NTS

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partially. At the moment and probably
for still some time, it fails mainly be­
cause the responsibilities in cities lies
with different departments and budgets:
the fire brigade is building something;
the department of roads is doing some­
thing; the economic enterprises are
again funding something else, and so on;
here, the overall coordination is mis­
sing. This will still take a while.
TB: I would also say that this is still a
damned long way ahead. In certain
cases, something will pop up that will
look cool and casual, but in order to get a
municipality or a whole town to that le­
vel, in which that an extensive invest­
ment will take place, a major political
earthquake will need to occur. This may
now sound very conservative, but it is
the case, and one needs to makes this
clear, the citizens don’t need it. It is ex­
pendable for their everyday life. It may
be interesting as a marketing strategy
for a city, but compared to the effort, it
does not help the people in these cities
with concerns to contributing to their
quality of life.With regards to this, there
are other topics.
Does the controversial issue surveil-
lance play a role here as well?
TB: This is an issue of course. We co­
llaborate with cities and municipalities,
there too, is always this headache, “what
happens when everyone knows where
everyone is?”
TH: This certainly is one of the most
decisive issues, especially when talking
about cities. One the one hand side, we
want that people are using and doing as
much as possible and on the other hand
side there is the topic of dis­
cuss this with the responsible people in
the cities. It is always a matter of which
data will be transferred altogether,
which data is shown, which data will be
saved and if and how one can access it.
At the same time, one must say that it
contradicts the efforts for data protec­
tion when users communicate all their
intimate information on social media.
Without playing the headmaster, it must
be said that a large part of misuse of pri­
vate data has still to be accounted for by
the users themselves. This is of course a
huge topic, but not one of ours.
Back to something that is currently
more concrete. What comes after the
video conference?
TB: This will still take a while. We will
definitely still be busy and installing vi­
deo conferencing at customers for the
next 10 years. I think that many custo­
mers will only contemplate in 5 years if
they even want to go for video telephony
or not. Other customers however are al­
ready saying that everything onlyworks
by means of video conferencing; that is
an essential fact… so in every aspect it is
difficult to judge what comes after it.
TH: I think that the networking of all
things will intensify. Video, spark board,
etc. are still large, stationary devices. To
be able to communicate spontaneously
everywhere and at any timewith any de­
vice with the help of as much automa­
tion as possible, is definitely the imme­
diate evolution of today’s status quo.
Fromyour perspective: will the
human being one day become
redundant?
TH: No. There are things that can be
automated quite well, but creation and
decision processes will always need hu­
man beings. A lot of decisions cannot be
made based on logical or transparent
criteria, a programmed system or artifi­
cial intelligence will hardly ever be able
to judge many decisions correctly. In fu­
ture, the big challenge will therefore be
to find the correct balancing act. An­
other example: in the security sector,
ones sees the case, that a human being
decides what is and isn’t allowed. In this
context, one has to consider exactly
what can be accomplished by a system
or where does one stick to a labor re­
source for the sake of security. There is
no in-between.
TB: I am convinced that human beings
will not become redundant, if only be­
cause the culture of humankind will
once again march into the other direc­
tion. NTS simplifies the customer’s mo­
vements, but the employees are “cross-
rationalized” into different sectors.
Other jobs in other sectors are created as
a result. It is of course correct that the
human being will be needed less and
less, but the jobs that are made easier or
made redundant by NTS’s service, are
not the most exciting labor market. One
will have to rather show some effort to
find people that are willing to do these
jobs that will still remain.
There, it plays long-term into the
hands of NTS that in thematter of
indispensability one always positi-
oned itself as a strategic partner for
the customers?
TB: Our highly qualified technicians
are definitely not as rapidly dispensable
as human beings. We are not the team
that is able to talk to the technicians at
the respective customers on the same le­
vel, but we are covering the know-how
peaks.
TH: Exactly. We want to be seen as a
trusted hope that this iswell
received at the customers. It is not our
intention to be just a supplier of techno­
logy.
» Video conferences will
become the exhaustive
norm and will then
remain as a medium for
quite some time. «
Thomas Bartl
16
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