Table of Contents
ADAM TINWORTH
From innocent idealism to pragmatic fixes
Two decades of internet culture
PAMELA PAVLISCAK
Can we design technology for well-being?
DAVID MATTIN
Welcome to augmented modernity
FIFER GARBESI
Five pillars of ethical immersion
Framework for a societally beneficial metaverse
FRANÇOIS CHOLLET
What worries me about AI
VIRGINIA DIGNUM
With great power comes great responsibility
Responsible artificial intelligence is needed to fix the digital world
STEPHAN DÖRNER
Luxury problems
How to overcome the paradox of the digital economy
NIKA WIEDINGER
No way back?
MARTIN RECKE
Digital Fix – Fix Digital
TOBIAS REVELL
The imagination trap
Preface
In its first decades, the digital economy was inspired by a belief in progress that seems naive to us today. Digitalisation was already considered good in itself and was therefore synonymous with progress. It took groundbreaking events such as the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States to shake this belief. Now the promises of salvation through digitalisation are suddenly threatening to turn into the opposite.
We see digital products that do not improve life and have no real benefit, but isolate us in filter bubbles and divide society. We recognise the excessive dominance of the GAFA companies (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon), which are penetrating ever new areas of our lives. We are worried about digital technology that does not serve people but controls them: DIGITAL FIX.
With the NEXT Conference 2018 and this book, we want to contribute to a differentiated view of digitalisation. It’s about looking at opportunities and risks in a sober way and outlining ways in which we as digital pioneers can become better: FIX DIGITAL.
The indisputable added value created by digital technologies is initially offset by value destruction, which is often described as disruption. Initially, disruption was mainly about outdated business models and yesterday’s technologies, but it has since spread to areas such as politics, society and the physical world. From this point of view, the techlash we are currently experiencing is all too understandable. It is a systemic defence reaction against irritations that appear as an existential threat.
We cannot yet be sure of all the problems. Digitalisation deeply interferes with our self-image as human beings and our way of living and working. This brings with it numerous conflicts that must be resolved. But the fundamental promises of digitalisation remain intact: many things will become more convenient, annoying routine activities will disappear, personal reach will grow, the horizon will be expanded. There will be a digital world after the GAFAs and it will be better than today.
In this book we ask how we can renew the digital world from the ground up. So what’s the key? Our recommendation can be summed up with one keyword: digital humanism. The success of digitalisation is closely linked to terms such as user-centric, customer-centric or human-centric. The consistent focus on the user, the user experience and the user value made the digital triumphal march possible in the first place. Now is the time to make the well-being of human beings and all of humanity the benchmark.
Digital humanism puts people (the people who used to be known as users) first and restores technology to its true role as a means to an end. The authors of the various essays in this volume provide insights into what this means in detail and how it can be implemented. Strategists, designers, engineers, researchers, journalists, philosophers, practitioners, entrepreneurs and artists present approaches to various solutions.
They all share a constructive view of the digital world in which we live today. We are convinced that, in the end, the digital economy will be successful with a consistent focus on people and their well-being. We can let ourselves be overwhelmed by the dynamics of digitalisation or we can control them. It’s in our hands. We remain optimistic.
Matthias Schrader is founder and CEO of SinnerSchrader and the NEXT Conference as well as managing director of Accenture Interactive.
Preface
A country full of worries was the title of an article on the state of the republic in the summer of 2018. [1] The text quotes a survey of high school students in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. According to this survey, the students considered artificial intelligence to be potentially more dangerous than the atomic bomb. “Most of us react to technological shifts with unease at best, panic at worst,” writes AI expert François Chollet in his contribution to this book. He notes that “most of what we worry about ends up never happening.” Chollet in no way denies that technological change can also have a terrible effect, including world wars and nuclear armament. But he warns that we are once again worried about the wrong thing and overlook the real dangers. Thus, students of today are not only afraid of a nebulous superintelligence, they also let their opinions and behaviour be manipulated by social media and the algorithms behind them.
The authors of this book are also concerned, but they do not panic. Strategists, designers, engineers, researchers, journalists, philosophers, practitioners, entrepreneurs and artists look at technological development from very different perspectives. Their criticism of the current state of the digital world is correspondingly diverse. But they all share the desire to fix what goes wrong – and the hope that this can succeed.
In fact, we seem to be at a turning point. Perhaps trend researcher David Mattin is right when he says that modernity as we know it ends here and now. Perhaps we now need to break away from the central belief of bourgeois morality that the performance of the individual should determine his or her place in society, as tech journalist Stephan Dörner demands. The philosopher Nika Wiedinger warns that there may even be a fin de siècle in which “technological development finally defines and prescribes our wishes” and thus deprives democracy of its foundation.
And yet this book is by no means characterised by an end-time mood, but rather by an irrepressible creative drive. The authors propose concrete solutions to how people can regain control of the digital toolbox (François Chollet), define ethical principles for the development of virtual reality (Fifer Garbesi) and artificial intelligence (Virginia Dignum), and call for a radically new approach to technology design based solely on human well-being (Pamela Pavliscak). They do not shy away from great visions and instead allow themselves the dream of a world full of possibilities for new ways of being, where the previously impossible can be explored and realised (Tobias Revell).
Reading this book, it becomes clear that digitalisation is least of all a technological question, it affects all areas of life and fundamentally changes the way we live, work, communicate and perceive the world. That is why the artist Tobias Revell is quite right to emphasise the political dimension of digitalisation. And that’s why it’s also right for many authors to take a closer look at the concept of responsibility. Today, every digital decision-maker must ask themself where exactly the line between what is technically feasible and what is socially desirable should be drawn. Every communicator must face a dual responsibility: for the content he or she disseminates and for the possible mechanisms of manipulation. Especially in the digital age, responsibility always means resisting temptations.
The Swedish physician and scientist Hans Rosling has impressively proven time and again throughout his life that people basically see the world in a darker light than it actually is. Rosling opposed pessimism and defeatism with his concept of factfulness, an open, curious and relaxed attitude in which we only make judgments based on solid facts. For me, factfulness is the prerequisite for defining one’s own attitude in the digital world. Reflected communication, the will to establish connections and the attempt to assess consequences are also the goal and purpose of the NEXT Conference – and of this book. The definition of a humane, superordinate canon of values and the derivation of individual frameworks for action would be possible avenues to explore.
But who takes up these proposals? Where can good ideas mature into concrete proposals and initiatives? Where will initiatives become a set of rules and who could possibly still be the addressee of global approaches in a world that is currently localising itself? If institutions are lacking, the creative power of the individual and of groups of like-minded individuals as well as their ability to network in a global community remain. As initiators of the NEXT Conference, we want to make a contribution to this.
At this stage of development, it is imperative that we find new answers to pressing questions: What is the human being? What is the purpose of our existence? How do we want to live? This book also makes this clear. And while reading, there is the quiet hope that this enormous technological revolution can lead to a new reflection on the true value of the human being. Digitalisation would thus become an opportunity to fill meaningless modernity (David Mattin) with new meaning, and the future would not be a country full of worries, but a place of confidence.
Volker Martens is one of the founders and board members of the Hamburg-based communications agency FAKTOR 3. Together with his partners Sabine Richter and Stefan Schraps, he has been following the central communication aspects and trends of a digitalised world for years. Alongside SinnerSchrader, FAKTOR 3 is the organiser of the NEXT Conference (www.nextconf.eu).
Source
Knop, Carsten (2018). Zu viele alte Strukturen und zu wenig Mut. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 28.07.2018.