This contribution is based on the analysis of a series of interviews (see as an example Latour 2018) with twelve leading academic researchers from France, the United Kingdom, Austria, the USA and Germany on the impact of digitalisation on the economy, work and society as a whole. The multiple perspectives expressed in these interviews constitute a widening of the discourse on the relationship between work and technology that can be made productive for the discussion on vocational education and training and the role of occupations. The interviews are available online as approximately 25-minute videos and took place in 2018 and 2019. They broaden the view beyond the common thesis of the substitution of human labour by digital technological solutions to various considerations regarding the actors, effects and opportunities resulting from technological change. The statements and present analyses are to be understood as theoretical markers of a strangely neglected field. Technical change is known to have an influence, but the mechanisms are seldomly explicated. They are also said to have an impact on occupations (see the economic substitution-idea (Frey/Osborne 2017), but occupations are only seen as statistical, time-irrelevant concepts. Thus, the analysis of theoretical approaches provides an insight into the effect of technologies on the structures of human-technology coexistence and their interdependencies, while it also points to very current specific conditions that are said to be capable of dissolving and altering even political and economic structures. This contribution to the symposium will be an extension to prior analysis of the interviews (Tiemann, Helmrich 2019) with a designated look at the relevance of the different approaches to comparative work on VET and the role of the concept of occupation, theoretically and statistically.

Frey, Carl B.; Osborne, Michael A. (2017): The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerization? In: Technological Forecasting and Social Change (114) C, S. 254-280. Tiemann, Michael; Helmrich, Robert (2019): Auf dem Weg zu einer KI-Welt von morgen. Soziale, ökonomische und technologische Entwicklungen. In: Berufsbildung in Wissenschaft und Praxis (3), S. 19–22. Latour, B. (2018) ‘Theory-Interview on the Relationship Between Societal and Technological Change’, www.bibb.de/dokumente/pdf/a12_latour_kurz-transkript.pdf .