Richard Kerschagl: Review of Die Automation und unsere Zukunft (1958)

Richard Kerschagl’s brief review commends the German translation of Georges Hartmann’s book as a valuable contribution to understanding automation. His assessment moves from praise for the publisher’s decision to translate the French work to three substantive merits: conceptual clarity, uncommon quantitative information, and breadth of social and economic analysis.

Das Buch ist nicht nur an sich wertvoll, weil es klare Begriffe der Automation vermittelt, sondern weil es auch zahlenmäßige Angaben bietet, die sonst nicht oder nur wenig bekannt sind.

English translation: The book is valuable not only in itself, because it conveys clear concepts of automation, but also because it offers numerical data which are otherwise unknown or little known.

Kerschagl connects the book’s explanatory value with its provision of otherwise little-known data. His strongest emphasis then falls on its treatment of automation’s consequences:

Besonders interessant ist der Abschnitt über die wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Auswirkungen der Automation, der in großzügiger Weise alle nur möglichen einschlägigen Fragen behandelt.

English translation: Particularly interesting is the section on the economic and social effects of automation, which treats in a generous manner all conceivable relevant questions.

This expansive endorsement identifies the book’s relevance to economic and social inquiry, though the review supplies neither particular findings nor examples of the questions addressed. Kerschagl closes by treating Hartmann’s work as evidence of the strength of French scholarly literature on automation. The review thus chiefly recommends a translated resource whose conceptual, empirical, and social scope merits German-speaking readers’ attention.