Technik Technology
Manfred Broy
No technical development in modern times has had a greater impact on society and the economy, or on people’s lifestyles, than digitization. It marked a more significant break and a more far-reaching change in society than the invention of printing. Particularly remarkable is the incredible speed at which digitization is advancing. As a result, the triggered changes wash over people like a tsunami. The speed is driven by ludicrously fast technological progress, by the economic and political interests of the most diverse groups, who realize innovations in rapid succession without being able or even wanting to assess their effects and which remain largely nontransparent to the people concerned.
The conclusion is that digitization is taking a direction largely determined by uncoordinated and uncontrolled economic and political interest groups. There is no social discussion or democratic determination of the course to be taken, even though digitization could bring with it an incredible wealth of opportunities to shape the future in a humane way.
The technical key to the digital world ultimately lies in the concept of programming, in software, in capturing a wide variety of connections through data, in the machine execution of algorithms, and in the global transmission of data. The beginnings of programmed processing of data go back a long way: to procedures in mathematics for performing calculations and the attempt to build calculating machines – as in research by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, for example. These approaches did not gather momentum in the 20th century until the 1930s and 1940s. They were enabled by advances in the field of electrical engineering – previously mechanical calculating instruments were converted into electrical ones to ultimately calculate on an electronic basis.
Data processing can be applied – far beyond mathematical or technical or financial data – to virtually all information, indeed to all terms and concepts of human thought and action: texts, images, and a variety of other complex contexts. This also allowed for the design of high-performance user interfaces that are used for highly diverse applications – as impressively demonstrated by the smartphone.
It proves to be of particular importance that whenever one wants to tackle an application object with software and digitization, one is forced to formally capture the object and the concepts considered in an explicit or implicit formal model. This concept has proven to be extraordinarily good at promoting innovation, as it forces many of the interrelationships that were previously implicit, intuitive, and thus only vaguely understood and tapped into, to be scrutinized more closely and analyzed and formally modeled down to the last detail – an essential step for a deeper understanding.
The multifaceted complex of digitization emerged, a term that subsumes everything that occurs in the application of software today. “Software is eating the world” is a well-known saying from California. What it means is that all objects of human activity, be it in the economy, in politics, in society, or in private life, are captured by software and data – this against the backdrop of a gigantic digital infrastructure of computers, end devices, digital networks, sensors and actuators, huge amounts of data and software systems and, last but not least, with almost all of humanity as a user community.
The digital transformation with its dramatic changes is putting society, politics, the economy and every individual under pressure to meet expectations and is giving rise to speculation and even fears about the future. In addition to prospects for high economic potential of the digital transformation, there are also far-reaching concerns. The open questions relate in particular to the social balance in society, the impact on the labor market, issues of privacy and the use of data, as well as the role of future digital systems, especially relating to artificial intelligence, autonomy and a data-driven society. Currently, there are questions of surveillance, manipulation, and third-party control by algorithms, especially by artificial intelligence algorithms. Digitization amplifies everything, wealth as well as poverty.
Digitization leads to fundamental questions that have so far been addressed far too little in politics and culture. The images and goals of the digital transformation have been almost exclusively motivated by economics in the past. Supposedly positive images of digital possibilities are drawn with reference to the no doubt vast economic potential of the digital transformation, but without addressing social and individual as well as democratic changes. More civil society-oriented considerations, on the other hand, are primarily characterized by fears of surveillance, including cyber attacks, job insecurity, and negative effects on privacy and self-determination.
The recurring proposals, such as that of an unconditional basic income, cannot prevent such fears; on the contrary, it cannot be a perspective for a future society that 20 to 30% of the population are no longer needed for any professional occupation – are “superfluous” – and are provided for via an unconditional basic income.
This is a cynical notion and leads to a picture of the future that seems anything but desirable to the majority of citizens. A positive vision of a digitized society is therefore long overdue, one that develops a vision of how a digital transformation can lead to a society, a way of life and a culture in which elementary values are respected and people live a dignified life without having to forgo the enormous potential of digital technologies and media, and even more, one that opens up new social potential through digital possibilities.
Today, digitization affects everyone, and not just in highly developed countries. More and more legacy processes are being converted to digital tools, rely on digital infrastructure, and require people to use digital media. The pandemic in particular has made it clear what advantages digital solutions bring with them, but it also showed the extent to which they are already standard today. The downside is a growing complexity that ultimately overwhelms many people.
The digital transformation is comparable to a tsunami: It has a similar destructive effect and is advancing at a similar pace. Outdated procedures and approaches are replaced at lightning speed. Entire industries are losing importance, new forms of businesses and procedures are emerging, and people – willingly or under silent pressure from reality – are making their data available and seeing their lifestyles transformed. This is particularly obvious in the area of communication with the countless messenger services or in the area of retail, where online stores are becoming dominant. In addition, there is the seductive effect of social networks, which permanently shake up social structures.
