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Digitalis
Reis mee naar Digitalis, het land dat meer dan 4 miljard mensen met elkaar verbindt via het internet. Een land waar gezondheidszorg, onderwijs, mobiliteit, economie en andere maatschappelijke thema's worden aangepakt dankzij de mogelijkheden van de digitale revolutie. Dit uitdagende boek van Thierry Geerts is een krachtig pleidooi om in deze tijden van digitalisering de angst opzij te schuiven en de vooruitgang te omarmen. De digitale revolutie heeft immense maatschappelijke, culturele en economische implicaties en stelt ons voor grote we moeten niet minder dan de hele wereld heruitvinden. Maar de boodschap is de technologische vooruitgang biedt unieke kansen om onze samenleving te verbeteren. En waarom zou België, dat in het verleden aan de spits heeft gestaan van de industriële en computerrevolutie, niet de hoofdstad van Digitalis kunnen worden? Als ons land deze digitale trein niet wil missen, heeft het behoefte aan inspirerende en ambitieuze projecten. Dit boek zet alvast de bakens uit.
267 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 29, 2018
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81 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
April 22, 2023
Boek dat vlot leest, maar ondertussen ook al weer achterhaald is.
August 4, 2019
I've said it before, just not here yet: the world would be a better place if we had some more ambition. And that's what Thierry is teaching is here. Go buy it, absolutely enjoyed every page of it!
December 5, 2024
This is a book written by a little boy like there are so many, selling a world of toys like it’s the solution to all of humanity’s and society’s problems, and it is all BS, respectfully. I truly believe that writers like these are superficial and immature thinkers, ignorant and dangerous. I am so done with technoboys, with their design glasses, telling me - preaching, in fact - that technology is the answer to everything, with a smile on their face. This boyman worked at Google, and of course was drenched in the philosophy of techno-salvation, not realizing that he stands in a long line of similar boymen over the ages (all with a deeply Christian DNA, as Nietzsche, John Gray and others have observed) all unaware of their preocupation with a very strange sort of salvation. Not yet having matured into being fully human, and into what true freedom and grace really mean, they still believe a toy will do the trick. One says: ‘The church will bring salvation.’ And when the chruch doesn't deliver, the next says: ‘No, it is science which is going to save us!’ The next says: ‘No no no, colonization is going to deliver it!’ The next says: ‘No wait wait wait - the industrial revolution is going to bring us the grace!’ And then the one that says: ‘No, capitalism is the true harbinger of salvation!’ And now this boy dressed up as a man says: 'The future is bright because there is technology! In five years’ time, you won’t even have to leave the house, as a drone will deliver your designer dress to you!', as if that is the best the boyman's imagination can muster as to the epitome of being human: ordering a dress from your lazy auto-recliner, and having it delivered by a noisy little helicopter - only then to send it back the same way, because all that sitting has made you so obese you don't actually even fit the damn dress. And these boymen have one thing in common: they believe salvation is a material affair, outside of us but álmost there.
And it's such an empty gospel. In this universe, being human consists in having absurd, made up, material needs only, and them being met instantly, like a toddler would want it. The toddler's needs are at least close to basics like food and drink and safety. In this technoworld however, the needs are: A gucci dress. or a slightly less yellow coloured foundation for your skin routine, or having your phone charge without any wires, which of course is amazing, let's be honest. This is not a being who has any longings deeper than their material needs, or who feels sheer joy without any reason, who weeps, mourns, whose life is a search for connection and meaning. No, human beings are individual and disconnected islands of made up needs, whose whole lives are summed up by the dynamics of wanting something and then getting it. And a host of drones, devices, electrical cars, ever faster internet, smart software, smart cities, smart cars, satellites, cables, datacentres, screens and apps and watches is going to help with that.
And the boyman does not realize he is exactly like all the other boys in history preaching any kind of gospel, since his world is completely cut off from its historical roots. Nothing he knows of history. His universe is brand new and weightless, as if human beings have not grown and evolved in concert with a world that is 5 billion years old, or a universe that is 14 billion years old. This world has the feel and texture of being like a decade old. The past has no existence, the present is simply a bunch of technical problems to be solved, and their solution lies in an imagined future, right ahead of us; in a bright world full of gadgets and digital services, shown on screens that smell of nothing; a world with, conveniently, only a frontend, full of images of cars and clothes and holidays to exotic countries, but no backend whatsoever; no plastic, steel, cables, devices that nature cannot digest, and won’t use for all eternity since it is all plastic, no steel, chemicals, no oil, brick, rubber and concrete, nothing of all this, but in realty it all piles up like a lifeless mount everest. There is no mentioning of the insane amounts of energy that these technologies use, the datacentres everywhere, the cables in the ground, the insane amounts of satellites orbiting the earth. For the sake of the dream, we just don’t mention the real world existence of our technologies, we only dream the dream of our material needs met by companies with sexy names who make our lives as easy as pressing buttons with the word ‘order’, from our lazy chair. There is no single mentioning of the real, tangible, stinking, ugly world behind the ‘order’ button in this book. It’s all happiness about the endless beauty of tech. Only in a world where the consumer's life and desires are the start-and end point to all the worlds recources, networks and energies, will this sentence make sense: 'wifi changed everyhing.' (p.74). In what tiny universe of references, in time and space, does such a statement hold true? What world is this, where 'wifi changed everything?' It is a human world, a western world, a young world, and an extremely small world at that. This is a testament to the tiny horizon, in time and space, of said writer. It is just so utterly devoid of depth, so disconnected from a broad and cosmic horizon in space and time - filled with other life and intelligence - stars, winds, seeds, animals, eons of ages, plants, algae, black holes, lightyears, 2 thousand year old oak trees, caterpillars, bees, mosses, whale sonar - so utterly in disregard of all that makes our life possible so as to be idiotic.
