ORIGINAL PAPER

The Vision of BIndustrie 4.0^ in the Making—a Case of FutureTold, Tamed, and Traded

Sabine Pfeiffer

Received: 27 May 2016 /Accepted: 29 November 2016 /Published online: 25 January 2017# The Author(s) 2017. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com

Abstract Since industrial trade fair Hannover Messe2011, the term BIndustrie 4.0^ has ignited a vision of anew Industrial Revolution and has been inspiring a lively,ongoing debate among theGerman public about the futureof work, and hence society, ever since. The discoursearound this vision of the future eventually spread to othercountries, with public awareness reaching a temporarypeak in 2016 when theWorld Economic Forum’s meetingin Davos was held with the motto BMastering the FourthIndustrial Revolution.^ How is it possible for a visionoriginally established by threeGerman engineers to unfoldand bear fruit at a global level in such a short period oftime? This article begins with a summary of the key ideasthat are discussed under the label Industrie 4.0. The mainpurpose, based on an in-depth discourse analysis, is todebunk the myth about the origin of this powerful visionand to trace the narrative back to the global economiccrisis in 2009 and thus to the real actors, central discoursepatterns, and hidden intentions of this vision of a newIndustrial Revolution. In conclusion, the discourse analy-sis reveals that this is not a case of visioneering but one ofa future told, tamed, and traded.

Keywords Visioneering . Industry 4.0 . Industrie 4.0 .

Future . Anticipation

The German Debate on Industrie 4.0: a Caseof Visioneering?

Since 2011, the notion of BIndustrie 4.0^ has stimu-lated an increasingly lively debate in German society.Ini t ia l ly concerned with new technologicalmanufacturing options, the discourse has developedinto an ongoing and still-intensifying debate that isreverberating through more and more spheres of so-ciety. The future seems to occupy a prominent placeon the current discourse agenda, and in drawing onthe book Future Matters [1], the present article con-siders whether this future is merely Btold^ (and bywhom) or whether it is also tamed and traded. Al-though there is professional debate about Industrie4.0 and the manufactural Internet in other countriestoo, in Germany the numbers B4.0^ have developedinto a well-known meme that adorns conferences allover the country, signaling fundamental discussionson no less a topic than the future of work and thefuture of society as a whole. What McCray [2] termsvisioneering inevitably comes to mind. Themarketing-style term Industrie 4.0 was invented andpromoted by three engineers: Henning Kagermann(physicist and one of the founders of SAP), WolfgangWahlster (professor of artificial intelligence), andWolf-Dieter Lukas (physicist and senior official atthe German Federal Ministry of Education and Re-search). What they started in 2011 during a pressconference at the Hannover Messe and in 2016 be-came the main motto of the World Economic Forum

Nanoethics (2017) 11:107–121DOI 10.1007/s11569-016-0280-3

S. Pfeiffer (*)Department of Sociology, Faculty of Business, Economics andSocial Sciences, University of Hohenheim, Wollgrasweg 23,70599 Stuttgart, Germanye-mail: soziologie@uni-hohenheim.de

(WEF) [3] meeting in Davos almost perfectlymatches what McCray defines as visioneering:

BVisioneering certainly embraces a probing andexploratory approach to design as technically flu-ent experts speculate at to what can be built. Yetvisioneering also involves the popularization ofideas, the construction of networks of supporters,and the cultivation of patrons^ ([2], p. 152).

The latter especially seems to be the ongoing missionof Henning Kagermann, who, as the president of theGerman National Academy of Science and Engineering(acatech), successfully institutionalized, and continuesto maintain, a high-profile network of leading managers,politicians, and other influential figures from employerand business organizations and trade unions to promotethe vision of Industrie 4.0. And this notion was framedas a vision right from the outset: the first strategic paperthat acatech published on Industrie 4.0 explicitly de-scribes Industrie 4.0 as a Bvision^ that has to be shaped,and draws a picture of what the Bfuture [will] look likeunder Industrie 4.0^ ([4], p. 18–20). And this future,although driven by technology, magically seems tosolve a host of societal problems that were once thoughtto be insoluble—not only in Germany but across theworld:

BIn addition, Industrie 4.0 will address and solvesome of the challenges facing the world todaysuch as resource and energy efficiency, urbanproduction and demographic change. Industrie4.0 enables continuous resource productivity andefficiency gains to be delivered across the entirevalue network. It allows work to be organized in away that takes demographic change and socialfactors into account. Smart assistance systemsrelease workers from having to perform routinetasks, enabling them to focus on creative, value-added activities. In view of the impending short-age of skilled workers, this will allow olderworkers to extend their working lives and remainproductive for longer. Flexible work organizationwill enable workers to combine their work, privatelives, and continuing professional developmentmore effectively, promoting a better work-lifebalance^ ([4], p. 5; emphasis in original).

However, the strategy paper on Industrie 4.0 is notvery specific about how its stated goals, which are inpart mutually incompatible, can be achieved. The

propagated utopia repeatedly upholds the mantra-likedictum that Industrie 4.0 is completely human-centeredand will therefore not pave the way towards deserted,fully automated factories.

With Industrie 4.0, new and ostensibly unheard-oftechnical possibilities are being touted. Without a doubt,the technical innovations being discussed are fascinat-ing, and the whole enterprise cannot be understood,much less realized, without giving them due attention.Yet, we must always differentiate between the real andspeculated effects of technology, between serious dis-course and media hype, between true innovation and oldhat. A command of basic knowledge about IT systemsand production-process technology is often lacking,although it would surely aid objective analysis, as wouldfamiliarity with the state of the art of work organizationand the intra-logistics of factory assembly. Technicalexpertise of this sort would quickly demystify much ofthe current hype.

But even those who coined the term Industrie 4.0 areastonishingly vague about the technical details of thebig, visionary picture they paint in the paper cited above.Despite their technical backgrounds, the three engineersseem to deliberately avoid describing technical detailslinked to concrete applications of Industrie 4.0 on theshop floor and instead indulge in colorful visions of thefuture. And this is why the vision of Industrie 4.0 lacksone central feature of McCray’s definition ofvisioneering, which in his words B(…) requires morethan imaginative and sweeping ideas for how new tech-nologies might dramatically reshape society. It also re-quires some application of technical skills, knowledge,and calculations to press forward toward the technolog-ical future. Engineering, after all, culminates in buildingthings. Successful visioneering demands that paper,pencils, and the speaker’s podium be exchanged forthe hammer, forge, and welder’s arch^ ([2], p. 261,emphasis in original).

