This week was re:publica week, Germany’s most important conference/festival around digital society and digital rights since 2007. It doesn’t quite feel like a family gathering anymore — it’s grown way to big for that — but it hasn’t lost any of its interest and value. If anything, it shows the success of the format and broad range of societal topics in the digital world.
Our panel
Since Henriette Litta and I just have a new report out (From Software to Society — Openness in a changing world), we had a panel on Openness: Offenheit von Technologie und Gesellschaft – Midlife-Crisis eines populären Begriffs? Together with Lea Gimpel (Digital Public Goods Alliance), Markus Beckedahl (founder re:publica, Netzpolitik and Zentrum für Digitalrechte) and moderated by Carla Hustedt (Stiftung Mercator), we discussed where things stand with Openness.
It was both a good discussion and simultaneously necessarily frustrating because Openness has touchpoints to and implications for such an enormously wide range of issues that we could barely scratch the surface. That said, I hope our paper will make a small but valuable contribution to the larger debate. Judging by the conversations after our panel, it certainly struck a nerve.
Here it is:
Some more reflections
In no particular order, a few more notes and thoughts from 3 days of re:publica:
This field has truly been mainstreamed and simultaneously diversified. It’s a broader mix of participants (individually and institutionally) and also a broad enough reflection of society that you cannot automatically assume everyone to agree. I think that’s a good thing.
I particularly find that re:publica does a fantastic job involving all ages: From school kids to white hair, the whole age spectrum is present. My own 7 year old was there for a bit as well and had a good time.
Both the conference and the topic have enough standing to attract leading politicians. It may have to do with the fact that the German government only just got started on their new term, but re:publica was basically crawling with top-level politicians including Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the minister for Digitalization and Government Modernization Karsten Wildberger, Foreign Minister Johann Wadepfuhl and Labor Minister Bärbel Bas all made appearances.
Keep in mind that (at least until now) digital policy was basically a third rail in German politics, or at least a dead end: All parties tended to sideline politicians focusing on digital policy, so to make career progress, digital experts inside the government needed to change tracks and focus on more prestigious areas. We heard this exceedingly loud and clear when doing research in preparation for the Mercator-initiated Agora Digitale Transformation: There simply wasn’t any political capital to be gained through anything digital. Which explains why Germany is quite literally decades behind on digital transformation issues. Maybe this is changing with the new government and its Digital Ministry? I’m not getting my hopes up but will be more than happy to be surprised.
Apart from that, there seems to be a fairly widespread agreement that social media has become a problem rather than the solution — a stark departure from when we discussed these things at re:publica in the late 2000s. Then, the assumption was broadly that there were issues (like privacy or centralized control by the companies now known as Big Tech), but that overall social media would distribute power from top to bottom, empower marginalized communities, strengthen democracy. Now we’re basically on the opposite end of the spectrum.
There was equally widespread agreement that AI = important, but there the picture seemed more fragmented. In the sessions I saw, critical overtones were more dominant, what I saw at the booths seemed more open to AI. Which I guess reflects the larger conversation, in which two opposing positions are both heard very loudly: AI bad (because energy consumption, IP theft, centralization, labor rights, digital rights) and AI amazing (because efficiency, lowering the bar to entry to certain fields, creativity, empowering people in things they lack skills for). More starkly: AI will either unleash the next chapter of humanity, or end it. It won’t surprise readers here that I think it’s a lot more nuanced and that both these extremes suffer from tunnel vision, but I hasten to add that I, too, only have hunches on this and no magic crystal ball that shows the future.
My mind’s still buzzing from 3 days of conversations in all the right ways. For now, excuse me while I try to catch up on my inbox.
