Do we need an internet age of enlightenment? A reply.

It is not often that articles are published that are dedicated to the adaptation processes of society to technological development in a multi-layered and profound way. Peter Diekmann(@derpeder) has recently written such an article entitled “What steam engines have to do with digitalization and why we need a new age of enlightenment” in two parts(Part 1 / Part 2). Extremely worth reading. A replica.

(Reading time: 5 minutes)

Thinking in analogies

Even though I find much of the article exciting and correct, it strikes me that we are always quite caught up in existing mental analogies when dealing with many of these aspects. It is apparently simply in the nature of human beings that we can only place changes and events in a larger, longer-term context with great difficulty. I am not exempt from this, by the way. I just try to resist it.

However, if we zoom out a little from the details, like Google Maps, we can see the bigger picture and I think many things become easier to understand.

Of course, this does not answer the questions of our decades. They are also questions of detail. If you look at them, it’s not that difficult to describe the major trends of change for the future. If you go into detail, it becomes difficult to get it right.

In this respect, Peter Diekmann is stepping into a minefield. I’ll loosely pick up on a few points that are mentioned in the article and which I would like to shed a different light on:

“The illusions that the Internet would make society better have not materialized”

I also saw Sascha Lobo ‘s presentation at the Republica and for a moment I was right there with him. However, a slightly more sober view reveals a different picture. The Internet has certainly improved society considerably. It’s just that the promises that our generation secretly made to itself have not been fulfilled. Our generation, now around 40, had lofty goals and an ideological, academic bent.

And so we stand there today and are amazed that polemical discussions from the regulars’ table domain have found their way onto the web just as much as our ideologically tinged and largely hypothetical discussions of values. And young people, this spawn of superficiality, only post pictures of themselves, their food or some pop starlets anyway. Fuck it.

What we fail to recognize and belittle: That it is quite common today for the secretly slightly right-wing radical petty bourgeois to communicate together with the secondo and the Syrian refugee. Even if they only like the same cat video. After all.

Of course, this doesn’t solve any problems at first and creates many small ones when the debates become more heated. But it does prevent an armada of people who are stuck in their heads from quietly boiling up a major attack, so to speak. The fact that communication takes place is more important than what is communicated. The Internet has achieved a great deal in this respect. Just not in the way we thought it would.

The end of the era of facts

Here, too, I can follow subjectively. Yes, I know this feeling. But I maintain that Bullshit 9.0 is something that has always been the basis of opinion-forming in society. The fact that untrue, entrenched opinions and ideas form entire fronts and urban social legends emerge that are free of facts and background is historically the norm.

The fact that this bullshit is now spilling over into the elite is thanks to the “democratization” and broadening of communication through the Internet.

And the fact that bullshit really is bullshit can usually only be recognized by the average citizen thanks to the information available on the Internet. The fact that many people lack the desire and will to deal with things seriously is not to be blamed per se. It is the way of things. What we as a society or intellectuals can do about this is to get our descendants to evaluate and communicate in a more differentiated way. To remain critical. Barack Obama did this perfectly in a commencement speech for Rutgers University:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-c6HDo7pNI

“The boundaries between the real and virtual worlds will dissolve”

The fact is that these boundaries never existed. It’s more of an idea that we have of things. We sometimes make a strange distinction between conventional technology and digital technology.

What is exciting in this context is something I call the “technology perception threshold”. The simple idea behind it: The more advanced and widespread a technology is, the less we perceive it as technology, but as a natural environment. The virtual world will therefore not simply stand in combination with the real world, without boundaries, but will become an indistinguishable part of our reality. A supposedly small but important difference.

Because when we talk about education, we fail to recognize that these generations’ offspring are already growing up with this reality. It’s like when you get to level 12 in a video game. How do you know what level 12 is and what it means to get to this point? For you as a newcomer, this is the base from which you start.

I am convinced that humanity can intellectually keep up with the rapid pace of change relatively easily. Not the individual, but we as a constantly renewing society. As is well known, I see the major challenges more in economic and political/organizational issues.

Do we need a new age of enlightenment, even a second enlightenment?

It is indeed tempting to say “yes”. But I hesitate. I have a hard time with these analogies. And the resulting thought patterns à la we simply have to do XY again. The past is a relatively poor guide for the future.

It may be a good guide in terms of not repeating mistakes once made. But it does not protect us from making new mistakes. And we live in a society that has few parallels to the pre-Enlightenment society at best. In my opinion, too much of this “mechanics” plays out differently. Today’s environment is too different.

The Enlightenment in the sense of the 17th century is a success story. And more a natural development than an initiated movement. I can hear the murmuring. As long as everyone can post and disseminate information, the Internet will fundamentally support this movement. And it will be like everything else: two steps forward, one step back.

“Nevertheless”

We should therefore perhaps not proclaim a new Enlightenment, but rather focus on the fact that the spirit of Western society is based on it. And work on its further development.

And not return to a glorified Christianity just because “the Muslim man is standing outside Vienna”, as my grandfather would blessedly call it today. And the whole of Facebook, from left to right, is currently making a socio-political racket. Let’s stay calm, tolerant, consistent, free of prejudice and clickbait. And work with our youth. Tomorrow never dies.

So, as the generation that was the first to really get to grips with the internet, let’s carry on the spirit of enlightenment. And yes, nevertheless.