20th Conference on Computer and IT Applications in the Maritime Industries

Abstract This paper presents a critical review of key IT technologies used in the maritime industries. The techniques are Virtual Reality, Digital Twin, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Unmanned Ships. Each of these terms is frequently used and came with grand visions. In this paper, we look behind the high and mighty terms and see the sober reality behind. Often it is a case of false labelling or relabel-ling of more mundane, down-to-earth IT applications. 1. Introduction We are living in a phase of ‘digital transformation’. There is wide consensus on that, but beyond that, things become muddy and hazy. When did this phase start? How long do we expect it to last? And what is digital transformation, as opposed to digitization and digitalization? I suspect digital transformation is ‘groovy’, as nobody has been able to explain to me what exactly ‘groovy’ means either. Most of us survive on poorly understood buzzwords, some of us thrive on them. If feeling disadvantaged, you may resort to agile internet-based tools in the industry 4.0 eco-system like https://www.makebullshit.com/. More advanced tools probably exist where you can feed in some keywords and out comes an impressive buzzword phrase. But your management may have beaten you to it already. But often, it is also a case of taking a great idea, and starting by necessity on a much smaller scale. As in: “In the future, we shall boil the ocean, but as a proof-of-concept implementation of limited functionality, I will make a coffee.” In other cases, marketing (including scientific self-marketing) has cleverly redefined goals to present success stories: “We define advanced calculus here as the ability to add two arbitrary positive one-digit numbers.” Or intelligence as the ability to memorize 5 items, as in person, woman, man, camera, TV. In the following, let’s have a look at some of these new high and mighty terms and see how far reality lags behind the visions created when these buzzwords were originally coined.