Silicon Harlem conference to prep Harlem and upper Manhattan for high-tech ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’

Calling all smartphone-clutching uptown residents! The digital-driven “Fourth Industrial Revolution” is here and you need to prepare, say organizers of today’s “Next Gen Tech Conference” at the National Black Theater in Harlem.

Aimed at the thousands of everyday smartphone, tablet and laptop users uptown, next-level innovations — such as quantum computing and artificial intelligence — are on the agenda of the confab, presented by the Silicon Harlem organization, under the theme, “World 4.0: Let’s Get Ready!”

“The Fourth Industrial Revolution which can be characterized as the ‘Age of Automation and Virtuality’ holds both positive and negative potentialities which will affect Harlem and upper Manhattan,” explained Silicon Harlem co-founder Bruce Lincoln. His organization is already developing a free uptown WI-Fi network to improve the area’s success in the impending technological “Revolution”

Public and private tech executives, educators and elected officials will gather at the daylong conference to inform residents and businesses how to adapt to new technologies.

Signs of this “Revolution” are abundant — rapidly changing the way people work and live. And special efforts must be made for uptown residents to keep up, said Lincoln, who founded Silicon Harlem with Clayton Banks.

“The Fourth Industrial Revolution presents parents, children and grandparents with the problem of how to stay relevant as far as being a part of the new economy driven by automation and virtuality,” said Lincoln, explaining that “digital literacy and access to broadband is at the forefront of Silicon Harlem’s commitment to upper Manhattan.”

To combat “economic dislocation that will be a part of this inevitable transition,” Lincoln said his organization has a strong focus on the new jobs, social realities and “enlightened public policy that Silicon Harlem is implementing in conjunction with the city.”

The National Black Theater, on Fifth Ave. between 125th and 126th Sts., is hosting the 2019 edition of the event from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.