Nevertheless, this article cannot take up the tasks,important as they are, of elaborating on the technicalphenomena associated with Industrie 4.0, the tech-nological ontologies that underlie them, or theirsociological implications. Even a discussion of tech-nical issues alone would fill more pages than appro-priate for a single article. Instead, this article usesthe now quite expansive reach and the loud buzzsurrounding Industrie 4.0 as a jumping-off point foran in-depth examination of the strategies and actorsbehind it all.

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The buzz surrounding Industrie 4.0 has put the spot-light back on industrial production and industrial em-ployment after it was very nearly relegated to historicaltexts. For many years and until just recently, industrialproduction was Bold economy,^ both for policymakersand academic researchers. Production and assemblywork was written off as being in permanent decline, justindustrial residue in a post-industrial society. Althoughknowledge about these work environments was currentin society and research as recently as just 20 years ago, ithas since faded like old photographs. Thus, I will con-centrate in this article on the industrial core and itsimmediate edges, to the neglect of equally importantprocesses that have initiated new forays into digitaliza-tion such as crowd sourcing, micro work, and theemerging sharing economy (which incidentally haveplayed similar roles in developments in non-industrialsectors such as logistics and health care). Nor will Idelve into the issues of increasing vulnerability as aresult of ever-more complex data acquisition and aggre-gation, although these are surely very important topicsfor employment-based societies and for businesses. Thisnarrow focus intentionally replicates the narrow con-fines in which the discussion about Industrie 4.0 itselfhas taken place. Doing so makes it possible to analyzethoroughly and critically the discourse and the phenom-ena it addresses.

My observations begin at the purported discursiveroots of Industrie 4.0—in the assumption that it arose inreaction to a new quality of technological developmentand that its intellectual home is above all in Germany,where the economy is still highly influenced by engi-neering and industry.

The BIndustrie 4.0: Understanding a SeeminglyTechnical DebateB section provides an introduction forreaders with only cursory knowledge of Industrie 4.0and provides the necessary background for the actualanalysis, which begins in the BFuture told: a GlobalStrategic DiscourseB section with a review of the ori-gins, progression, intention, and actors of a discoursethat has a lot more to do with economics thantechnology.

On the basis of this critical discourse analysis, anddrawing on the theories of Barbara Adam’s and ChrisGroves’ Future Matters, BFuture told: a Global StrategicDiscourse,BFuture traded: the False Hope of a NewSource of Unbridled Growth,B and „Future tamed: theGlobal reorganisation of workB sections elaborate thecentral argument of the paper that Industrie 4.0 (or,

rather, that which is referred to by this name in Germa-ny) should not be interpreted as an example ofBvisioneering.^ With respect to the German debate onIndustrie 4.0, it is shown that German engineers are notthe driving force behind the debate, nor are they inter-ested in Bbuilding things^ (as noted above). McCray’svisioneers use their visions to raise money and attractsupporters and thereby achieve their technical goals.Their visions are a means to an end, or, as Nordmannputs it: BWhat visioneering aims for is to exhibit acompelling causal link between a state A (technologicalwork-in-progress) and a state B (a future so desirable asto mandate its realization) (…)^ [5].

The empirical basis for this article is a discourseanalysis of a wide range of texts published between2009 and 2015, which follows the Bsociology of knowl-edge approach to discourse (SKAD)^ [6]. More than220 publications were chosen and, in line with theSKAD, were analyzed with regard to the explicit opin-ions they contained and the economic interests, socialrelations, and politics of knowledge that the future vi-sions in this material addressed.

Following Adam and Groves, I argue in this articlethat Industrie 4.0 should be understood as a process thatworks in a manner contrary to the way in which it isoften conceived. Industrie 4.0 is not a debate about Btheembedded, embodied, contextual future^ but a phenom-enon of a Bdecontextualized future emptied of content,which is open to exploration and exploitation, calcula-tion and control^ ([1], p. 2).

The three main sections will discuss the debate onIndustrie 4.0 as an intentional future told from Adam’sand Groves’ analytical perspective. The BFuture told: aGlobal Strategic DiscourseB section elaborates on themanner in which agenda-building and big narrativeshave been deliberately initiated by influential actors ona global scale. The BFuture traded: the False Hope of aNew Source of Unbridled GrowthB section proceeds toshow how Industrie 4.0 could be seen as a form oftraded future: a future that only appears utopian to asuperficial regard. In terms of certain well-known eco-nomic considerations that are highly pertinent today, thisfuture fails to live up to its self-imposed utopian aspira-tions. The overall aim of Industrie 4.0 seems not to bethe development of visioneering forms of trading thatwould be genuinely utopian and truly novel (in gener-ating post-growth prosperity, for instance, or sustainablyusing global resources and promoting a more equaldistribution of wealth) but to ensure the persistence of

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the current economic spatio-temporal logic. In order forthis traded future to be established, production anddistribution processes not only have to be digitized andintegrated into a global network, but—as the „Futuretamed: the Global reorganisation of workB sectionshows—also need to be restructured from the globallevel down to every workplace and shop floor. Discus-sions of Industrie 4.0 and the vision of a Fourth Indus-trial Revolution therefore also tend to paint a picture of atamed future. The BIndustrie 4.0: a Future Told, Traded,and TamedB section brings together the key results ofthe discourse analysis. These results are contrasted withan interpretation of the German debate on Industrie 4.0that at first glance appears accurate, namely, one thatconstrues this debate as a nationally centralized andtechnologically driven case of visioneering. The articlecloses with some theoretical reflections on the signifi-cance of the sociomateriality of technology and thesocietal and economic role of human labor in realizingvisions of the future.

Industrie 4.0: Understanding a Seemingly TechnicalDebate

After being introduced to a wide audience for the firsttime during the Hannover Trade Fair in 2011, theIndustrie 4.0 concept migrated quickly out of the spe-cialized discourse to become a widely recognized catchword in the popular vernacular. It succeeded in puttingindustrial production, a dead topic for many years, backin the limelight. What had been written off as Boldeconomy^ became celebrated as the nucleus of an IT-based revolution. Industrie 4.0 was elevated to a centralstrategic goal for economic and industrial policy [7].The evolving discourse around Industrie 4.0 becamevery diverse, complex, and interest-driven as the list oftechnical options associated with the label was length-ened almost daily. For the initiators of the debate,Industrie 4.0 is nothing less than the fourth industrialrevolution: BThe first three industrial revolutions cameabout as a result of mechanisation, electricity and IT.Now, the introduction of the Internet of Things andServices into the manufacturing environment is usher-ing in a fourth industrial revolution. In the future, busi-nesses will establish global networks that incorporatetheir machinery, warehousing systems and productionfacilities in the shape of Cyber-Physical Systems(CPS)^ ([4], p.5; emphasis in original).

