TerminusWhere to from here?
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Terminus

Comic. 1776 — Innovation was once a hobby... A village; steam rises from a house: «It moved!!» «James Watt! Come and eat your soup and stop playing with that boiler!» 1850 — ... then it swept away the primary sector... A steam engine carries peasants to a factory: «Pretty sure no potato grows under that.» 1920–1980 — ... then came manufacturing's turn ... Workers loaded onto a train at a factory, then a train past a university into office towers: «Granny always said, don't trust a road when you can't see where it goes.» 2026 — ... next stop: tertiary, all change A father holding a pitchfork and a laptop talks with his daughter; behind them the Office Express heads for a cliff. She asks: «But Dad, if that's the plan, why go to school?» He answers: «What you learn is your one true treasure. That's how you get off the train in time. We haven't invented that much about societies over centuries: let me explain...»

For 250 years, each generation could tell the next: learn at school, work for a salary, and tomorrow will be better than today.

That promise ran on growing complexity and ever-better technology compensating for it. Little by little, finance came to set its pace: from gold to paper and finally digital money, it became the measure of almost every human exchange. And in the end, most of it was handed out in offices.

Terminus is about the moment that promise stops being obvious. We do not sell an answer. We go back through history to see how we got here, when such situations have happened before, how these eras end. Stepping out of the station, we then look at the ways out that history already offers us.

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TERMINUSL1 MomentumHow we got here1776: theengine startsCoal, rail andthe timetableElectricityrewires thefactoryOil and themass-producedlifeFrom mainframeto pocketSoftware eatsthe firmLeader ormanager?L2 EndgameHow it endsDiminishingreturnsEnergy: thebill comes dueToo connectedto fail?Slow declineor suddenbreak?Threescenarios for2050L3 Déjà vuIt has happened beforeThe Bronze AgebreakdownRome's longgoodbyeKondratiev'slong wavesTainter: theprice ofcomplexityCreativedestructionWhat stillworksSkills thattravelYour systemsare older thanyou thinkThe ERPquestionSmall, local,repairableTerminus: allchangeHow do people keep busy?How do power anddomination translate?What does educationbecome?Where is the nextcentral station?L4 Ways outWhere to from here

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1Momentum

1776: the engine starts

Watt's engine did more than pump water out of mines. It set the tempo for everything that followed.

2Endgame

Diminishing returns

Each new generation of technology costs more for a smaller gain. How far can that go?