You know what changed everything? The event of oxygen in the atmosphere, 2.3 billion years ago. The incorporation of energy-creating bacteria into cells to make them their powerhouses, turning them into what we now call mitochondria, 1.45 billion years ago. The discovery of symbiosis by nature. Fotosynthesis. THESE things changed everything. They made the very life possible that invented WIFI, which is now part of an infrastructure of plactic and steel and cables and concrete and carbon gasses, about to destroy its very cradle.
Boys like Geerts like to think history started somewhere in 1978, with the advent of the first computers, and it all led to the most wonderful world you can think of: you can order a dress from your lazy chair and have it delivered to you by a little noisy helicopter. Praise the Lord for all this.
But and all this happiness is accomplished with an insane amount of cognitive dissonance, not only completely thinking away the backend (and if there is a problem in the backend, like plastics drowning rivers, like microplastics in our unborn babies' bloodstreams, carbon emissions skyrocketing, temperatures and sea levels rising, like social distress among children completely addicted to digital platforms designed like slot machines made to harvest their data, like biodiversity dying all over the place, we will find a new technological solution for that too!) but also forgetting that all the same technologies are used in wars to kill, in geopolitics for power, to spy, and they all fart a continuous carbon fart that is so big we suffocate whole ecosystems with it. And not to mention: there are 4 billion people in this ‘digital town’, but the other 4 billion people are not. They are promised the same goodies in time, just be patient, you will be delivered from your poverty, from your tribal, cavemen lives into this glorious world of Facebook and Tiktok and instant ordering of dresses delivered to you by drones - but by now, I am starting to think that the ones left out have one up on us, the ‘connected’ ones. They still see a tree from time to time, and hear the rustling of leaves in the wind - instead of being given a 4k version of that exact same scene from some influecers b-rol, with some generic, AI-generated music poured all over it.
There is a scene in Dead Man, a Jim Jarmusch film, that plays on native lands in the 1880's in North America. In it, the native character, Nobody, snatches the hat of the white guy from Cleveland, and puts it on his own head, and then starts to imitate the 'civilized' white men who stand for 'progress': with a hat on his head, glasses on, he imitates the way white men talk, simply moving his lips up and down, endlessly and meaninglessly. ‘Bla bla bla.’ He calls those white men: ‘those who talk saying nothing.’ If that scene were to play in our world, the native would use a smart watch for his imitation of the white man, he would be wearing google glasses, he would have a self-driving car, neuralink planted in his brain, a smart phone in his one hand and the remote control to the lights in the house in his other – but he would still be babbling endlessly and meaninglessly. He would talk endlessly saying nothing, and all the while true grace would be a thousand miles away crying.
And it's such an empty gospel. In this universe, being human consists in having absurd, made up, material needs only, and them being met instantly, like a toddler would want it. The toddler's needs are at least close to basics like food and drink and safety. In this technoworld however, the needs are: A gucci dress. or a slightly less yellow coloured foundation for your skin routine, or having your phone charge without any wires, which of course is amazing, let's be honest. This is not a being who has any longings deeper than their material needs, or who feels sheer joy without any reason, who weeps, mourns, whose life is a search for connection and meaning. No, human beings are individual and disconnected islands of made up needs, whose whole lives are summed up by the dynamics of wanting something and then getting it. And a host of drones, devices, electrical cars, ever faster internet, smart software, smart cities, smart cars, satellites, cables, datacentres, screens and apps and watches is going to help with that.