The terms Internet of Things (IOT) and cyber-physical systems indicate what is at stake here. It isabout networking digitally the maximum possiblenumber of elements involved in production process-es, support services, and logistics. In this way, thematerial melds with the digital. Everything from alocal production line to global value chains is to beglobally networked and locally regulated, as in theoften-cited example of highly customizable products.All manipulable objects in the production process areto be fitted with data transponders that communicateposition and production status to the machines doingthe processing work. In Bsmart factories^ built onthese principles and in the Bsmart service welt^ thatemerges afterward [8], the restrictions of traditionalmass production can be overcome. The idea is thatproducts will be custom-manufactured in response toindividual needs and only on demand.

At every point on such complex production andvalue chains, an immense amount of data is created,even today. In the course of CPS, the volume of datathat has to be integrated will increase exponentially.Not only the elements being moved through the pro-duction process but also all of the sensors and acti-vators of all the machines and plants involved gener-ate status data continuously, and this data stream mayeven one day be extended to driverless systems thatdeliver the finished product right to the customer’sdoor. This is big data indeed, and not only data abouthuman consumption or health behaviors but also dataabout machines and human-machine interaction suchas the longevity of machine parts or optimal deliveryroutes. Note that all this is not simply aboutstretching an additional layer of data over already-existing databanks and applications. Other technicaldevelopments also play a central role in the Industrie4.0 scenarios being discussed:

& To date, we are familiar only with large stationary oraxial industrial robots. In the future, light robots,two-armed robots, and adaptive Brobotics^ willmake new forms of human-machine interaction pos-sible, making the use of robots feasible for tasks thatcannot now be profitably automated.

& Completely new production technologies are alsobeing considered. BAdditive manufacturingprocesses^ or 3D-printing makes decentralized, on-demand production of individual parts possible. Ap-proaches such as Brapid tooling^ change the way

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businesses make tools and thus also change thework process at the point of production.

& Finally, Bwearables^ also come into play. These aredigital devices that can be affixed directly onworkers and can include anything from data glassesthat display information during maintenance workto the smart glove that sends a warning signal whena worker assembles something incorrectly or as-sesses assembly workers’ stress levels by monitor-ing their vital signs.

& This is by no means an exhaustive list of possibletechnical applications relevant for Industrie 4.0.These also include all of the technically supportedcapabilities so well known to most of us from ourprivate use of smartphones, tablets, apps, and socialmedia. All of these technical capabilities and morecan be integrated into the factory workplace.

This quick review includes only a small part of thetechnological tour de force supposedly awaiting us inthe future, and it makes little sense to elaborate furtheron the important technical details that underlie them.The sheer expanse of possibilities is overwhelming, buta healthy skepticism is called for because all of thespeculation so far is in fact based on long-establishedtechnologies that are being improved incrementally. Theoften cited Bteach-in^ method of intuitive robot pro-gramming, for example, has been in industrial use fordecades. Similarly, the use of data generated by ma-chines and plants for remote or preventive maintenanceis by no means new. Even the digitalized factory isvirtually standard practice in mass production today.Large automobile manufactures, for example, give eachchassis on an assembly line its own barcode. Thebarcode is affixed at what is appropriately called itsBchristening^ in industry jargon before it moves ontowards its Bmarriage^ with an engine block. Inciden-tally, ITcompanies have been working for years (not yetwith complete success) on methods to create an unbro-ken product data stream through all points of the productlife cycle, from construction to disassembly.

Yet, some scenarios are being imagined that aregenuinely futuristic. For example, 3D-printing, althoughnearly universally overhyped, is still in its infancy formany industrial uses. And whether the decentralized,self-directed manufacture of products in lots of one willever prove to be economically sustainable and techni-cally sufficient remains to be demonstrated. Makingthings additionally difficult is the fact that we have not

even begun to resolve all the security and privacy issuesthat accompany these envisaged innovations. Nor is theneeded technical infrastructure in place. Creating a suf-ficiently fast internet might well necessitate abandoningnet neutrality, which would bring up political issues, andsolving these would require negotiation among societalactors, not just a technical fix.

As the discussion above makes clear, there is nosingle Industrie 4.0. What innovations will be adaptedin which branches and by which companies depends onthe specific settings as defined by factors including butnot limited to the degree of automation, product com-plexity, value chains, and production technology. Wehave little idea about these factors, even in today’seconomy. Our current knowledge of the presence andinfluence of these factors in German industrial produc-tion is based on speculation. No official statistics arekept, for example, on how many people work at hybrid(half-automated, half-manual) assembly stations orwhich companies use anticipatory, data-supportedmain-tenance. Given the lack of robust data, we must be verycautious with prognoses.

One can reasonably argue that the scenarios propa-gated in the Industrie 4.0 discourse may also be subjectto systematic data bias. The tasks performed by indus-trial workers in advanced industrial societies are in facthighly diverse and complex, yet the available empiricallabor market datasets that attempt to measure work tasksreproduce this complexity only crudely and superficial-ly. This problem affects Carl Benedikt Frey andMichaelA. Osborne’s often cited study [9] and German labormarket research alike. The available surveys falselyassume that practically every human task on a machineis simple and routine and can thus be easily replaced byautomation. This is more than a pragmatic simplifica-tion—it is a misleading assumption devoid of theoreticaljustification [10]. Moreover, simple logical reasoningalso cautions us to be skeptical. If we take the dis-course’s claim of immanent Brevolutionary^ andBdisruptive^ developments at face value, we actuallyhave zero basis to make robust predictions of futureevents, as one can only predict the course of futureevents on the basis of previous experience. On top ofthis come plausible economic objections: innovationshave never prevailed in industrial manufacturing simplybecause they were technically feasible. Were this other-wise, Germany would now be the home of a vibranttextile industry that had incrementally modernized itsproduction technology for generations, given that textile

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manufacturing is the textbook case of the possibilities ofextensive automation. This is, however, not the case.Apparently, it was more profitable for most Germantextile companies to use low-tech methods in low-wage countries rather than high-tech methods in high-wage Germany.

In sum, there are data-bias, logical, and economicreasons to be skeptical of any vision of the future de-rived from quantitative projections of labor markettrends and based on a single-minded consideration ofwhat innovations are now technically feasible. Thesekinds of Industrie 4.0 scenarios are short-sighted be-cause they are not informed by qualitative insights intothe reality of the working world and corporate strategy,e.g., ignoring the role of humans in human-robot inter-action [11]. Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that thesevisions do have a certain degree of influence. Tomor-row’s reality need not be today’s reality; it can always bechanged by powerful economic and political actors. Thenext section discusses these actors and their intentions.

