Cebit example: Digitization is eaten

The end of the fair is a counterexample to claims that digitization would not hurt the job market – a comment

As heise.de reported yesterday, the Cebit is settled. The fact that concludes the fair, whose creed of the industry was the creation of jobs, is not without the famous paradox in such cases.

As a consumer, hardware buyer and software distributor / stand staff, I've been doing Onbit experience 11 times since 1991. Until the first half of the 90s it was a fair fascinating technology. You did not just have to go to stay up to date in the industry. It was also rewarding to find customers and suppliers.

Internet is the most important trade show in the world

The general spread of the Internet in the second half of the 90s marks the end for Cebit: the collection of information, the search for suppliers and the presentations for the customers are more and more perfectly digitized. Now, scanning is so perfect that no one has to sacrifice long trips, high accommodation costs, ticket prices, long walks in fairgrounds, lost workdays and free time. The revolution eats its children, but very differently from the apologists of digitization.

Today, the Internet is the largest and largest fair in the world. Free, open 24 hours a day, with a complete offer of information on all products. Always accessible without putting a foot in the door.

The Prime Minister of Lower Saxony, Stephan Weil, did not recognize the cause in his comment on the closure of the Cebit. Because they thought that the Cebit was "a victim of their own success" and mentioned the fact that all the fairs would occupy the subject of digitization. This is not correct because Equitana in Essen on the bauma in Munich, the IAA in Frankfurt, the boot in Düsseldorf, the Green Week in Berlin or the BAU in Munich at the Leipzig Book Fair, Digitization is only a marginal and incidental problem. Almost all fairs live to watch, touch and try.

It's also an excuse to say that the competition at the American fairs in Austin and Las Vegas is too strong. Even commercial visitors, among the approximately 80 million German citizens and 500 million Europeans, would prefer to travel to Hanover rather than undertake long and expensive air travel to receive information which they can also consult on the Internet. or who can explain them to the sales representatives. Even the Hannover Fair is only a partial competitor of the Cebit and has no reason to suppress it.

Visitors: quality and quantity

The balance between quality and number of visitors was a major challenge: exhibitors wanted as many professional visitors as possible. However, half a million square meters of covered exhibition space and 26 exhibition halls can not be filled with technology buyers and project managers. The empty exhibition halls are again a fiasco. Thus, the show management continued to swing between the extremes of consumer scams as contemptuous "possums" (gift collectors) with prohibitive tickets, and then distributed free tickets to students from the Hanover area so that the aisles are not so empty. ,

One of the biggest mistakes of management has been the expulsion of the video game industry. Due to the high demand for games presentations, gamescom was created in a logical way, which the Cologne show has built with gratitude. The International Funkausstellung also lives – with growing problems – the only advantage of the salons: whoever wants to see, touch and see things live before the launch of the market is a potential visitor of the show.

When IFA is abandoned, it is likely that manufacturers can no longer afford to retain the latest state of development before the next show in an ever faster race for features and customers. Trade and consumers do not want to wait, even if only information disclosed on new products can be read on the Internet.

Last attempt: entertainment

Desperate, the director of the exhibition, Oliver Frese, drew the last card: turning a dying fair into an entertainment event. The editor-in-chief of Jan-Keno Janssen, said: "The fair has indeed felt very different from last year, especially thanks to the large outdoor area: such a technology fair with ferris wheel , stationary surfing wave, drone show and musical scenes … as far as I know, there was nowhere else. "Jürgen Rink, publisher of the C & # 39; t, found that in the C & # 39; 39; tn ° 14/2018, it was partially different: "I had expired the Cebit in two hours." I saw half empty rooms, very wide aisles, too few exhibitors and too few people – Jan Delay, the big SAP wheel or the IBM cloud outside were not enough to give the business festival the promised impression. "As a consumer of the Phantasialand Leisure Park, Rust or Heidepark offers more entertainment for its money.

Typical statement before the end

The declaration of Cebit's management, the Cebit 2018 exhibitors were "completely satisfied", is only the usual marketing statement that each organizer of shows spreads after each show. "This show was unsatisfactory for many exhibitors" has not heard of any exhibition company yet.

In addition, supposed trades at the fairs are a myth and a marketing trick. No project manager, buyer or other decision maker places large orders at trade shows if the decision has not been taken long before. Incidentally, this also applies to the alleged orders that Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel, for example, would have "failed" during their overseas travels for German industry.

Curse and blessing of digitization

The most important reason for digitization is cost reduction through streamlined processes. In the case of Cebit, the Internet has largely automated the process of collecting, marketing and disseminating information. Patrick Spät explained under Automated unemployment the consequences of automation on the labor market. Richard David Precht, in his latest book, "Hunters, Shepherds, Critics," explains why the digital revolution, called the "4th industrial revolution," will be so devastating.

Once most people were replaced by machines when selling their muscle strength, he avoided delicate manual labor and brain work. As automation increasingly tends to replace fine manual work, the only thing left to do is to escape intellectual work (with the exception of poorly paid services), which are becoming increasingly more replaced by more and more complex AI algorithms and systems. The fact that unemployment in Germany is not much higher today is due to lower incomes and the fact that our higher productivity and internationally competitive unit labor costs mean that we largely export our unemployment abroad.

What is missing is the solution. The idea of ​​Precht based on old basic income models is futile. His model only offers a sum of 1,500 euros, does not eliminate the causes of unemployment and low wages and resists the loss of jobs. His model is also unfeasible because it is based on the transaction tax (also known as the Tobin tax), which has haunted the intellectual scene since 1972 as a ghost, but can only be achieved if the New York Stock Exchange York, London, Tokyo, etc. Join Singapore, Sydney etc. This is not predictable.

Incidentally, I think the world urgently needs a new economic system. This will be the subject of other Telepolis articles.
(Jörg Gastmann)