 Everything is Software 1
This time, we’ll take a broad view of the whole picture and only then go into the details – a top-down analysis, so to speak. Have you ever noticed that in the automotive sector there are hardly any problems
with the hardware anymore, but an endless number with the software?
We would therefore like to define this in full below, in order to demonstrate just how important it has become. So it is by no means just the in-car infotainment system, which was already available in the past in
combustion-engine cars. And let’s not even get into the fact that it has now grown into an operating system.
Nor is it just a question of production methods such as Isao Kato’s Kaizen system at Toyota. Even VW’s Annual General Meeting, which has only just taken place, fails to do justice to the term ‘software’.
Even the share price cannot constitute ‘software’.
Nor is it the trade unions or works councils that, over time, have secured much higher wages for their members than for comparable skilled workers in small and medium-sized enterprises – though, of course,
not for agency workers.
Is the world determined by software?
I suppose one has to agree. If we look only at the money, which obviously consists to a very large extent of software, because it has long since ceased to be backed by any hardware. In the past, people used
to talk about being paid in Deutschmarks for hard work.
If things went particularly well, you’d be handed 5 DM to go to the funfair. But there had to be a reward for putting in extra effort at school. Back then, money was still something tangible that you could feel in
your pocket.
Back then, cars would still break down because they suffered from the usual niggles, time and time again, to the extent that you could set the mileage counter by them. More experienced TÜV inspectors knew
exactly where to look on this or that type of car in order to get the result they wanted.
Perhaps they’ll even ban cash altogether, so they can monitor cash flows more effectively. Surely the value of a share should be measured by a car manufacturer’s success, yet it seems that the annual
general meeting and the payment of dividends play a much greater role.
One day Elon Musk is a billionaire, the next moment he isn’t. Surely not that much can have changed at his various companies in the course of a single day. Money seems to have become far more arbitrary,
but anyone without it feels its value acutely.
That’s where the price tags in supermarkets become a major stumbling block. For others, there’s no stopping. Why isn’t a national team manager’s contract limited to the next World Cup? Now that he is
being dismissed, they have to throw millions of euros after him.
| The money is obviously no longer tied to success, and hasn't been for a long time. |
With hardware, it was possible to monitor the success of certain measures even more effectively. It seems that failure in software can be interpreted in any way one likes. The very question of whether something
works is apparently no longer so easy to answer, let alone determining who, if anyone, is to blame.
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