Future Told: a Global Strategic Discourse

The Industrie 4.0 discourse is often shortsightedly fo-cused on technical issues and national boundaries, de-spite the fact that its origin and development weremotivated more by economics than technology andinfluenced more by the international strategic environ-ment than by national economic policies. The pervasivepresence in 2015 of talk about Industrie 4.0 does notcausally result from society having reached a new stageof technological development. It is first and foremost theresult of professionally managed agenda setting. Fromthe perspective of discourse analysis, this is a clear caseof successful public relations.

The origin of the Industrie 4.0 discourse and all theideas that were present at its creation were decisive inthe formation of the discourse as it exists today becausethey vitally influenced the initial direction and contentof prognostications about change. In Germany, the ex-pectation that Industrie 4.0 will spur immense growth isclosely linked to the strong export and innovation per-formance of German machine tool, plant equipment,and motor manufacturers. Not by accident do thesecompanies play a starring role as providers of infrastruc-ture in Industrie 4.0 scripts. Germany’s competitiveadvantages and the relatively high share of added valuein industrial production favored a view of Industrie 4.0

that is filtered through the lens of national interest. Thekey actors very much want to see the global networkingof manufacturing to be realized in such a way as togenerate positive economic effects for the German econ-omy. With a view toward global competition, especiallywith the USA and China, Industrie 4.0 has even beencharacterized as the question that will decide the fate ofGerman industry [12]. Nonetheless, although the spe-cific concept may have been a German invention, theidea that underlies it is not. An international debate thatparalleled discussions occurring in (West) Germany isclearly evident.

Between 2009 and 2010, a number of widely noticedstudies were published, mainly by business consultants.Written in the shadow of the international financialcrisis, they fueled a rediscovery of the significance ofthe industrial sector despite previous long-term trends ofdeindustrialization. They expressed concern over theflagging competitiveness of established and once-strong industrial economies (Germany, Japan, USA)relative to the emerging industrial economies, especiallythose in Asia. The following messages played a prom-inent role in this discussion.

& An elaborate comparison of the complexity of na-tional economies [13] ranked Germany first of 129countries. Disappointingly for Germany, however, alater publication using the same dataset to estimatefuture economic potential placed Germany at thebottom of the ranking, near Yemen.

& The international corporate accounting and consult-ing firm Deloitte created the Shift Index [14]. This isa three-part strategy that conjoined, probably for thefirst time, many of the elements typical to the na-tional Industrie 4.0 discourse. First, the strategy callsfor the creation of decentralized steering mecha-nisms for new forms of collaboration and a Bflowof knowledge.^ Second, these are to be based ondigital infrastructure and even greater market liber-alization. Third, economic and political actors areadvised to cooperate in the realization of these goalson so-called platforms [14].

& Germanywas ranked 8th on theGlobalManufactur-ing Competitiveness Index [15]. Although Germanyremains technically advanced, the Chinese industryhas clearly caught up and now even exceeds itsGerman rivals in the area of wind and solar powertechnology. High labor costs and bureaucratic hur-dles for start-ups were cited as demerits.

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& Germany was ranked 13th on the Enabling TradeIndex in 2010, good enough to make it the Bbestperformer^ among the large national economies.Germany placed well ahead of the USA, whichhad ranked 16th a year earlier but fell to 19th inthe 2010 ranking [16].

Influenced by these studies and their strategic recom-mendations, three initiatives were launched during theWorld Economic Forum (WEF) in January 2011: a taskforce, the BFuture of Manufacturing^ project, and theGlobal Agenda Council on Advanced Manufacturing[17]. Participants in the new initiatives included corpo-rate representatives from Volkswagen, Bosch, andDaimler. Among this group was also SiegfriedRusswurm of Siemens AG, who later became one ofthe spokespersons of BPlatform Industrie 4.0,^ foundedin 2013. These WEF organizations see themselves as aBplatform for informed dialog between senior businessleaders and policy-makers.^ To kick off activities at theWEF level, they soon agreed to promote a Bdata-drivennarrative^ in support of Bthe strategic use of publicpolicy as an enabler of economic development^ [17],and 3 months later in April 2001, the term Industrie 4.0was floated at the Hannover Trade Fair as noted above[18]. After this successful beginning, the discourse nev-er quieted down. It even seeped into the popular vernac-ular. In the process, political actors at the European,national, and federal-state levels started to play in ex-emplary fashion the Benabling^ role imagined for themby the WEF. In addition, all of the large corporateconsulting firms have taken up the narrative as initiatedand quantitatively undergirded by the WEF, contribut-ing their own data and details. The plot forged in Swit-zerland bore fruit.

Ironically, the same consulting firms that joined thevanguard recommending intentional deindustrializationnow point to the industrial sector not only as the coreelement of the value chain but also as the essential prereq-uisite for the preservation of Bhigh-quality services^ in thenational or regional economy [19]. In a study of how tocreate an Industrie 4.0 ecosystem, Roland Berger StrategyConsultants offered up a crystal-clear plan centeredaround the promotion of Industrie 4.0 as a European ideaand legislation to fund start-up friendly infrastructure [19].These appeals are of course addressed to European andnational-level politicians.

These initiatives have resonated greatly, as superblyexemplified by the Industrie 4.0 discourse in Germany. It

can hardly be denied that political actors are carrying outtheir part of the plan dutifully. Note that this assertionrequires no need to assume the influence of some kindof causal force Bfrom above,^ guiding the dynamics ofnational public discourses and ensuring their success. Theconjunction of diverse personal alliances, the influence ofcorporate consultancies, and the economy-driven world-view shared for years by politicians and corporate leadersare fully sufficient to ensure that reality remains consistentwith the master plan.

One thing, at least, is clear. Industrie 4.0 got itsdiscursive wings not primarily from the rise of newtechnical possibilities but rather from economicBexigencies^ as identified by economic elites. In theinitiation of this elite discourse, German businessleaders did not play the key role, although without adoubt Germany is a strategic and internationally valuedpower player, and the members of the BPlattformIndustrie 4.0^ are surely proud to have kept the Germanspelling of their group from being Anglicized. Lookingback from today’s perspective, however, we see thatGermany was neither the inventor nor the protagonistin a narrative that other actors brought into play with theintention of reinventing the world of industrialproduction.

