Internet

THE GLOCAL: Citizens' councils can revitalize Europe. Their success depends both on their ability to strengthen the EU's participatory political processes, and on greater responsiveness to citizens' local communities. Here we look at how the first "European Commons Assembly" provided an opportunity for information-based political reforms together – based on social and ecological sustainability.

Hilde Nagell: Digital revolution

DIGITALIZATION: Who has the right to move "freely" on the digital highways, and who is waved to the side by the police or the state intelligence service because their data profile appears on the radar?

Jason E. Smith, Aron Benanav: Smart Machines and Service Work: Automation in an Age of Stagnation, Automation and the Future of Work

GROWTH: Capitalism, through "creative destruction" and technological disruption, created the conditions for a new cycle of economic growth. But now the trend seems to continue towards zero. Is it a vicious circle of global competition, falling prices, overcapacity, technological inertia (rather than innovation) and falling incentives to invest – which is the cause of capitalism's protracted crisis?

Yasha Levine: Surveillance Valley. The Secret Military History of the Internet

SURVEILLANCE: State surveillance would not have been possible without the services of Silicon Valley's technology companies. For example, Google in Surveillance Valley is described as "a full-fledged military contractor, who sold versions of the company's consumer data and analytics technology to police departments, city councils, and major U.S. intelligence and military organizations."

Mark Alizart: Cryptocommunism

BITCOIN: In a book that is both wild, elegant and utopian, the accelerator Mark Alizart sees bitcoin as the very king's road to a classless society and a better future.

Mercedes Bunz and GrahamMeikle: The Internet of Things

IOT: Things have started to behave. But the fact that things around us are getting smarter does not necessarily mean that we ourselves are getting smarter, quite the contrary.

OPTIMISM: By taking positive ideas more seriously, we can give them the same attention that toxic ideologies get today.

: Will increased control or surveillance in this decade gradually be left more to algorithms that carry out actions based on so-called "actionable intelligence"?

Geert Lovink: Sad by Design: On Platform Nihilism

MEDIA: Author Geert Lovink analyzes contemporary use of social media and looks towards a possible end to «platform nihilism».

NEWSPAPER EDITOR: The conversation with Thomas Hylland Eriksen.

DATA LEGISLATION: World autocracies introduce new internet laws to prevent the emergence of "rebel" groups, such as democracy movements and human rights organizations.

ID: Around one billion people lack legal proof of identity. Can digital ID help even out the differences in the world?

Schlecky Silberstein: The internet has to go away

: One of Germany's most famous bloggers, Schlecky Silberstein, states that attention is the most important currency in the 21st century and that the internet creates anxiety.

: China's digital social credit system operates with a form of gamified control, which rewards users while scoring points for online and offline behavior. By 2020, the Chinese authorities plan to establish a nationwide system. Western commentators react with disgust, but is our own social media really that much better?

Jonathan Taplin: Move Fast and Break Things

: The book Move Fast and Break Things directs sharp criticism at Google, Facebook and Amazon, but is at the same time partly romantic and unvarnished.

: Werner Herzog explores and challenges the internet – as the dreamy documentary filmmaker he continues to be.