Peer2Politics

Lately I have been preoccupied with the question of European answers to the techno-libertarian onslaught of Silicon Valley. Why are so many Europeans blind to the monopoly strategy of the new intermediates such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, but also Microsoft, and embrace their online services without any second thoughts? Where is our digital intelligentsia, the public intellectuals who grew up with the Internet? There is plenty of use, the stats for Europe look bright. And there is just as much concern about privacy: the stream of hacker and whistleblower scandals is not drying up. But for an informed view that goes beyond journalistic reportage we need something else. What is lacking are not the geeks or business journalists who comment on the latest apps and gadgets but informed philosophers, thinkers who not only have the technical expertise but also enough knowledge about the political economy of the net to display self-confidence in debates. Where is the conceptual supremacy, the passion and rage of a German Jonathan Franzen, a Swedish dana boyd, a Romanian Andrew Keen? How can we surpass the ressentiments a la Roland Reuss and come up with a more imaginative, subversive attack on Amazon? The European cultural elite is still in a stage of denial, hoping and praying that the digital storms will blow over so that we can return to the normality of the good old newspaper and the Tagesschau at eight.