Future Traded: the False Hope of a New Sourceof Unbridled Growth

In elaborating their notion of a Btraded future,^ Adamand Groves distinguish between an abstract, an open,and an empty future. The abstract future, Bbelonging toeveryone and no one,^ inherently calls for—and contra-dicts—the concept of an open future, which is describedas Bbelonging to some degree to human beings them-selves; as produced through human intervention sup-ported by an awareness of freedom and potentiality^([1], p. 57). Since the concepts of the abstract futureand the open future are entangled with each other andfraught with numerous tensions, they were increasinglyreplaced with what the authors call an Bempty future^:the Bcentral problem associated with the open future, i.e.which potential future to choose, is solved using math-ematical methods to quantify the prospective gains andlosses entailed by each of the alternatives.^ Adam andGroves identify both a domain—Bthe appearance of anautonomous market economy towards the end of the18th century^—and a set of willing actors—Ban

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independent social science called economics^ that joint-ly laid the Bfoundations (…) for the cultural dominanceof the empty future^ ([1], p. 57). Both the marketeconomy and modern economic science subsequentlyacquired an ally that has helped bridge both spheres andenhance their mutual interaction: consulting firms areintroduced here as the main drivers of the narrative,promising a future of everlasting growth as long associety willingly follows the path and pace they setdown.

In the origin and course of the public debate onIndustrie 4.0, we see that certain economic expectationsattained priority. The focus was never on technical in-novation, which was always treated merely as the meansfor securing greater economic growth. And indeed, theprojections of the potential growth effects of Industrie4.0 are very rosy. Some analysts have ventured theprognostication that Industrie 4.0 will bring economicgrowth for Germany in the amount of 78 billion eurosby 2025 and a growth rate of up to 30% in somebranches such as machine tools and plant construction[20]. The methods used to arrive at these projections,however, are questionable. Those 78 billion euros sup-posedly represent the isolated effect of Industrie 4.0, thatis, its effect separate from growth due to other factors.The study picked out six especially innovative econom-ic branches for analysis: chemicals, automobiles, ma-chine tools and plant construction, electrical equipment,agribusiness and forestry, and information and commu-nication technology.1 For all other branches and underthe assumption of such growth rates, the study adds a50% growth multiplier to arrive at the prediction thatIndustrie 4.0 will by itself spur economic growth in theamount of 267.5 billion euros for the German economyalone [20]. Upon closer examination of the study’smethods, it is clear that these are black-box prognoses,although admittedly this does not prevent the researchunit of the Deutsche Bank from re-using them uncriti-cally [22].

The numbers sound fantastically good and are hap-pily accepted in the halls of politics. However, a recent

systematic comparison of studies assessing the potentialimpact of Industrie 4.0 criticized their lack of method-ological rigor and showed that while Industrie 4.0would indeed be likely to spur economic growth, theexpense of the necessary investments would most likelycancel out any overall growth effect [23]. Advocatesapparently overlook something every entry-level man-ager knows: investment costs have to be subtractedfrom revenue in a correct profit calculation. But as longas economic growth is measured solely as gross domes-tic product, even poor investments count as growth.Nonetheless, the statistical legerdemain intended tomake Industrie 4.0 shine is not intentional duplicity, itis just another example of a pervasive flaw in businessschool thinking referred to as Bthe capitalist’sdilemma.^ In their article with this title, published inthe Harvard Business Manager of all places [24],Christensen and van Bever take their own colleaguesto task and argue against a promoting innovation at anycost. Instead, we must differentiate between Bmarket-creating innovations^ and Befficiency innovations.^Most Industrie 4.0 scenarios link growth projectionsto increased flexibility of production with supposedconcomitant productivity gains. This, however, is justanother form of efficiency innovation, unsustainablefrom the Christensen and van Bever perspective. Great-er efficiency serves, they argue, only to eliminate jobs(or to prevent new jobs from being necessary) and togenerate additional capital. Yet, corporations alreadyhave more capital than they want to invest. The authorsestimate that corporations are currently sitting on morethan 1.6 trillion dollars in unused capital. This moneyshould be invested in market-creating innovations.

The worrisome state of the global environment alonewould justify a worldwide negative growth program,but if the Industrie 4.0 vision becomes reality, there isno indication that any of its aspects would run counter tothe dominant ideology of economic growth. It wouldonly serve to heighten what a German sociologist callsthe dual crisis of economy and ecology [25]. Sure,insofar as Industrie 4.0 means on-demand-only produc-tion, fewer natural resources would be wasted, but apowerful reason to doubt that Industrie 4.0 would everbe green can be found on the assembly lines of everymajor automobile manufacturer today. Even on theselines, designed for high-volume production, every auto-mobile is individually identifiable from its Bchristening^onward and can thus be fitted at every point of assemblywith individualized options. Thus, production in series

1 McKinsey is not as optimistic in their assessment of the growthpotential in industrial equipment production. Unlike its predecessors,the fourth industrial revolution is not expected to be characterized bythewholesale replacement of the physical means of production. Rather,it will proceed more similarly to electrification. Many plants andmachines will simply be enhanced with sensors, networks, and bigdata. Less than half are expected to be completely replaced, and theturnover is expected to occur over a longer timespan [21].

114 Nanoethics (2017) 11:107–121

even now is by no means to be equated with rolling outidentical products en masse. The status quo of today’sdata network and assembly line technologies has ad-vanced enough already to allow companies to produceindividual automobiles only after receiving a specificorder from an identifiable customer. No doubt, the tech-nology associated with Industrie 4.0 would improve thecapabilities of such a production regime. All supplyprocess could be integrated into self-directed,decentralized value chains optimized for the manufac-ture of products in lots of one such as to eliminateoverproduction. Yet, as long as the logic of unbridledgrowth remains dominant—for example in the dogmaof Boverall equipment efficiency^ (OEE) and its dictateto maximize the utilization of plant and equipment—thenew capabilities of self-directed CPS will not beemployed to improve environmental outcomes.

An additional consideration is the unheard-of growththat Industrie 4.0 is expected to spur through the inte-gration of the Internet of things. A prognosis venturedby the corporate consultancy McKinsey arrived at thefigure of over 11 trillion dollars per year (!) in additionalgrowth through 2025 [26]. However, this calculationassumes a price for rare elements, essential for manyIoT components, that is already much too low from anecological perspective, and the study further assumesthat the prices for other essential components such asmicro-electromechanical sensors will sink by 30 to 70%[26]. Imagine, however, the consequences of such adramatic fall in prices in terms of the tide of globalelectronic garbage, which grew globally by 42 milliontons in 2014 alone.

Industrie 4.0 and the Internet of Things certainly arefeasible technologies and could make a welcome con-tribution in the near future to the reduction of resourceconsumption. Yet, they are hardly likely to break thedogma of growth and will instead only greatly exacer-bate the dual crisis of economy and ecology.