And the boyman does not realize he is exactly like all the other boys in history preaching any kind of gospel, since his world is completely cut off from its historical roots. Nothing he knows of history. His universe is brand new and weightless, as if human beings have not grown and evolved in concert with a world that is 5 billion years old, or a universe that is 14 billion years old. This world has the feel and texture of being like a decade old. The past has no existence, the present is simply a bunch of technical problems to be solved, and their solution lies in an imagined future, right ahead of us; in a bright world full of gadgets and digital services, shown on screens that smell of nothing; a world with, conveniently, only a frontend, full of images of cars and clothes and holidays to exotic countries, but no backend whatsoever; no plastic, steel, cables, devices that nature cannot digest, and won’t use for all eternity since it is all plastic, no steel, chemicals, no oil, brick, rubber and concrete, nothing of all this, but in realty it all piles up like a lifeless mount everest. There is no mentioning of the insane amounts of energy that these technologies use, the datacentres everywhere, the cables in the ground, the insane amounts of satellites orbiting the earth. For the sake of the dream, we just don’t mention the real world existence of our technologies, we only dream the dream of our material needs met by companies with sexy names who make our lives as easy as pressing buttons with the word ‘order’, from our lazy chair. There is no single mentioning of the real, tangible, stinking, ugly world behind the ‘order’ button in this book. It’s all happiness about the endless beauty of tech. Only in a world where the consumer's life and desires are the start-and end point to all the worlds recources, networks and energies, will this sentence make sense: 'wifi changed everyhing.' (p.74). In what tiny universe of references, in time and space, does such a statement hold true? What world is this, where 'wifi changed everything?' It is a human world, a western world, a young world, and an extremely small world at that. This is a testament to the tiny horizon, in time and space, of said writer. It is just so utterly devoid of depth, so disconnected from a broad and cosmic horizon in space and time - filled with other life and intelligence - stars, winds, seeds, animals, eons of ages, plants, algae, black holes, lightyears, 2 thousand year old oak trees, caterpillars, bees, mosses, whale sonar - so utterly in disregard of all that makes our life possible so as to be idiotic.
You know what changed everything? The event of oxygen in the atmosphere, 2.3 billion years ago. The incorporation of energy-creating bacteria into cells to make them their powerhouses, turning them into what we now call mitochondria, 1.45 billion years ago. The discovery of symbiosis by nature. Fotosynthesis. THESE things changed everything. They made the very life possible that invented WIFI, which is now part of an infrastructure of plactic and steel and cables and concrete and carbon gasses, about to destroy its very cradle.
Boys like Geerts like to think history started somewhere in 1978, with the advent of the first computers, and it all led to the most wonderful world you can think of: you can order a dress from your lazy chair and have it delivered to you by a little noisy helicopter. Praise the Lord for all this.
But and all this happiness is accomplished with an insane amount of cognitive dissonance, not only completely thinking away the backend (and if there is a problem in the backend, like plastics drowning rivers, like microplastics in our unborn babies' bloodstreams, carbon emissions skyrocketing, temperatures and sea levels rising, like social distress among children completely addicted to digital platforms designed like slot machines made to harvest their data, like biodiversity dying all over the place, we will find a new technological solution for that too!) but also forgetting that all the same technologies are used in wars to kill, in geopolitics for power, to spy, and they all fart a continuous carbon fart that is so big we suffocate whole ecosystems with it. And not to mention: there are 4 billion people in this ‘digital town’, but the other 4 billion people are not. They are promised the same goodies in time, just be patient, you will be delivered from your poverty, from your tribal, cavemen lives into this glorious world of Facebook and Tiktok and instant ordering of dresses delivered to you by drones - but by now, I am starting to think that the ones left out have one up on us, the ‘connected’ ones. They still see a tree from time to time, and hear the rustling of leaves in the wind - instead of being given a 4k version of that exact same scene from some influecers b-rol, with some generic, AI-generated music poured all over it.
There is a scene in Dead Man, a Jim Jarmusch film, that plays on native lands in the 1880's in North America. In it, the native character, Nobody, snatches the hat of the white guy from Cleveland, and puts it on his own head, and then starts to imitate the 'civilized' white men who stand for 'progress': with a hat on his head, glasses on, he imitates the way white men talk, simply moving his lips up and down, endlessly and meaninglessly. ‘Bla bla bla.’ He calls those white men: ‘those who talk saying nothing.’ If that scene were to play in our world, the native would use a smart watch for his imitation of the white man, he would be wearing google glasses, he would have a self-driving car, neuralink planted in his brain, a smart phone in his one hand and the remote control to the lights in the house in his other – but he would still be babbling endlessly and meaninglessly. He would talk endlessly saying nothing, and all the while true grace would be a thousand miles away crying.
January 30, 2020
Livre intéressant à lire pour se mettre à jour sur les différentes innovations numériques et comment elles changent les secteurs et notre société. le gros est déjà connu des curieux ( impression 3d, bitcoin, internet of things, ...).
le plus intéressant est sa dernière partie : sa vision de comment la Belgique doit se développer pour surfer sur la vague. il faut de l ambition et arrêter de procrastiner.
le plus intéressant est sa dernière partie : sa vision de comment la Belgique doit se développer pour surfer sur la vague. il faut de l ambition et arrêter de procrastiner.
