Back then, the electrical grid was fully invested, today is it the IT of structured knowledge work? The future belongs to the human behind the technology.
All media outlets have reported on the anniversaries of the great stock market crash 90 years ago: about the greedy speculators, the insane index increases, the accompanying fraud, the free fall to only ten percent of the previous value by July 1932. Millions of people in the USA and Europe subsequently suffered from hunger. In this interpretation, the stock market crash triggered the world economic crisis of the 1930s, but that is not true: even before that, industry and car production in the USA had been declining. Economists then write that the cause of the crisis is not known. Here, the perspective of the real economist Nikolai Kondratieff (1892 - 1938) is helpful: Since the 1890s, electric power had been driving the economy: through chemistry, agriculture and medicine boomed; steel could be produced 80 percent cheaper with electricity, enabling mass production. Such fundamental new technologies require vast amounts of capital over an extended period to build the technology network, at high interest rates. Until it is increasingly fully invested: by the early 1920s, almost all companies in developed countries were electrified, and by the late 1920s, depending on the region, 80 to 90 percent of private households were connected to the electrical grid. There were fewer and fewer profitable investment opportunities that reduced costs. Therefore, the national economy then needs less money, interest rates fall, boosting consumption, such as holiday homes in Florida, buying a new kitchen. Or the free money flows into real estate investments and, above all, stocks, whose prices rise not because they are worth more, but solely because there are no longer profitable improvements in real life. Today, it is not the central bankers who are "responsible" for zero interest rates, but the lack of investment opportunities that save resources in real life. Something has come to an end, gradually worldwide: computers have made structured knowledge work more efficient for over 40 years. Someone who stored their typewriter in the basement around 1990 and bought a 2/86 PC made tremendous progress. In contrast, when computing power doubles today, work has not improved by zero percent because it does not address scarcity, as Kondratieff contemplated. Future technologies do not focus on that, which are promised to us today: the more technology we have, the more it is about the people behind the technology who must strive for better solutions, analyze a situation realistically and make decisions, reconcile conflicting interests. Laying pipes is a structured activity; however, advising a difficult couple is an unstructured, fuzzy task. Neither AI nor nanotechnology help when two department heads do not communicate or a team addresses problems from a relational level rather than a substantive level. The consequences of a fully invested technology followed by stagnation are disastrous: countries close their trade borders, seek scapegoats, elect "strong" leaders, set aside reason, and allow themselves to be manipulated by base instincts. This was the case for 20 years after the 1873 financial crash when the railways between the then centers were completed; this was during the Great Depression after 1929 when most countries sank into dictatorships. What can be done to prevent a global 1929 today? Neither more money nor technology will fundamentally help us. The best way to stabilize politics and the economy is to become more productive as a society as a whole. Over the past 200 years, we have rationalized material and energy processes. Now it is essential to improve the share of our work that consists of unstructured thought work between people, in the world of thought where there are no limits to economic growth. Erik Händeler, 50, is an author ("The History of the Future") and public speaker. He is primarily concerned with Kondratieff's economic theory and the relationship between productivity and prosperity in the knowledge society.
