Rethinking life - living change

“Welcome to Planet B - A different life is possible. But how?” This question - or, rather, this invitation to seek a different way of life, instead of just a different place to escape to and carry on as before - was the title of Ars Electronica 2022. The festival was founded in 1979 by an unlikely trio: a journalist, an artist and a scientist. When they came together, they each had a great interest in the perspectives and working methods of the other two, and they all sensed that the world was on the verge of major change. With little idea about what this change would look like, but a strong desire to help shape it, the three partners realised they wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything alone. They therefore decided to bring others on board - the city and its politicians, the economy and its leaders. In this way, they wanted to give a voice to the visions, ideas and utopias of art and science. What quickly became clear to them was that bringing about change also requires new tools - and that change only happens when it is lived at the same time.

From this, Ars Electronica was born as a festival for art, technology and society - not only to create interesting interactions between these three areas, but also to utilise the creative space between the different disciplines, perspectives and approaches as a launchpad for new ideas. This also gave rise to a method - a toolkit, so to speak - which 44 years later still allows us to observe, analyse and, to some extent, proactively negotiate and shape change.

Art plays a special role in this as a “tool of discovery”. Its ability to question and deconstruct established patterns and to use these pieces to create new, innovative ideas that transcend the boundaries of disciplines, conventions and ways of thinking. Today, we call this “Art Thinking” - a method that is not just about finding ways to solve problems, but also about recognising the scope, diversity and options of a situation in advance... about being able to consider what is not yet obvious, what is not yet predetermined... about expanding the realms of thought and action to create space for new ways of thinking.

A brief look back at this development might help us in our next attempt to understand how and where change occurs.

1979: We were still in the midst of the industrial world of the 20^th century, the first moon landing had happened only ten years previously, and the coolest thing in consumer electronics, the Walkman, had just hit the shelves. Computers and microelectronics (as they were referred to back then) were already wellestablished in many areas of industry, business and research, but the big revolution that created the world we know today was still a long way off. The changes, the disruptions, the myriad of new possibilities that have become so commonplace for us required a completely new type of computer at the time, one that was affordable but also small enough to fit on every desk. It was the personal computers - IBM’s PC in 1982 and Apple’s Macintosh in 1984 - that paved the way for the idea and, to some extent, the reality that everyone could participate and share in this new technological era, that it would now be possible to do business with the whole world, bypass the big gatekeepers and access information and knowledge directly, all without the need for large industrial facilities, banks or bureaucratic structures. The final door was opened in 1989, when Tim Berners-Lee managed to convince his bosses at CERN to let him work on developing a software program that would make it easier to share research results, and he shortly after made this universal portal to the internet freely accessible to everyone. The digital revolution was now no longer merely a technological and economic matter but, above all, a social and cultural one as well. It became a mass phenomenon. And so the journey began, from digital technologies to the digital business models of the major platforms, the digital lifestyle of social media, and the massive business of digital data. But it also caused growing unease, with many wondering if we had gone too far, too soon, too carelessly. 

Like in the Industrial Revolution, the use of new technologies in industry and commerce had economic and societal consequences (rural flight, urban population explosion, the emergence of the proletariat, etc.) that fundamentally changed how we live. However, the difference with digital technologies is that “everyone” now had direct and open access to tools and production resources, as well as unlimited knowledge and information at their fingertips. Although this vision quickly extended to many parts of the world and wowed many people, it should be noted that “everyone” is a rather inappropriate term that highlights the narrow geographical, societal and cultural perspective of the digital revolution; a flaw that has not yet been fully addressed. The many debates about ethical rules and the fairness of AI systems at present demonstrate just how important an issue this is. A great many people are still excluded from accessing these opportunities. While social injustices were the main reason for this exclusion in the beginning, political restrictions are now an increasingly prominent factor as well. Although ITU statistics indicate that 5.3 billion people (~67%) regularly use the internet, a significant proportion of the global population is still offline. This is especially concerning given that this technology has become so essential to modern civilisation and everyday life. Interestingly, the number of people without regular internet access (2.6 billion) is almost the same as the number of people who do not have consistent access to clean water (according to UNICEF, around 2 billion).

