“On Trans-Industriality” - TETI Journal n.1, Spring 2024
In transindustriality, the prefix ‘trans’ denotes that which crosses through space or time, that goes beyond the limit contained in the name to which it applies. In this case, the trans-industrial aims to supersede – or connect –different historical forms of industriality. The rapid transformations in economic and social fabric that have taken place since the advent of the Industrial Revolution has led observers to identify different sequences unfolding towards the present global and planetary, yet increasingly fragmented age. ‘Fordism’ underlined the increased means of production delivered by an efficient division of labour within located factories. Postfordism signalled the turn to even more flexible production modes, in parallel to the shift to global post-industrial societies, in which planning, management, information, and knowledge industries, have become the central axis governing the shape of our social fabric.
A focus on trans-industrial patterns places the emphasis on the ongoing circulations between different industrial and technological activities, across interconnected historical periods. A such, it can reflect nowadays on the ongoing role played by material infrastructure in the age of new media and climate change, on the physical roots that still inform digital expansions and virtual networks, on the survivals and revivals of past industriousness in the present, and future.
The term denotes in particular three dimensions:
• 1 the survival of technologies from one historical period to another (for example from telegraph to contemporary coded digital communications)
• 2 the cohabitation of technologies associated with different historical moments within a same period (for example the sail and steam ships in the 19th century, now revived with fair maritime trade initiatives)
• 3 the transfer of technologies from one industry to another (for example in the use of combustion engines, electric batteries, wind turbines, etc…)
The Journal is sheduled to be published online in Spring 2024
Editorial Board: Anne-Laure Franchette, Stephanie Gygax, Gabriel Gee, Caroline Wiedmer
Contact: Gabriel Gee
gabrielngee@tetigroup.org