July 16, 2018
Thierry Geerts gaat met het fascinerende ‘Digitalis’ niet mee in doemdenken en onheilspellende scenario’s, maar toont welke kansen de digitale revolutie op verschillende vlakken kan bieden. Denk aan bots die chirurgen assisteren bij operaties, zelfrijdende auto’s die het fileleed verminderen, gigantische 3D-printers die 10 perfecte ruwbouwhuizen produceren per dag… Het boek toont de lezer wat de toekomst kan inhouden en hoe we daar als werknemer, onderneming en overheid op kunnen inspelen. Dat het soms ietwat ‘gekleurd’ is (de auteur is CEO van Google België en spreekt dus voor eigen - uiteraard digitale - winkel) dien je erbij te nemen. Met veel aandacht en plezier gelezen!
November 8, 2020
Iets te grote focus op de eigen Google producten, en vanwege een aantal cijfers en verwijzingen erg snel daterend. Type boek dat niet zonder website kan waar de gegevens voortdurend worden aangepast. Wel mooie samenvatting van de staat (land + IT), en waar de evolutie ons (snel) zal brengen. Aantal statements dan ook al achterhaald.
February 25, 2022
Niet oninteressant, wel al sterk achterhaald, juist doordat een van zijn grootste punten in het boek (de technologie evolueert snel, mis je kans niet) waar is.
Zie het als meneer Geerts' persoonlijk mening en gedachten over de technologie, zowel gisteren, vandaag als morgen, welke kansen er zijn en hoe hij het aan zou pakken.
Zie het als meneer Geerts' persoonlijk mening en gedachten over de technologie, zowel gisteren, vandaag als morgen, welke kansen er zijn en hoe hij het aan zou pakken.
January 4, 2023
Interessant boek met stand van zaken van alle bestaande digitale toepassingen. Helaas al wat gedateerd, de wereld verandert inderdaad razend snel, heel veel voorspellingen die werden gemaakt in 2018 toen boek uitkwam zijn ook effectief (mede door Corona) effectief in een absolute stroomversnelling gekomen.
October 22, 2018
Boek leest erg vlot en geeft mooie samenvatting weer van de huidige inzichten. Ik miste evenwel vernieuwende inzichten, kortom het meeste had ik al wel ergens gelezen afgelopen jaren. Niettemin, de moeite om toch eens door te lezen!
October 30, 2018
A good bundling of digital disruptions in different markets. If you read a lot on this topic maybe the information is not always so new. Chapter 12 and onwards -focusing on Belgium's next moonshot- are most interesting.
November 10, 2018
Dit boek brengt je in een ruk “up to speed” met de laatste technologieën die vandaag het dagelijkse leven binnendringen. Van gepersonaliseerde medicatie over machine learning tot smart cities. Veel nieuwe zaken lees je er niet in, maar toch zeer toegankelijk werk over de digitale toekomst!
February 9, 2019
Het is al even geleden dat ik een boek in één ruk heb uitgelezen. Een boeiend en motiverend betoog voor meer innovatie en onderneming op vlak van technologie!
Het raakt meerdere vlakken van onze samenleving en is een must-read voor zowel ondernemers, bewuste burgers en beleidsmakers.
Het raakt meerdere vlakken van onze samenleving en is een must-read voor zowel ondernemers, bewuste burgers en beleidsmakers.
March 21, 2019
Vlot geschreven, doorspekt met voorbeelden uit 10 domeinen. Ik denk erover na om dit te linken aan een lensmodule probleem oplossend denken, met artikelen uit Dat. Deze laatste bevat concrete python oefenen en het boek is dan een mooie toepassingszone
July 9, 2018
A fair invitation to proactive use of digital tools and a disarmingly rational case for embracing that which too often stirs intuitive and irrational fear. Refreshing and well documented.
December 28, 2019
Soepel geschreven, maar weinig tot geen nieuwe inzichten.
March 21, 2020
Bought after his TED Talk in Antwerp. Interesting summary and connecting the dots in between (pretty) known information about digitalisation. Has an interesting and clear way of writing.
April 5, 2021
Een positief pleidooi voor meer digitalisering en hoe dit aan te pakken.
February 16, 2024
Le livre a déjà 6 ans et est donc antidaté sur plusieurs. Néanmoins, c'était intéressant de le lire.
April 15, 2024
Een vlot leesbaar, techno-optimistisch boekje. Is ondertussen al wat gedateerd en bevat geen inhoud die je niet in de dagelijkse pers kan vinden.
March 16, 2025
7 jaar is oud voor een boek over dit thema. Ik onthou vooral het voluntarisme van Thierry.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews