The economic crises, as all the earthquakes, ahead, of a sudden, the end of one world and the beginning of another. The crisis of 1929 had symbolized the shift in the era of fordist big factories and mass consumption. The 2008 us enter the digital age. In the same year that the american commercial banks, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch fell, Apple invented the smartphone and its applications, which were going to put in all the pockets, the infinite richness of the Internet. No longer only to inform or entertain, but also to move, buy, find work, friends, a home. In 2009 was created Uber and Airbnb, Facebook was only four years old and the Chinese were not yet aware of: the e-mail to millions of subscribers.
As in 1929, the finance has played a double role. Making easy money, it has allowed the development of this new sector on a planetary scale, but it has also masked the social and economic tensions, by distributing credits without restraint. The dust of this crisis dissipated, a quite different society is emerging. American technology took the opportunity to establish its domination on a world of ” platforms “, which disrupts in-depth look at all sectors. Google and Tesla challenge the automotive industry, Amazon destroyed the traditional trade, Netflix the world of cinema.
Europe, the big loser
The initiators of the crisis, the Americans must cope with an opinion that took refuge in populism, and that is wary of the giants of the Silicon Valley. China has become, thanks to digital, the equal and the only true competitor of the United States. Europe is the big loser of this new situation. It cannot boast of a single Internet platform large public, Spotify, the music app, and online Swedish. Two exceptions emerge, the German SAP and its enterprise management software,…