A supposedly dangerous threat to economic growthremains one of the main diagnoses undergirding theWEF’s Badvanced manufacturing^ strategy [17], themost serious problem being the US economy. The BBigShift Index,^ put out by Deloitte in 2009 for the firsttime, showed that return of assets (ROA) in the USA hasbeen in continual decline for the past four decadesdespite some work productivity gains [14]. The datawere positive only for the highly subsidized aeronauticsand defense industries and for consumer goods produc-tion. This noteworthy finding could be interpreted as

empirical support for Marx’s hypothesis of the inherenttendency of profit rates to fall as a consequence ofincreasing technical automation. This leads to a reduc-tion of the significance of human labor for value crea-tion and is for Marx one of the central mechanismspushing capitalism to its inevitable end. Deloitte wouldnot concur. They explain the cause of falling profitsdifferently:

…[C]reative talent continues to capture increas-ingly disproportionate returns in terms of totalcompensation relative to the rest of the laborforce…. On the customer side, new generationsentering the marketplace appear to be more will-ing to exercise their market power to switch toproducts and services…. The growing power ofcreative talent and customers … helps to resolvethe mystery of why ROA is declining so markedlyat the same time that productivity improvementscontinue to occur ([14], p. 12; emphasis inoriginal).

This explanation is surprising because it ignoresstandard explanations for the fall of profitability,including for example increased global competition,disruptions of financial markets, the most recentcrisis, and mismanagement. Instead, Deloitte argues(without providing empirical evidence) that thecause of the problem lies in the influence of workersin the creative sectors and in consumers’ purchasingpower. The first group, which stands at the upperechelon of the qualification pyramid, earn too much,even as consumers prefer cheaper services andgoods. Apparently, the argument is that companiesin innovative markets must pay their workers highwages without being able to pass these costs on tothe consumer because of stiff price competition.

For Deloitte, the right response is not Btosqueeze creative talent and customers in a zerosum battle to capture more of the existing pie [butrather] to discover new ways of organizing andoperating to more effectively create and capturenew value^ (ibid.). The consultants do not targetdisproportionally high salaries of creative workersfor change. Rather, they recommend that corporatemanagers organize new and efficient ways of valo-rizing human work. From this perspective, then,human work in the spheres of production and con-sumption has gained significance for the promotionof growth and the generation of profits.

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Future Tamed: the Global Reorganization of Work

For decades, jobs have been replaced by automatedsystems in a continual process of labor rationalization.In the 1980s, armies of typesetters and analog printworkers were swept aside by new printing technologies.And who today remembers shop-floor secretaries? Orthe fact that Bbank teller^ once used to be a synonym forsecure employment? Or the days when more humansthan robots worked on Germany’s automotive assemblylines? These and other profound changes in work orga-nization came about relatively unnoticed, and the topicof technology-induced unemployment has returned nowto the public agenda only because of new, Industrie 4.0production technologies. These technologies are, withgood reason, thought to have the potential to completelytransform productive labor as we know it. Intelligentalgorithms and Big Data could replace qualified knowl-edge workers, at least partially, and inexpensive lightrobots are likely to be used in production environmentsthat have so far resisted automation. And incidentally, ifthe driverless car ever becomes a practical reality, it willdramatically change all economic activities dependenton package delivery and small-scale transportation.

Furthermore, Adam and Groves show how and whyfutures have to be not just told but also tamed ([1], 39–56). In predicting the future, and a fortiori in creating it,human beings have to cope with its underlying pitfalls,particularly those of uncertainty and mortality. Whileancient societies were able to embed this endeavor inrituals and/or delegate it to divine authorities, modernsocieties—whose complexities and enhanced velocitiesof change produce greater uncertainty on a potentiallylarger existential scale—cannot rely on ancient modesof coping, but require different ways of taming thepossible downsides of the future.

At an individual level, grave uncertainties and mor-tality serve to reduce life to the level of mere existence,while at societal and historical levels, the accumulationof risks serves to endanger humanity as a whole. Be-tween these existential dimensions of mortality, in thesphere of the economy and labor, existence and non-existence are translated into doing business and thedying of business on the one hand, and into having ornot having a job on the other. As a future told, Industrie4.0 also needs to tame the uncertainties and risks posedby Bmortality^ for business and jobs.

In light of the potential magnitude of the predictedeconomic and societal changes, then, it is no surprise

that a large number of studies have addressed the man-ner in which automation has the effect of eliminatingjobs, where Bjob elimination^ may well mean the elim-ination of all jobs in any given production environmentthrough the replacement of human workers with intelli-gent things [9, 27–29]. As noted above in the BIndustrie4.0: understanding a seemingly technical debateB sec-tion, in reflecting on the potential large-scale transfor-mation of labor, the fundamental methodological prob-lems inherent too much of the Industrie 4.0 debateshould not be downplayed. Nor should we neglect thefact, also noted above, that current prognoses about thepossible effects of new technology on employment areoften diametrically opposed to one another. Note thecontradictions for example in debates on workforce re-qualification versus workforce dequalification, or onwhether automation liberates workers from repetitivetasks so that they can be more creative or rather makesthem wholly redundant.

Putting aside these objections for the moment, howev-er, it is also clear that to focus narrowly on individualtechnical options, on current methods of effecting a divi-sion of labor, or on the kinds of job tasks now in usemisses the main point completely. And that is how thevisions of Industrie 4.0 are taming the risks and uncertain-ty of business right down to the shop floor. Again, withoutancient gods to turn to, when modern societies envisionthe Fourth Industrial Revolution, they rely on somethingthey invented during the first one and have been optimiz-ing ever since: the (seemingly) perfect plan—a plan thatpromises both: to anticipate possible uncertainties and toprovide tools to cope with any minor ones that may be leftover. Today, these tools comprise all forms of organiza-tional standardization [30]. With Industrie 4.0, these con-cepts of planning and standards have to be propelled into aglobally connected economy and have to be transformedto fit in, as we see now as we return to the discourseanalysis on Industrie 4.0.

Current visions of a future with globally networkedeconomic actors re-conceptualize the working world ona much, much larger scale, placing the management ofall global value chains at the front and center of discus-sion. The goal is to create structures free from localconnections, regional expertise, and labor market-specific configurations. This is about creating globallystandardized, networked production and service struc-tures that enable the flexible and self-directed collabo-ration of fixed and variable capital. One might discountthis project as a utopian dream of capitalist visionaries

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with no basis in reality. Yet, a careful examination of thediscourse as reconstructed in the sections above makesclear that the projects being discussed contain specificgoals that are even now close to implementation. Due tospace limitations, we offer below only one—highlyrelevant—piece of evidence to support this argument:the WEF’s use of the old Copy EXACTLY strategy as acase in point, illustrating the feasibility of itsrecommendations.

