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Sasha Lobo:

2022-06-08T14:47:08.833Z


The »digital society« is meeting again in Berlin for the internet conference re:publica. Who should belong to it? And who doesn't?


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re:publica in Berlin: Digitization is always the digital step that the majority has not yet taken

Photo: Mauersberger / IMAGO

The re:publica has started, the most important German conference for those Internet people whose goal is not

is to become or stay a millionaire.

The re:publica calls itself a “festival for the digital society”, and even with the best will in the world it is hard to imagine that.

But that's not the fault of re:publica and even less the fault of the term "festival", which most people can assess quite accurately.

On the other hand, when it comes to the meaning of »digital society«, most people are funny and at a loss for advice at the same time.

And it's true, what is a digital society supposed to be anyway?

Wikipedia, as is usually the case in a very informative way, doesn't help with this problem at all, it refers to "information society", and that means "a society that relies significantly on information and communication technologies (ICT) in all areas of life".

That doesn't get us very far, because according to this definition we would have irrevocably crossed the threshold to the information society long ago.

In fact, with regard to the digital penetration of everyday life, three to four generations cannot eat a lemon cake without posting a blurred cake photo on Facebook, publishing a lemon cake story with an animated GIF on Instagram or dancing to a baking instruction on TikTok in light clothing.

There are a number of studies, surveys and investigations on the subject of the digital society, for example a "Digital Index" compiled by the digital association Initiative D21*, which ascribes a degree of digitization to Germany of 63 out of 100 points.

The interest group of tech companies, Bitkom, explains that Germans give their own digital skills an average grade of 3.1;

over half would like to do more digital, but don't know exactly how.

These values ​​give some fodder to the widespread gut feeling that Germany is somehow left behind digitally, but are only meaningful to a limited extent.

In general, the enormous jello is due to the fact that the term digital society drags around the same problems as the larger term behind it: digitization.

Digitization is always.

That sounds like a stale bon mot from the regulars' table of the IT managers (gender unnecessary).

In fact, many people still implicitly assume that you digitize something and then it's done and therefore somehow digital.

This is a fallacy that is easy to track down if you look at the meaning of the word digitization in ordinary companies over time: In the 1970s, digitization was about archiving data on magnetic tape in the company basement, and in the 1980s it was the introduction of electric typewriters, which were replaced by PCs up until the 1990s, then digitization was the networking of these very PCs, then the introduction of special business software, then the shifting of this software to the cloud,

Always new, digital things that are taken for granted

At the moment, digitization is spread further and staggers in the various companies somewhere between semi-automated, digital marketing and the question of where, how and, above all, why one should want to use artificial intelligence.

In five years, digitization will be something with quantum computers and the third blockchain infusion, because of course the latest developments keep coming, and in waves.

And that doesn't even describe the digital transformation that is going on at the same time, i.e. the change in business models through the various steps of digitization.

Digitization is always exactly the digital step that the vast majority has not yet taken.

Digitization is therefore never finished, which on the one hand is a nice job guarantee for me as digitization explainer and on the other hand explains why the digital society has been around for a long time and at the same time is still a long time coming.

Digital society actually describes the development of new, digital things that are taken for granted.

Suddenly you have to keep up with a constantly escalating digital normality.

This is at the same time the biggest problem of the digital society and the reason why so many people rightly feel excluded and left behind (the above numbers are quite good for that).

At some point in the last ten years there has been a break or, as Olaf Scholz would say, a turning point.

It was about the transition from the information society to the information flow society.

It may not have happened uniformly and simultaneously everywhere, and in some areas not at all, but the turning point has changed something.

A moment ago, information or data were more relevant.

Then the balance shifted towards data streams.

This is an almost inevitable consequence of digital connectivity, and perhaps best seen in layman's terms in today's ubiquity of social media.

Their triumph has manifested itself through the flow of news or the timeline, i.e. the principle of constant renewal of data.

Internet platforms are never finished

Photo platforms like Flickr or social networks like MySpace and Friendster already existed in 2005, but they were little more than large digital registers of profile pages.

Twitter is often credited with inventing the timeline as the most important page.

Copied without further ado by Facebook, this principle led to the most important change in behavior among Internet users: being constantly online, constantly checking for news because something is always happening.

The fact that this is a logical consequence of digital networking can be seen from the fact that the principle of perpetual beta prevailed roughly at the same time on the back side of the Internet: Internet platforms are never finished, they are constantly being further developed, sometimes every half hour.

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The great innovation of digital networking is - in addition to the feedback channel - the constant further development.

Due to the laws of both society and the market, the possibility of further development has resulted in an obligation.

Nothing looks more dead than an app that was last updated three years ago.

Or a social media profile that last posted something five months ago.

These examples may seem anecdotal, but taken together – from the frequent, learning-intensive updates of company software to the power of social media in public and in the personal social environment – ​​the transition from an information society to an information flow society is associated with massive consequences.

You'll never feel like you've finished learning again

Social participation below a certain age is hardly possible today without constantly updating oneself.

And that means not so much the technology as the mastery of a range of technologies and the associated customs.

Until the information flow society took over, lifelong learning was little more than a phrase.

In the meantime, being able to participate at all is now a prerequisite, for example in more and more professions.

One of the many buzzwords that revolves around this problem is digital divide, the German translation is the so far unbeaten »digital gap« on the open scale of uncleship.

If you start from times of peace in wealthy Central Europe, you can see that as the great social drama of our time, as an injustice that can hardly be bridged, that in an era of constant further development there will never again be the feeling of being finished, of having learned enough, of taking a breather for years without feeling left behind.

For those who have never experienced it any other way, a digital matter of course.

For those who knew and perhaps loved another world – an insult that could hardly be healed.

Perhaps not only the re:publica is needed as a place for the cutting-edge avant-garde of the digital society, but also a pre-publica.

For those who want to follow with dignity.

* Between 2008 and 2010 I was a member of the D21 initiative as an individual

Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2022-06-08

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