Zeitenwende. Corona, Big Data und die kybernetische Zukunft. Promedia Wien 2022 (288pp) by Andrea Komlosy

TURN OF AN ERA. Corona, Big Data, and the Cybernetic Future by Andrea Komlosy

Book Announcement (translation) https://mediashop.at/buecher/zeitenwende/

We are facing the transition from the industrial to the cybernetic age. The economic historian Andrea Komlosy takes a look back to make the Corona crisis understandable as a dynamizing element of the historical turnaround. Komlosy assigns cycles of economic activity and global hegemony as well as epochs in human history to historical junctures - from hunting and gathering to the agricultural revolution and industrial society to the current moment of upheaval leading into the cybernetic age. This transition corresponds with a new accumulation cycle, which is characterized by digitalization, robotics and interfaces between man and machine. Pharma, biotech and nanotech represent the lead industries of the transition. At the same time, we are witnessing the erosion of Western dominance and increased geopolitical rivalry for hegemonic succession.

Artificial Intelligence, Industry 4.0, New Green Deal, Great Reset, and the measurement of all bodily emotions and thoughts are based on Big Data.

Corona laws made home office and online commerce the basis of survival. They served as behavioral training in new cultural techniques. Medical surveillance, motion control, and biopolitical conditioning transform the body into an intervention field for data extraction, optimization, and control.

Covid-19 will lose its threat. However, the acceptance of surveillance and tracking has become part of everyday life. Closures and segregations can be reactivated at any time if this trend fails to spark an anti-systemic counter-movement. Such a counter-movement must aim at quality of life instead of complexity and strive for self-determination and democratic control of future developments.

The Author:

Andrea Komlosy, born in Vienna in 1957, professor of economic and social history at the University of Vienna. Her most recent publications, published by Promedia: "Arbeit" (English: Work. The Last 1000 Years, Verso; Serbian: Rad, Slovenian: Delo) and "Grenzen” (Borders. Spatial and Social Dividing Lines in the Course of Time".

Table of Contents (translation)

Introduction

Section 1
Long Waves: Cycles of business cycles, hegemony and evolution

1.1 Business Cycles
Business Cycles from a World System Perspective
The Cycle Model
Cycles as generational succession?
Controversies around the 4th Kondratieff Cycle
The Future of cyclical renewal

1.2 Hegemonic Cycles
Hegemonic change and business cycles

1.3 Evolutionary Cycles
Utopian and dystopian visions
Periodization of evolution
Cyberoptimism
Women and belief in technology
Ethical criticism
Evolutionary ages and Kondratieff cycles

Section 2
The Corona Moment in the Historical Process
Scenario, plan or opportunity
A bypass for the failing financial system?

2.1 Cybernetic Capitalism
The leading sectors of the cybernetic age
The medical sector - Robotics - Biotechnologies - Nanotechnologies - Additive technologies -Cognitive systems
The promises of "disruption
The boom industries of the corona lockdown
The media push for online products
Online communication and home office / Online commerce / Online services

2.2 The new human being
Work processes
Robots / Supply chains and just-in-time / Digital nomads
Datafication
Data as raw material /From the exploitation of labor to the appropriation of experience / Occupational health and safety – data protection / Desire for mass data / Limits of the Internet / Corona emergency as data driver
Penetrating the body
Health / Hygiene / Beauty medicine / Extending life / Corona and the body / The Corona vaccination / Big Data for Big Pharma
Control of movement
Brief history of the passport / The reactivation of the health certificate / Corona apps and "green passport" / Global plans for biometric IDs and health cards

2.3 Geopolitical shift - struggle for hegemony
China's catch-up development
Zero Covid: Triumph or Handicap
Competing Block Formations and Trade Policy

Conclusion

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version, revised by the author)