I’m sitting in the train and get passed a link to a piece from Süddeutsche Zeitung about the internet and its sharing culture. This being my more-or-less favorite German newspaper, I dig into it expecting it to yield a solid piece of thought that will cause me to reflect on my online behaviour.
The real result is a lot less positive. It ends on this note:
Wir müssen nichts mehr erfinden, denn Google und Facebook lehren uns, dass neue Ideen leicht zu haben sind. Es könnte sogar sein, dass fügsame, gelehrige Kopisten jetzt erfolgreicher sind als diejenigen, die innovativ sind.
Some old dude quotes selectively and writes about a subjective divide between digital and analog like you would find in the eighties. And it quotes an interview with Geert Lovink from 2007 that superficially treats ‘blogging’.
The piece opines that because of connectivity we will not be able to pay attention to what is important or come up with original thoughts ourselves. But it turns out that the Süddeutsche has fallen prey to that disease itself. Here as almost everywhere, German writing about the internet follows a predictable course that fails to illuminate.