The global economy is currently in the grip of a $1.3 trillion contradiction. Since the dawn of the 2020s, organizations have poured astronomical sums into digital transformation, yet the failure rate remains a haunting 70% to 80%. We are living through what I call the "Transformation Trap"—a period where the rapid irruption of technology is mistaken for the deep reorganization of the institutions that use it.
As a historian of large technical systems, I see a pattern today that is eerily familiar. When we ask engineers what the AI-embedded society of 2050 will look like, they describe faster algorithms and more GPUs. But history tells us that technology is never the bottleneck. The bottleneck is us: our hierarchies, our incentives, and our refusal to let go of the "central drive shafts" of a previous era.
