Industry—Between Evolution and Revolution: A Historical Perspective

Abstract

Looking back, it seems that global social insecurity has never been as disconcerting as it is today. The reasons for this are to be found in acutely experienced socio-technical and political processes of change. Change has always been a continuum of human existence, but what is new is how it is now perceived to be changing humanity faster and more fundamentally than ever. After all, digital technologies are literally turning everything upside down; they are relativising the world and transforming with historically unprecedented quality all aspects of human existence. Mankind is facing an absolute novum and the most radical of all socio-technical upheavals (Ede 2019; Wolff and Göbel 2018).