Cultures of malfunctioning. The long and difficult history of the digitally networked factory

2011年，术语Industrie 4.0在汉诺威博览会上被引入。它被宣传为工业生产的一种革命性(“颠覆性”)范式。然而，很快就有人质疑它与计算机集成制造(CIM)的相似之处，CIM是一个在20世纪80年代中期和90年代初流行的概念。尽管CIM和Industrie 4.0都被用作宣传一种(显然)激进的工业生产新概念的术语，但一些评论人士质疑Industrie 4.0的革命性，称其为“CIM重装”或“新瓶旧酒”。CIM的“失败”再次被重新审视和强调。关于CIM和Industrie4.0的辩论最终以比较诸如颠覆和进化发展或失败和成功的条件等属性而告终。计划中的项目是基于新月研究对CIM和Industrie 4.0历史的许多见解。然而，中心思想是重新审视现有的围绕进化或破坏问题的叙述，围绕CIM的失败或将Industrie 4.0评估为CIM的“第二”阶段的问题。相反，CIM应该被解释为建立数字网络工厂的艰苦过程的历史起点。这一过程非常复杂、困难，并伴随着许多问题和挫折。该项目旨在准确调查这种故障、数字化进程的努力和问题。因此，该项目将当前的辩论作为一个研究项目的起点，该项目旨在通过从历史的角度和通过关注故障来改变以前的叙述。因此，计划中的项目不会要求技术发展的“驱动力”，而是探索数字联网工厂的历史，将其作为一项新技术的长期、延迟引入的典型数字化过程，这一过程总是面临各种各样的障碍和问题。而PP“研究的是一个同时表现为三个重叠运动动力学的过程的系统转换：渗透(…)，提供(…)和永久化“，计划中的项目改变了这种观点，不要求数字化进程的影响。相反，它要求“渗透、提供和延续”的社会技术条件。因此，它表明，工作世界的数字化是由一个漫长而困难的过程构建和塑造的，或者简单地说，是一个永久失灵的过程。除了重新解释CIM的历史之外，拟议的项目还有两个首要目标：第一，应从故障和“破碎的世界思维”的角度讨论和重新解释根本的变革问题和数字转型的机制(Jackson 2014)。其次，该项目旨在建立一部关于故障的历史学。

In 2011, the term Industrie 4.0 was introduced at the Hannover Messe. It was propagated as a revolutionary (“disruptive”) paradigm of industrial production. Soon, however, questions were raised about its resemblance to Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM), a concept that had its popularity in the mid-1980s and early 1990s. Even though both CIM and Industrie 4.0 were used as terms propagating a (apparently) radical new concept of industrial production, some commentators questioned the revolutionary nature of Industrie 4.0, calling it "CIM-reloaded" or an "old wine in new bottles". The "failures" of CIM were revisited and highlighted again. The debates about CIM and Industrie 4.0 culminated in comparing attributes such as disruption versus evolutionary developments or conditions of failure and success. The planned project is based on many insights into the history of CIM and Industrie 4.0 from rescent research. The central idea, however, is to revisit the existing narratives that revolve around questions of evolution or disruption, around the question of the failure of CIM or the assessment of Industrie 4.0 as a "second" stage of CIM. CIM should instead be interpreted as the starting point of a history of the laborious process to establish a digitally networked factory. This process has been highly complex, difficult and accompanied by many problems and setbacks. The project aims to investigate precisely this malfunctioning, the efforts and problems of digitalization processes. Thus, the project takes current debates as the starting point for a research project that aims to shift previous narratives by taking a historical perspective and by focusing on malfunctioning. The planned project would therefore not ask for “drivers” of technological developments, but explore the history of the digitally networked factory as a typical digitalization process of a long, delayed introduction of a new technology, which always is confronted with a wide variety of obstacles and problems. While the PP “investigates systematic transformation as a process that simultaneously manifests itself in three overlapping motion dynamics: permeating (…), making available (…) and perpetuating”, the planned project turns this perspective around by not asking for effects of digitalization processes. Rather it asks for the socio-technological conditions of “permeating, making available and perpetuating”. Thereby, it suggests that the digitalization of the working world has been constructed and shaped by a long and difficult process or, to put it shortly, by a process of permanent malfunctioning. Beyond the reinterpreting the history of CIM, the proposed project has two overarching goals: First, the fundamental question of change and the mechanisms of digital transformation shall be discussed and reinterpreted from the perspective of malfunctioning and a “broken world thinking” (Jackson 2014). Second, the project aims at establishing a historiography of malfunctioning.