What must not be overlooked when considering the digital transformation: 1989 was also the year that the Berlin Wall fell, marking the start of the Soviet Union’s collapse and a shift in the world order. This period provided new windows of opportunity, both technological (WWW) and political, for an open, free world where people across the globe could connect in a more equal and democratic way than ever before. In retrospect, it is easy to mock these visions of a “global village” and ridicule the naivety of its proponents in the 1990s. But it is also worth delving a little deeper. After all, the meteoric rise of digital business models would not have been possible without two very different exponential developments. The first one is global population growth: In 1969, when man landed on the moon for the first time and two computers were connected between Los Angeles (UCLA) and San Francisco (SRI) for the first time, there were just 3.6 billion people on the planet, compared to more than 8 billion today. The second development is the extensive liberalisation of the global economy, which can be attributed to Reagan, Thatcher and other prominent politicians from that era and which really started to gather pace in the 1990s. Figuratively speaking, digitalisation was not the wave of the great revolution but, rather, the surfboard that allowed us to smoothly ride the massive waves of global change at the end of the 20^th century. This metaphor is quite fitting, given just how much the “digital world” has been shaped by the West Coast mentality of its developers and the Wild West approach of its investors. But the comparison also challenges our usual way of thinking about the causes and effects of change and the roles of politics, society and technology.

Figuratively speaking, digitalisation was not the wave of the great revolution but, rather, the surfboard that allowed us to smoothly ride the massive waves of global change at the end of the 20^th century. Bildhaft gesprochen war die Digitalisierung nicht die Welle der großen Revolution, sondern vielmehr das Surfbrett, mit dem man die großen Wellen der globalen Veränderungen am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts perfekt surfen konnte.

Delving deeper also means asking ourselves who or what is actually to blame for turning the grand vision - i.e. that free universal access to knowledge and direct global communication would lead to greater democracy, equality and prosperity - into a reality that actually resembles digital feudalism, where a few digital landlords determine the rules themselves and claim ownership and exploitation rights over all data generated on their digital estates. Is the current information crisis being caused by social media or perhaps by the now quite thorough deconstruction of public service broadcasting? How nice it would be if we had a clear answer to this question. Then we could once again blame something else and deflect our own responsibility as individuals and as a society. 

This brings us back to the present, where we are faced with the question of whether we can still entertain utopian ideals, given the very limited time we have left. Neither naive escapism into virtual worlds nor the technological ultra-utopia of space colonisation will save us from addressing the really uncomfortable questions. What must our life on this planet look like if we are to prevent environmental catastrophe? What actions must we take, and what consequences must we be willing to accept? How much conviction, effort, pressure and coercion will be needed, and what “collateral damage” will be associated with it?

In 1979, the change brought about by digitalisation meant that cities had to be able to adapt and plan for the future. Today, the priority is more to establish a global dialogue about how we live on this planet. However, “global” is not only to be understood geographically, but also in terms of the differences and polarities within our societies.

This Planet B, as a utopia, could offer an opportunity for us to coexist more harmoniously with the unique ecosystems of the planet, while also offering the chance for a new and fair form of coexistence between all people on the planet. But how might we achieve such fundamental and far-reaching change (not just a shift in how we think, but how we act as well)? Because it is not just a matter of reducing CO₂ emissions. Reliable data tells us what our world will look like if we fail to make this turn. But what will our world look like if we succeed? What technologies do we still need to develop for this purpose, and what economic, social and democratic changes will they give rise to?

We know exactly what needs to be done. But we don’t know how to accomplish it. We fear the consequences of climate change, yet we are even more afraid of the uncertainties and unknowns associated with the necessary changes.

It is therefore a matter of creating new narratives again, because it is clear that facts alone will not cause us to change how we think, let alone how we act. Rethinking the future also requires us to rethink the tools for our future plans, forge new alliances, and understand the interactions between society, politics, business and technology. In the past, our concept of innovation was mainly associated with technology, systems and processes, with optimisation, rationalisation and profit growth. The next ten years will be about giving ourselves an enormous innovation boost. We will need every bit of technology, every organisational and logistical improvement that can help us reduce emissions and filter them out of the atmosphere. But this time, the greatest innovation project in human history will be us and our ability to meet the challenge head on as a global community - by reinventing humanity!

So can we change not only the world we live in, but ourselves as well?