While Austrian-German is indeed somewhat idiomatic, this specific text only suffers from poor style and excessive punctuation.

Here's the corrected translation:

Futurist: The future fits like a glove

The U.S.-futurist Jamais Cascio senses trends as others sense a good deal. With the "Press on Sunday," he talked about the joy of "hacking" and design at the touch of a button.

You are someone who believes it is possible to positivly change the world, without omitting the downsides. Do you think that people learn from history?

Jamais Cascio: I am against the idea that we are all lost and become so rigid from the shock that we say: Oh God, you can"t do anything. Because in most cases you can do something. It's really easy to get caught up in the idea that people are simply stupid and not capable of learning. But look at history, how society has changed. Especially in the west, in the U.S., Europe or countries such as Japan: Life has become much freer, so much richer - not just in material wealth, but also in terms of social welfare. We have more options than ever before in history, we have access to more information than ever before. This little device in my pocket has more power than all the computers who sent a man to the moon put together. Although it may not always look like it, and we do not always learn the right lesson, but we mainly learn a lot through our constant failure.

But failure was never allowed. / Wasn't failure always prohibited? [trans. note: The original German sentence wasn't really a question, question mark not withstanding.]

It depends on the region: Where I come from, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, where most computer executives are working, you won't be considered a good boss until you've a nosedive on something. You've tried something, made a really big mistake, everything collapses, and you learn a lot from it, and you don't make the same mistake again, but instead create something better. And this approach has been around for a long time, especially in regions with a high degree of innovation that leaves plenty of room for experimentation.

So in the USA creativity is even in demand when it comes to failure. Will the trade in "ideas" and "creativity" determine the economy of the future in the post-industrial society?

Yes, and there are a lot of reasons: One reason is the rapid development of technology and how this technology changes our economy. Creative ideas work as a catalyst for these changes, because our entire system is based on innovation. In addition, there are now already many mechanisms of production and manufacturing processes that make it possible for small businesses, single proprietors or small communities to create products that could formerly only be produced by big industry.

Can you give a specific example?

There are now 3-D printers, for instance. Maybe those aren't known here yet, but those things are now almost more than ten years on the market. At first they were rather primitive devices, that produced only strange shapes, which were at most good enough to create some models. Today, because of all the new plastics used as toner in these printers, is it possible to create products that are actually usable. And they are also getting cheaper. It is conceivable that within the next ten years every family could have such a printer at home and therefore would be able to produce a specific product with the push of a button. And in that case, how would you get the designs for these things? Around this "idea" entirely new professions and training requirements would be created. One could put the designs up on the net, or sell them on iTunes-like platforms.

Is it not also true that we unlearn our natural abilities through technology? For example the abilities to remember telephone numbers, to find our way trough a city in a car, or to write by hand?

I think it was Socrates who complained bitterly that his students learned to read, because they would lose their ability to transmit stories orally. And in a sense he was right: the students unlearned something, but what they got in return was enormous. And the same is happening today with modern applications, we give up something, but in exchange the technology gives us the ability to do more, experience more, learn more, and to connect us better than ever before in history.

Would you say that technology inspires our creativity? Everyone can now record and cut a film, everyone can make animations, produce music.

Even before there were many people out there who had the talent and the ideas, but they quite simply lacked the money and the chance to express these ideas. And to the extent to which these opportunities to express ourselves creatively have been democratized, the mountain of rubbish that was produced grew as well. Every day millions of videos are uploaded to YouTube, and 99 percent are crap. But that also means that we have a growing number of products that are pretty good. And once again a whole new industry is created, one that is concerned with "information filters" and methods that help users to find what they are really looking for. Now, this could be be a new software, but it could also be people who filter the web and judge what's good and what can be forgotten.

This trend has to be brought into connection with that of personalization: do we feel so lost in mass society that we want to leave our stamp on every product?

300 years ago almost everything was "personalized" because almost everything was created by hand – everything had, so to speak, its personal signature. So, for most of the history of civilization products were completely personalized, but this type of production was very slow and laborious. And then the industrial revolution came, and suddenly you could mass produce products. This was to some extent an aberration of history [trans. note: the German word Irrweg means maze.], which was possible because of technology, but was not very humane. But the profits were so enormous that it was impossible to give up this new way of production – today, the technical development goes back in the direction of individualized work again. And now it is possible to offer not only customized and personalized products, but also customized and personalized production to the masses. It is, so to speak, the democratization of personalization. In addition, there's a whole new generation of people who have the desire and the ability to not only passively consume things, but to actively work with the product – to fiddle, to hack and manipulate the products. In the U.S. this is called "The Maker Movement," the motto is: "If I can not disassemble it, then I don't want the thing." The iPhone, for example, is not very popular with them, because you can't open it. They want access to the source code or even to add various new features to the hardware.

So the new generation no longer wants to just be presented with finished products?

And this is a very important and significant idea that will change a lot in the economy, because it means nothing different than a renegotiation of the relationship between producers and consumers. It's about a fundamentally different approach: one just doesn't want to be only the consumer, but an active co-designer. And together with the opportunities, with the current changes in the economy, we will – I would say in 20 to 25 years or so – live in a world, in which pretty much every single thing we use – from various products through computers, cars, and commercials – will be "personalized." This does not necessarily mean that your name will be on it, but it could be a chair that has the ability to adapt exactly to your buttocks.

When everyone creates everything at home, then who pays anymore and for what?

This revolution will be very fundamental for the economy; industrial capitalism, as we know it, won't exist for much longer. And just because profit and efficiency have been the only factors everything was build on until now, that doesn't have to mean it will stay that way. One of the potential achievements of this new creative world of the future could be that absolute growth will no longer be a prerequisite for the system. If we can make things for ourselves at home, the pressure to "have to make money" also decreases.

Still a bit weird in places, but that's it.