At first glance, it is confusing that the WEF uses astrategy called BCopy EXACTLY!^ pioneered long agoin the 1980s, as a case in point to illustrate its vision ofthe future [31]. Why indeed did the WEF choose torevisit this old strategy, initially developed by Intel?[32].2 It is worth studying the original project at lengthbecause it provides insight into the mentality of the Intelmanagers who invented and implemented it. Their coreidea, addressed to the problem of how to best expandmanufacturing capacity globally, was to build multipleexact copies of running manufacturing lines on differentsites around the world. BStated in its simplest form,everything which might affect the process, or how it isto run, is to be copied down to the finest detail, unless itis… physically impossible to do so…^ ([32], p. 2). As itturned out, virtually nothing physical proved impossibleto replicate—right down to the smallest details such asthe color of assembly workers’ gloves. The problemsthat Intel encountered trying to set up an exact replica ofanAmerican factory on European sites were immaterial:BMaking a philosophical statement is obviously mucheasier than implementing it within a large team of R&Dand manufacturing engineers^ [32]. Intel’s Europeantechnicians and engineers, headstrong and better trainedthan their American colleagues, were irritated by thedirective to merely copy an American production line.This offended their professional ethos, which places ahigh value on continual improvement. An analysis ofthe project concluded by citing an astounded AmericanIntel manager’s observation that European educationalsystems train graduates to think independently, whichmeant that the order to copy felt to them like an order toBcheat^ ([32], p. 3). This impasse spurred a corporatelearning process. For neutralizing opposition to theirstrategy, based on the professional identities of theirEuropean employers, Intel eventually came up with afour-stage implementation system that made

concessions to local creativity but still created assemblylines that exactly copied American production lines.

What is noteworthy about Intel’s implementationprocess was that the regionally rooted skills of theheadstrong European engineer were neither playeddown in their significance nor technically substituted.The solution was to shut down those aspects of engi-neering knowledge that are regional and unique onlytemporarily during the copying phase. Later, when theline is up and running, the copying phase ends, and theregional expertise of the European engineer is re-activated and indeed may be massively rewarded. Ideasfor improvement that have proven effective in one plantare implemented in all similar facilities worldwide(these had to be implemented within 1 week!). Thus,identical production facilities worldwide means not onlythat the benefits of engineering know-how are no longerlimited to local plants but also that the total sum ofactionable production improvements worldwide in-creases without increasing the number of techniciansoverall. BIn effect, the number of engineers per processstep or per area for improvement is increased, as is thenumber of improvement ideas generatedB ([32], p. 5).The system extracts the innovative capacity of localengineers from specific regional environments, thusincreasing their effectiveness, while at the same timeguaranteeing an especially high flexibility in produc-tion: BWith three sites running the exact same process,products were easily transferred back and forth with nore-qualification. Using free capacity at another site hasalso solved manufacturing bottlenecks^ (ibid.).

Although the Bcopy EXACTLY!^method started outsimply as one company’s strategy for optimizing translocal production methods, for the WEF it is an exampleand instructive blueprint for complementingmore recenttechnological advances. The underlying goal for all is tooptimize process efficiency by making production lessdependent on locally oriented and situation-specificknowledge—as when, for example, a medium-sizedcompany outsources an algorithm-based optimizationof its Bmilk runs^ (the intra-logistical routes by whichparts are delivered to machines on the factory floor) to aservice contractor’s data server, or when maintenance-relevant data from countless sensors and activators in acomplex production facility are analyzed using big datain order to prevent malfunction, or when a technologylike 3D-printing is used to shorten the time it takes to gofrom prototype to series. All these are examples of acompletely new, flexible, and globally manageable

2 The BCopy EXACTLY!^ orthography, chosen by Intel, was sup-posed to give expression to an intended, underlying Bparadigm shift.^

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division of labor, and as it becomes extended by tech-niques such as crowd sourcing or crowd working and isapplied in different market contexts such as Bsharing^ orBplatform^ economies, new and highly variable constel-lations will emerge that combine value creation andvalue realization, off-line and online, and commodityand commons in completely new ways [33]. Of course,this kind of globally networked mode of flexible pro-duction requires local correspondence in the specific-ities of work organization, at least in respect to human-machine cooperation. Humans and machines should beas self-directing as possible but should most especiallybe able to adapt to continually changing conditions ofproduction. The demands this model places on workers’willingness to collaborate are high, and thus, it is notsurprising that the discussion of the democratic, partic-ipatory firm is heating up again. Within this discussion,the interaction between humans and machine is of par-ticular relevance for Industrie 4.0.

It is being said that knowledge—and with it, humanwork—is now important again. However, the forms ofuseful knowledge and thus of human work are changingvery rapidly. Many agree that rapidly developing digitalinfrastructure and years of deregulatory politics com-bine to create a second-order effect: BThey unleash aflood of knowledge flows on a global scale that becomemore diverse and richer with each passing year.^ In thiscontext, the knowledge corporations need is in constantflux. Firms cannot afford to merely conserve already-acquired knowledge but rather need to adapt a strategyof permanent knowledge acquisition: BNow, there is anopportunity to learn faster and drive more rapid perfor-mance improvement than ever before by harnessingthese knowledge flows^ ([34], p. 28).

To cite a second voice in the ongoing discussion, theBosch manager Siegfried Dais echoes the views ofmany others when he claims that we are on the cusp ofan Belemental paradigm shift^ quite unlike the CIMideas of the past [35]. Dais advocates replacing olderproduction models based on central planning and robustbut rigid value chains with models based ondecentralized self-management and the ad hoc organi-zation of value-creating networks ([35], p. 613). In hisestimation, we need to create an Barchitecture and rulesfor a value-creating network that links millions of deci-sion points globally, is secure and robust, and is charac-terized by high availability^ ([35], p. 633).

