CONCEPT
Installation Phase
Carlota Perez's term for the first half of a technological revolution — driven by financial capital, characterized by speculative frenzy and rapid disruption, during which infrastructure is built at a pace rational investment could never achieve.
In Perez's formalization of Schumpeter's framework, every major technological revolution unfolds in two phases separated by a turning point. The installation phase is the first — driven by financial capital rather than production capital, characterized by speculative investment, rapid infrastructure deployment, and the disruption of existing economic structures. It is exhilarating for those positioned to benefit and devastating for those displaced. The gains are concentrated. The costs are diffused. The institutional framework is anchored to the previous paradigm and systematically inadequate to the new one. The AI transition, by this analysis, is deep in the installation phase — and the turning point has not yet arrived.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Perez developed the framework in Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital (2002), drawing on the historical patterns of five technological revolutions since the 1770s. Each revolution, she demonstrated, followed the same two-phase structure: installation driven by finance, deployment driven by production, with a turning point