Practice

Our new Somewhere, i.e. the digital world, is a place where we live new experiences, learn together with others, develop ideas, and discover new horizons. We must not, however, ignore the downsides of the digital world. There is a growing coarsening in public communication which manifests in hate, agitation and the incitement to violence. In the digital age, the Internet provides public spaces that we are able to master from a technical point of view, yet fail to act on with regard to its moral and legal aspects. How, then do we responsibly make use of freedom in digital spaces?

Digitalization, digital transformation, and digital revolution are catchwords of our time. They promise fascinating opportunities to shape and improve human life. The developing technology is revolutionary in a fundamental sense. It does not mean setting oneself up as a prophet if one believes the digital revolution to be a signal event and the starting point of new developments in the evolution of planetary life. However, the opportunities that come with these developments do not implement themselves and, moreover, are far from being obvious. We thus need to reflect on what kinds of opportunities are essentially in reach.

Humans have become a new factor of influence on Planet Earth due to technological progress, the massive rise of the world’s population, and the development of modern societies which consistently consume more and more energy. It is against this background that the term anthropocene has arisen, meaning a new age dominated by humans. Until recently, biological, geological, and atmospheric processes were not affected by human civilizations. This has changed, since such processes are now dependent on what humans do and do not do. We thus have reason to ask how to discuss digital transformation within the context of the anthropocene, on the one hand, and to what degree humans (being part of nature) may undergo changes if the anthropocene affects us via its digital components, on the other.

Far from being independent from humans, digitalization is the result of pioneering spirit, scientific research, and technological developments. Digitalization is a human invention. We thus should be interested in understanding the scientific-technological machine room of the digital age as best as we can. Such an interest represents both a lust for fascination and the desire to let technological progress happen in compliance with rules. People are people because they shape their world and decide on what human life in the digital age should and should not be.

The idea of being home somewhere has much to do with the desire for conversance and cultural identity. It speaks of people who find their everyday reality in regions they feel connected to. The desire for being home somewhere, some say, is the emotional world of the provinces or even the foundation from which nationalist ideology grows. For others, though, it is simply a harmless desire to feel at home somewhere. Still others argue that the idea of home and cosmopolitan open-mindedness are not mutually exclusive. A further approach is to deal critically with semantics and images as detected in both history and the present age.

The spaces where we live are quite different. Take, for example, Planet Earth where we live and remember that it is part of our solar system where we also live. The solar system, in turn, is part of a galaxy called the Milky Way in which billions of suns exist. In this regard, we live in the Milky Way. However, this galaxy is only one of billions of other galaxies in the universe. Are we not entitled to say from a cosmological point of view, then, that we live in this universe? Of course, we hardly make references to cosmic spaces in which we live. For we are more familiar with smaller scales: we live on one of the continents in a country where we live in cities, villages, or completely remotely. Humans, though, also live in nature, even though we tend to have different conceptions of such a life. The same is also true for culture, given that culture can be a space where we live, in one sense or another. In which case, what do we mean when we say that we live in a culture?

A city is not a village and yet not a place where only globalization is reflected. Conversely, a village is not just a place where the idea of being at home predominates. A city is a space that is heterogeneous and offers many opportunities to combine past, present, and future. Such an approach is not necessarily focused on urbanity in the conventional sense of the word. Urban development has much to do with rethinking the rhythms of life and creating spaces in which the unexpected becomes suitable for daily use. In such a universe of thought, the question arises of how people can feel at home in cities. Moreover, we need to ask the other question of what it may mean to live in the countryside beyond clichés in times of increasing mobility.

Globalization was not planned and implemented one day. It is not a project for humankind that was conceived by a small group of individuals. Rather, globalization is a consequence of social, economic, and technological developments. From a political perspective, there was hope that globalization would mean a dissemination of democracy and that freedom would be both an economic and a political concept by which basic human rights are guaranteed. Prosperity and freedom are still at the heart of narratives which are intended to support  globalization in the face of negative criticism. However, the negative effects of globalization have become so manifest that euphoria for globalization is clearly in decline. It is therefore of crucial importance that we continue to talk about the opportunities and challenges of globalization.