Re-examining the Concept of Secular Transformation. How Can We Capture the Turn of an Era? Theoretical Approaches, Methods and Implications

This contribution explores the theoretical approaches and methods of my book ‘Zeitenwende. Corona, Big Data und die kybernetische Zukunft’ (‘Turn of an Era. Corona, Big Data, and The Cybernetic Future’), published in German language at Promedia in 2022. The following considerations have benefited fr om the many reviews, discussions and interviews, I have had with colleagues, media, podcast and video platforms, and at book presentations all over Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Apart fr om approval, I have received a list of open questions which encouraged me to re-examine my approach and verify my arguments. Turn of an Era addresses the transition fr om the industrial to the cybernetic principle as a major turning point in the history of mankind. With regard to the scheme of long-term historical development, Komlosy builds on Leonid Grinin, Anton Grinin and Andrey Korotayev (Grinin and Grinin 2016; Grinin, Grinin, and Korotayev 2017), to whom she is grateful for the model of triple cycles of accumulation, hegemony and the production principle. The Russian school of big history and social evolutionary research has so far not been received in German-speaking global studies. Their contributions add new insights into the field of world-system transformation. The transition gains momentum in the face of the Corona crisis management, which is portrayed as a dynamizing element, occurring at a moment when Kondratiev cycles and shifts in global hegemony coincide with a secular conjunction, the rise of the cybernetic mode of production. Hence, Corona management is analyzed as an accelerating factor in the promotion of new lead sectors and novel ways of structuring production flows, needs and wants as well as political governance. In the course of reflecting the theoretical and methodological approaches, outlining the structure and theoretical concepts, special interest is devoted to answering the question of how to identify an epochal turning point at a moment when we cannot yet foresee outcomes and future developments. For a historian, it is not enough to rely on foresight models alone. In addition, Corona and its handling during the special period 2020–2022 offered a unique moment for empirical research, creating a global laboratory fr om which no one could escape. A state of emergency, with regard to movement, communication, consumption sectoral dynamics, the vulnerability of supply chains … providing abundant sources and evidence to study the transition fr om industrial to cybernetic capitalism in a nutshell. Corona's disruptive effects first met health. Given the concern about life and death, health and health-related industries developed into the motion center for social change that affected society far beyond health, across all sectors and spheres of life.