In the 1960s, social scientists predicted the end of modern industrial society. Technological innovations led to a communications revolution, as a result of which the dissemination of information and knowledge-based professions came to define post-industrial society. In the wake of these predictions, the ‘knowledge and information society’ emerged as new self-descriptive categories, which have been used since the 1980s to drive forward reforms in education, the economy and labour market policy, as well as, more recently, the expansion of digital infrastructure. These categories served either as a promising vision of the future for an open society or as a solemn warning that the structural changes already well under way required the state and society to make far-reaching adjustments in order to remain internationally competitive.

The project investigates how work has changed under the conditions of the information society. Has intellectual labour really supplanted industrial manual labour? Are there new forms of intellectual labour that differ from earlier forms of mental work?

Together with Franziska Rehlinghaus and Knud Andresen, and in collaboration with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the Böckler Foundation, Désirée Schauz organized a conference in Düsseldorf in November 2025 on the history of cognitive work. 

Conference report: https://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/fdkn-161067