Ten years ago, I wrote “Die komplexe Perspektive” (the complex perspective) as a practical mental model for making sense of the digital economy. I’m revisiting those ideas using a set of infographics generated with Google’s NotebookLM.

The “Complex” Perspective

Ten years ago it was becoming clear that the traditional mental models we relied on were no longer sufficient. In an era shaped by Big Data, AI, and accelerating digitalization, they increasingly failed to explain what we were seeing—and where we were heading.

I wrote the book to offer a mental compass for the digital age. My goal was not merely to describe what is happening, but to help readers understand how to think about it. By connecting insights from IT, economics, and psychology, the book aimed to provide a way for navigating complexity and uncertainty in a rapidly evolving world.

But the book is now ten years old, and much has changed. With the benefit of hindsight, it is both humbling and illuminating to see where my assumptions proved wrong—and where they turned out to be surprisingly accurate.

To prepare for a re-examination of these ideas, I created a set of infographics using Google’s NotebookLM. They distill and visualize the book’s core concepts, making its arguments easier to explore, question, and reassess.

Revisiting these ideas has also made clear that my own mental compass needs recalibration—today’s technological shifts require new bearings, not just retrospective judgment.

Continue here to explore the infographics!