At one point, Dais asseverates: Bthe pace of produc-tion will be a human pace.^ Yet, looking again at his

entire argument makes one rather skeptical about this. Ifthe employment of human labor is described in the samebreath as both highly flexible and dependent on exper-tise needed in a certain span of time ([35], p. 614), theauthor appears to be just paying lip service to the abil-ities of individuals to influence the pace of production.Note, for example, that the German logistic branch hassent out signals that logistics 4.0 is only to be had ifchanges in production sites can be undertaken withquicker response times in the future. BThe whole thingbegins with the fact that the best location for a systemcan no longer be determined on a long-term basis due tothe ever more volatile production and trade environ-ments. There is no such thing as the ideal productionlocation, sometimes for many years. The logistics net-work and its nodes must be continuously adjusted tocircumstances. Thus, the logistics nodes of the futurewill have to be moveable^ ([36], p. 615). Humans andintelligent machines increasingly melt into a Bblendedworkforce^ in which technology is not just a set ofphysical tools but is rather the Bnewest employee^ andshould be seen as one, indeed as a Bpartner in a newcollaborative workforceB ([37], pp. 88–89). The WEFuses nearly identical definitions, also favoring the termblended workforce, and characterizes Bdigital labor^ insuch a way as to make no distinction between variableand fixed capital, between (wo)man and machine.BDigital labor^ is a specific reference to the use ofdigital technologies to take over work once done byhumans: B...smart sensors, machines (e.g., robots), orintelligent systems that can do parts of the jobs that onlyhumans used to do^ ([38], p. 28).

What remains puzzling in both visions is just how allthis is going to make human work more autonomousand decentralized as its proponents repeatedly claim. Ifhumans, machines, and intelligent systems are to betransformed into a globally networked, digital-humanblended workforce ([38], p. 7) in which the individualcomponents are universally deployable in a highly effi-cient, self-directed collaborative production system,how will its human components be free to concentrateon the Bmore human elements of their jobs like creativeproblem-solving and collaboration^ ([38], p.17)?

Industrie 4.0: a Future Told, Traded, and Tamed

The immediate effects of Industrie 4.0 on the industrialsector will be significant and far-reaching. Under no

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circumstances, however, should we lose sight of the factthat Industrie 4.0 is at best just one phenomenon amonga wide range of disruptive global transformations. Asmechanisms of corporate control increasingly proveunable to solve the basic problem of how to transformpurchased labor power into actually rendered work,many prognoses and visions of the future organizationof work tell us that this problem will or ought to beresolved through the self-direction of variable capital. Itbodes ill, however, that even as these prognoses havespurred a renewed celebration of the Bdemocratic firm^and Bparticipatory decision-making,^ our society isperfecting the means of collecting massive amounts ofdata on all aspects of individuals’ work-related activi-ties, both as employees and as consumers. Is this digi-tally augmented hollowing-out of both the privatesphere and of labor rights and the democratic potentialof industrial relations not a new form of despotism?Here, we might observe that it is the key actors them-selves who interpret their Industrie 4.0 plan to linkglobal economics to new forms of production as aglobal, long-term strategy. Let us give the experts fromDeloitte the last word, again with a quote from the 2012WEF paper:

BTo understand the future of manufacturing, weneed to explore a much broader set of dynamicsthat are reshaping the global business economy.These powerful forces have been playing out fordecades and will continue to unfold over manydecades ahead (…). We call these forces and thetrends they set inmotion the ‘Big Shift’ ([14], p. 28).

As should be clear by now, Industrie 4.0 is a centralelement of this Big Shift. Building on Adam’s andGroves’ theoretical framework and drawing empiricallyon a discourse that stretches back to 2009 and includespublications from major actors in the global economy,this article began by debunking the myth of Industrie 4.0as a vision formulated by German engineers. At firstglance, the discourse of Industrie 4.0 might beinterpreted as a case of visioneering—one thatBconnects this emphasis on design, engineering, andconstruction to a more distant time horizon and anexpansive view of a future determined by technology^([2], p. 11). McCray’s perspective proved to be aninspiring one, but other aspects of his concept ofvisioneering were more difficult to observe in practice:the discourse analysis did not associate technical

engineers with brilliant and concrete technical ideas,nor did it identify them as individuals who use andpotentially exploit a vision of the future to attract ven-ture capital and entice supporters. The article ratheranalyzed the discourse on Industrie 4.0 as an exampleof agenda building, showing which global actors areshaping the narrative that has made the vision ofIndustrie 4.0 so effective and helped it to dominatepublic debate in Germany. Following Adam andGroves, we showed that the vision is embedded in atriple case of future-making: we first considered thedimension of a future told and traced the global strategicdiscourse that describes a new form of globally connect-ed and almost autonomously functioning production.Secondly, we examined the underlying idea of a futuretraded, along with the perhaps misplaced hope for a newsource of unbridled growth that this technological visionis predicted to unleash. And thirdly, we followed thisnarrative towards a complementary notion of a futuretamed: a global reorganization of work that rewrites therole of human labor.

Adam and Groves make a key distinction between theBembedded, embodied, contextual future from contem-porary perspectives^—a future that, as we saw in theBIndustrie 4.0: Understanding a Seemingly TechnicalDebateB and BFuture Told: a Global Strategic DiscourseBsections, is to some extent still contained in the future toldof Industrie 4.0—and a Bdecontextualized future emptiedof content^ ([2], p. 2). The latter is described as Bopen toexploration and exploitation^ (in a manner we consideredin the „Future Traded: the False Hope of a New Source ofUnbridled GrowthB section under the heading futuretraded) and open to Bcalculation and control,^ as detailedin the „Future tamed: the global reorganisation of workBsection. Our analysis drew on Adam’s and Groves’ un-derstanding of Bhow the emptying of the future is impli-cated in both the progress of industrial-capitalist societiesand the major problems that they face today^ ([2], p. 2).They describe the latter as open to exploration and ex-ploitation—we followed that path in the „Future Traded:the False Hope of a New Source of Unbridled GrowthBsection—and open to calculation and control, as shown inthe „Future tamed: the global reorganisation of workBsection. Adam andGroves inspire us with the idea of howthe „emptying of the future is implicated in both theprogress of industrial-capitalist societies and the majorproblems that they face today^ ([2], p. 2).

Our sociological analysis was able to offer a numberof insights into the nature, intentions, and dynamics of

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contemporary visions of the future by finely tracing thediscourse patterns that create and transport these visionsthrough different societal spheres. But if sociologicalanalysis stops at the level of discourse, its perspectivetends to become part of what Adam and Groves call theemptying of the future. Sociology cannot fill the sub-stantial emptiness of a discourse by dissecting that dis-course. But sociology can confront the emptiness ofdiscourse about the future with its opposite: theembeddedness and thus materiality of work and produc-tion today. Whatever future form of production willbecome reality, it will not unfold in discourse alone; itwill take place—or not—on the shop floor and be cre-ated and put to work by real people and their livinglaboring capacity [39], within real labor relations, usingand creating real technology in all its sociomateriality[40].

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of theCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestrict-ed use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, providedyou give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source,provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate ifchanges were made.

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