The drivers of the digital transformation are primarily digital companies, first and foremost so-called hyperscalers such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and many others, each of which has developed specific business areas and often exploits them as monopolies with incredible force and economic success. An important factor here is a close focus on user communities, on the end user. Often, the latter is offered attractive services – supposedly free of charge in many cases – and these services are implicitly financed by the information and data obtained from the users. A much-criticized surveillance industry is emerging that collects data about its users in a variety of ways, markets it and creates completely new business models based on it.
Totalitarian states are also increasingly using these surveillance capabilities to spy on citizens down to the last detail and evaluate them digitally. The term “social scoring” is used to describe procedures that evaluate the behavior of citizens, giving them grades, as it were, which are then used in turn to grant or deny them certain privileges. The surveillance industry becomes the surveillance state.
This shows that digitization has so far essentially been determined by the economic interests of large companies and by the political intentions of states, especially totalitarian ones. Despite this certainly critical background, however, it should not be overlooked that digitization holds enormous potential, much of which has not yet been tapped.
In its early stages, industrialization developed products and processes that supplemented and enhanced man’s physical powers so that he was able to use forces quite different from those physically given to him, to move at quite different speeds, to harness energy, to conquer for himself the depths of the seas, the air, and even outer space. Digitization, on the other hand, allows people to increase their spiritual, mental, intellectual abilities. The instrument of digitization is multifaceted and enormously powerful, but so far it lacks a vision of how digitization can help move society into a humane direction.
In what world does man live? Humans are biological beings. Accordingly, they live in a material world with bodies that are matter and exist and live in matter. However, humans are also intellectual beings, and this is what distinguishes them in particular1. Without doubt, people’s identity is most prominently influenced by their consciousness2. It is difficult to provide a generally valid definition of the term due to its different usage with different meanings. Scientific research is concerned with definable properties of conscious experience. Digitization leads to new dimensions of sensation, experience and ultimately knowledge. In his work Einleitende Abhandlung über Philosophie im Allgemeinen, Christian Wolff (1679–1754) postulates three main types of knowledge (see Wikipedia):
Ultimately, a burning question in connection with digitization is how it can contribute to knowledge, to the three main types of knowledge and thus to consciousness.
Much of what makes people tick can be mapped and supported directly with and in digitization. This text deliberately does not discuss the ways in which digitization has great potential to help people in important problem areas, such as medicine or transportation. These topics are being worked on intensively, albeit perhaps too much with the aim of economic success. What is more interesting, however, is the question of the contribution that digitization can make to being human, to interaction between people, to reflection and to a more conscious life. Or the question whether digitization can help people experience new forms of cultural self-understanding and more conscious identity.
The discussion about digitization in education that took place during the pandemic falls far too short, no matter how important distance learning or working from home may be. It completely fails to recognize the future of education with a digital foundation.
Digitization is ultimately related to the difficult questions of human consciousness. This topic is not yet fully understood or largely scientifically determined. There are even those who say that this area may largely elude scientific, rational treatment. Nevertheless, when considering the possibilities of digitization, the question arises as to whether it could contribute to a more conscious, intensive and reflective life. How could digitization increase people’s intellectual abilities?
Against the backdrop of such a definition of social and intellectual goals, we ultimately require a much deeper understanding of human existence and of the processes of human thought than today’s celebrated artificial intelligence can currently provide.
After completing his degree in mathematics and computer science, Professor Manfred Broy earned his doctorate and habilitation at the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Technical University of Munich, where he was the founding dean of the Faculty of Computer Science in 1992. Since then, he has been conducting research in the field of modeling and development of complex, software-intensive systems. The goal of his academic endeavors is to establish and further develop the methods of software and systems engineering with a focus on quality assurance and long-term system evolution. Manfred Broy is a member of the European Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina, acatech and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Passau and a fellowship from the German Informatics Society (Gesellschaft für Informatik). To date, he has authored more than 520 scientific publications.
1 Nach Wikipedia: Der Intellekt (von lateinisch intellectus ‚Erkenntnisvermögen‘, ‚Einsicht‘, ‚Verstand‘) ist ein philosophischer Begriff. Er bezeichnet die Fähigkeit, etwas geistig zu erfassen, und die Instanz im Menschen, die für das Erkennen und Denken zuständig ist. „Intellekt“ wird oft als Synonym für „Verstand“ verwendet, kann aber auch die Bedeutungen „Vernunft“, „Bewusstsein“ oder „Geist“ haben.
From Wikipedia: The intellect (from Latin intellectus “cognitive faculty”, “insight”, “mind”) is a philosophical term. It denotes the ability to grasp something mentally and the instance in man that is responsible for cognition and thinking. “Intellect” is often used as a synonym for “mind”, but can also have the meanings “reason”, “consciousness”, or “spirit”.
2 Nach Wikipedia: Bewusstsein (abgeleitet von dem mittelhochdeutschen Wort bewissen im Sinne von „Wissen über etwas habend“) ist im weitesten Sinne das Erleben mentaler Zustände und Prozesse.
From Wikipedia: The German term “Bewusstsein” (=consciousness) derives from the Middle High German word “bewissen”, which means “having knowledge about something”. In the broadest sense, it therefore describes the experience of mental states and processes.