to get tips from our experienced teachers there.

We were calculating which department we should choose to make more money in the shortest way.

Meanwhile, there was a kid in Trabzon who took practice exams with us.

I think he had ranked highly in the ÖSS exam, and he was expected to rank highly in the second exam, the ÖYS. I remember he made it into the top 20.

He had answered all the questions correctly.

I remember it was a big deal during the preference period.

While he was making his choices, the teachers, to whet this kid's appetite, were trying to sway his mind by embellishing and describing how much money doctors make, how comfortably they live, and how they leave everyone behind in womanizing.

The kid, however, was resisting, persistently trying to explain to his teachers that he wanted to be a scientist.

Even though he said he had money, was already living comfortably, and was far from womanizing, the teachers could not grasp it.

There was one thing the teachers did grasp.

And that was that one could not be a scientist in Turkey.

The result.

The teachers were proven right.

Despite his perfect score, the kid got into the METU Physics Department, which had a much lower score requirement.

He finished school successfully.

He went to America.

He became a Physics Professor at Princeton University, one of the most prestigious schools in the world.

Just like his cousin Özlem Türeci.

In the next article, let's cover the topic of what we should have done to catch the fourth industrial revolution, so our elders don't say, "You wrote the problem, why aren't you writing the solution?"