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Digitalis: How to Reinvent the World
•Thierry Geerts makes a plea for the so-called knowledge society in response to the negative media coverage
•The digital revolution both enables and forces us to reinvent the world we live in
•Europe is in urgent need of ambitious and inspiring projects if it wants to catch the digital train
All too often the digital revolution is depicted as a global companies are shut down, jobs are cut, and the future is looking grim. Others try to take action and are bracing themselves for the giant disruption that is looming around the corner. In his thought-provoking book, Thierry Geerts proposes to replace the word 'disruption' with 'reinvention'. Take the car, for instance. The way we have been driving around for the past 50 years no longer has a we are constantly stuck in traffic, thousands of people die each year as a result of road traffic accidents, and cars are major contributors to air pollution. Electric, self-driving cars offer a safer and more efficient solution. People can share them and park outside the city. Perhaps we don't even need a car of our own anymore? This book is a wake-up call. Europe has been at the forefront of the industrial and the computer revolution, so what stops us from becoming the capital of Digitalis?
•The digital revolution both enables and forces us to reinvent the world we live in
•Europe is in urgent need of ambitious and inspiring projects if it wants to catch the digital train
All too often the digital revolution is depicted as a global companies are shut down, jobs are cut, and the future is looking grim. Others try to take action and are bracing themselves for the giant disruption that is looming around the corner. In his thought-provoking book, Thierry Geerts proposes to replace the word 'disruption' with 'reinvention'. Take the car, for instance. The way we have been driving around for the past 50 years no longer has a we are constantly stuck in traffic, thousands of people die each year as a result of road traffic accidents, and cars are major contributors to air pollution. Electric, self-driving cars offer a safer and more efficient solution. People can share them and park outside the city. Perhaps we don't even need a car of our own anymore? This book is a wake-up call. Europe has been at the forefront of the industrial and the computer revolution, so what stops us from becoming the capital of Digitalis?
232 pages, Paperback
Published April 15, 2019
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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.
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