Schulz: Speech in honour of Jaron Lanier, Peace Prize of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association 2014
We are on the threshold of the digital age—at the turn of an era that leaves in its wake the long 19th and short 20th centuries; within a process that calls into question our social relationships, the way we run our economies, our constitutive disposition, our values, indeed our culture. We find ourselves in a process that presents societies all over the globe with challenges of an enormity not seen since the Industrial Revolution so powerfully changed the world.
A wealth of articles and books dedicated to the analysis and evaluation of the process of digitisation has appeared in recent months. They examine the opportunities spawned by the technological revolution: increased transparency and the opportunity to participate in decision-making processes, easier access to knowledge, more effective medicine, better services, improved efficiency and much more. But they also deal with the risks inherent to these changes.
Hardly anyone has pointed out such dangers and risks more trenchantly than Jaron Lanier. His criticism, however, is not culturally pessimistic, nor is it opposed to technological change. Instead, Lanier seeks to caution his readers from the vantage point of a knowledgeable oppositionist who still remains fundamentally loyal to the cause. This is what endows his convictions—which he has presented in books, articles, speeches and interviews—with such an illuminating quality. And this is exactly why he will be awarded the Peace Prize of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association today.
Much has been written about him. He’s been labelled a pioneer of the internet, a vanguard, a visionary. Here is an example: “Jaron Lanier is one of America’s cyber gurus and a protagonist of a new intellectual scene of which Europe doesn’t even seem to be aware, even though it should be, so as to wake up from the haze of the last century.” An intelligent sentence, articulated by a man who was himself a great visionary and humanist and whose tragic and premature death we mourned here at the Paulskirche a few weeks ago: Frank Schirrmacher.
Schirrmacher wrote this sentence as a way to shake Europe to its senses, and he wrote it—and here I would love to make you guess when—in the year 2000. That’s 14 years ago. So it did take a while before the debate on the opportunities and risks of the internet—which has been raging in California for decades—reached the “Old World”. Now, we also engage in these controversial discussions, and we’re able to draw on many things that have already been thought and said; indeed, on much of what Jaron Lanier himself has thought and said.
Today’s recipient is an impressive polymath. He is a writer, musician, scientist, entrepreneur, teacher, activist and inventor. His biography is a dazzling example of a patchwork identity that may appear postmodern at first glance, but is more reminiscent of Humboldt’s educational ideal upon closer scrutiny. The multitude of his talents links Lanier with an ancient, centuries-old conception of being a scholar; when scholars were philosophers, architects, painters and doctors in one and did not shy away from entering into debates of socio-political relevance.
Lanier’s biography has a European stamp on it. While he was born in New York in 1960, his mother grew up in Europe and his father, too, has European roots. His family suffered the persecution of the Jews; his mother survived the worst breakdown in civilisation in the history of mankind, the Holocaust; she survived the war and managed to flee, making her way to a new, better world across the Atlantic.
Today, the son of these parents vehemently defends the individuality of each person in the digital age. This places him in a great humanist tradition. Lanier cautions us not to put computers and networks above all that is human, not to belittle man and, as he writes, “not to lower our standards so as to make information technology look better”.
Lanier calls on us—as free, self-determined, motivated, and creative individuals—to work towards a better future. And it is thus that this American with European roots leads us back to our own tradition of thought and reminds us of our best capabilities. He reminds us that man should never be degraded to an object; not for any idea or ideology, regardless of its aim.
Lanier provides a poignant description of how for some in Silicon Valley the belief in a smart internet world has become an ideology, if not a new religion. Google founder Larry Page once claimed that “human programming”, to use his own words, would require fewer bytes than a simple operating system for computers. But if people were only to become the sum of their data—i.e. a collection of their biodata plus information on all the places they’ve ever been, everything they’ve ever read, heard or said—then we’d be able to save this information-person in his entirety, as a file. According to this logic, our digital twin might even attain immortality. To quote Lanier: “But if you want to make the transition from the old religion, where you hope God will give you an afterlife, to the new religion, where you hope to become immortal by getting uploaded into a computer, then you have to believe information is real and alive.” He then concludes: “Man does not occupy a particularly special position (within such a world.)”
Many who adhere to this belief ascribe to the global network a sort of higher consciousness—one that is superior to the consciousness of man. They believe that the digital consciousness is more reasonable than we are and knows much better what’s good for us. On the most basic level this just means that word processors—whether we want to or not—end up correcting our writing; but soon, our fridges will fill themselves up or we will be sent goods that we didn’t even know we wanted to buy. And not long after that, some algorithm will determine that we need to pay higher health insurance premiums or deserve to be cast out socially because we’ve refused to have our bodies hooked up to cables, because we don’t exercise daily and travel to the wrong countries on vacation.
According to this logic, it’s a good thing that the internet should take so many decisions off our backs, since it looks out for us around the clock, taking care even of our social relations. The internet turns into a doting mother, an alert and strict father. Welcome to this brave new world.
To avoid any misunderstandings: I’m not against digital technologies per se. On the contrary: whenever it constitutes an improvement of our lives I’m all for any kind of innovation. But the belief that we are merely the sum of our data reduces and degrades man; plus, it does not recognise who is the actual creator of culture. For it is the writers, musicians, filmmakers, engineers, programmers, journalists and other creators who come up with the content that fills the internet. In short, this content is created by actual human beings, and it is these people who are the first to lend meaning to what they have created. This is why it is also unacceptable that only very few make billions off these cultural achievements, whilst many creators emerge empty-handed. An act of creation should be honoured and we should not succumb to the illusion that anything on the internet is in fact free.
Because, in the end, we will all have to pay. Lanier writes: “If music is free, then your cell phone bill goes up, however crazy that sounds.” He continues: “There is certainly nothing wrong with that, but since the web is killing the old media, we face a situation in which culture is effectively eating its own seed stock.” Cultural achievement, ladies and gentlemen, should and must have a value and a price. And as a trained bookseller I would like to add: some of the arrogant attacks on the German fixed retail price of books truly irritate me.
We end up paying for everything that is seemingly free on the internet, not least with our data, which global internet giants with gigantic servers suck up so greedily. That’s not trivial because data will be one of the most important future resources and digital standards will become a decisive infrastructure. It is for this reason that our data does not belong in the hands of the few. For even in light of all the great opportunities provided by Big Data, this data collection mania makes it all the easier to monitor and control us. Knowledge is power and whoever knows what we buy, where we are, who we’re friends with and the stuff of our innermost dreams and desires knows too much. These are things that we entrust only to those closest to us, to our most intimate friends. Which is why I must insist that the collection and control of all our data is inimical to the very concept of a free and self-determined society. To be quite clear: not everything that is technically possible should also be permissible. Not everything that is more efficient is also better. The morality of feasibility is not compatible with our ethical standard.
Please allow me to make one remark on a recent debate, because it applies to many writers and also to the book market as a whole: diversity is a value in itself! If individual internet platforms—which, in the analogue world, were known to us as department stores, shops and markets—attain the kind of size that enables them to determine not just the price of a product but an artist’s income, bestseller lists, the format of publications, the date of shipment, etc., then there is no diversity but just one all-consuming monopoly. The golden calf of efficiency and of ever-sinking prices invalidates the principle of plurality that lies at the heart of our economy. That is not acceptable and that is why I share the concerns voiced by so many writers against these power-hungry monopolists.
The point of an argument as basic and wide-ranging as Lanier’s is not to make minor readjustments. What Lanier voices is a fundamental critique that precludes the possibility of fixing certain ill-developed aspects—either presently existing or predictable for the future—through technology or engineering. There is no easy way out, no app to download quickly; even if some people may believe this is the case.
But beware: Lanier doesn’t buy into a simple scheme of good and evil. He presents his critique as someone who helped initiate this new world, who eagerly pushed it forward, who himself has acted as a programmer. Lanier is a digital native; in his critique, he also criticises his own work and points towards instances where something might have gone awry. Anyone who thinks that Lanier turned his back on the digital world in frustration is quite wrong. No, he is at the forefront of the debate, pursuing the highly moral agenda of making things better than they are today. In his book “Who Owns the Future” Lanier writes, “My hope for the future is that it will be more radically wonderful, and unendingly so, than we can now imagine but that it will also unfold in a lucid enough way that people can learn lessons and be wilful.” He continues: “It was about making the world more creative, more expressive, more sensitive, and more interesting. But it wasn’t about escaping the world.”
So if we want to take our destiny into our own hands and make the internet a place from which the many and not the few benefit, then we will have to make an effort.
We will need rules for that digital world. Rules that represent our values. We will need a new charter of fundamental digital rights to set out what is permissible and what is forbidden in light of new technological possibilities. Because there have to be restrictions on what companies or states are allowed to know about people. In the same way in which we debate subjects such as human cloning, euthanasia, war and peace and what goes into our food, we will need to talk about the digital world we would like to inhabit in the 21st century. We will need to talk about what is important to us, as a society. The party is over, and now we’ve got to clean up; after all the upheaval, we will have to end this state of virtual disorderliness.
But what could a different, more humane internet look like? Let’s attempt a change of perspective first: it’s not about what “the internet” should look like. The internet could never be human, even if engineers become better and better at simulating a kind of “internet consciousness”. The internet is not a subject. At best, it is an infrastructure serving many people that has the potential to create a lot of good. It can even be fun.
We will have to do away with the idea that there is a clear separation between the analogue and digital worlds. That was a long time ago. We only have this one world and we will have to figure out how to live together in peace. Almost all questions on the subject of internet politics concern the same socio-political questions that we know from the days of the analogue world. Which is why it is not just internet politicians and activists who need to stand up, but also those who are not digital natives. They too have a right to participate in the discussion. Because if we were to leave all these questions to the tech experts, the programmers and the nerds, we’d end up living in a self-referential system ruled by engineers and mathematicians - a government of experts in the Platonic sense. But that wouldn’t be a democracy.
It is clear that there isn’t one right way to set up such rules. Perhaps however we Europeans will be able to provide some suggestions and experiences to help with the next push of innovation on the internet. At the moment, the standards enforced by US corporations as well as an increasing number of Asian companies dominate. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Because we could think of different standards, a few of which I will now list: