 Guten Abend, allerseits. Rückblick. Ich bin sehr überrascht über die enormen Antworten, die wir für diese Serie von Konferenzen bekommen. Wir haben diese enormen Antworten durchs ganze Jahr begonnen. Wir haben das letzte Jahr mit der Präsentation von Manuel Castells begonnen. Wir haben seitdem fünf weitere Gespräche gehabt. Wir haben immer einen großen Audienz hier und das ist warum wir jetzt die Impression haben, dass diese Frage über die enormen structuralen Änderungen, oder die Gespräche, die wir hier auf diesen enormen sozialen Änderungen haben, hier mit unserer Audienz mitgebracht haben. In den letzten Jahren haben wir über 2.000 Mitglieder, über 4.000 Leute, die sich für diese Gespräche erlisten. Es ist eine große Unterschiede zwischen den 4.000, die sich selbst erlisten, und die 2.000, die eigentlich kamen. Es ist eine große Unterschiede zwischen den 4.000 und die 2.000. Es gibt eine große Erleichterung von anderen Änderungen. Aber wir müssen noch einen starken Nerv. Der Nordshow-Raten ist ca. 50%, d.h. wir müssen zweimal als viele Leute erlisten. Und dann, wie ein Airline, enden wir hier mit der richtigen Erleichterung. Und weil dieser große Nerv, unsere Institut und die Federal-Agenz für die Stadt-Education, haben diese Serie von Lesen mit dem gleichen Titel aufgenommen. Und wir haben auch einen schönen Venue für die nächste Meeting. Und bevor ich auf die Strecke passen möchte, möchte ich Tobi Müller, der unser Spektakulär-Retreater ist, etwas zu sagen. Ich möchte, dass Andreas Räckwitz, der letzte Woche, das Erleichterung für das Jahr 2019, und der auch einen Rundesplans für das hat. Und ich würde ihn bei diesem Christus-Prize aufmerksam sein. Guten Abend. Willkommen zu dieser speziellen, final oder konkruten Leser der Serie von Lesen. Ich würde mich bedanken, dass die Federal-Agenz für die Stadt-Education der Federal-Agenzien-Fraktion und der Humboldt-Institut. Ein paar Worten auf den Programm für heute. Ich werde ein paar von den interaktiven Remarkten machen. Dann haben wir den Gespräch oder die Lektion von Mr. Reckwitz. Und dann haben wir einen irgendwie anderen Programm. Wir haben einen großen Diskussion-Panel hier auf dem Topf mit dem Präsidenten der Federal-Agenzien und auch dem Herr von der Humboldt-Institut. Und nachher wird die Lektion offen für Fragen von Ihrer Partei, von der Audienz. Man kann auch Fragen über Twitter fragen. Man kann also die ganze Nacht formulieren, um die Fragen zu uns zu stellen. Als Konklusion haben wir ein German-Soziologin, der mit diesen Fragen arbeitet. Ich denke, dass die meisten von Ihnen wissen, der Phänomener, den er in seiner Forschung macht, ob wir Fragen machen, ob wir Sport oder Yoga machen, weil wir fühlen, dass es für uns gut ist, weil wir fühlen, dass es ein Social Pressure ist. Und wie kann man sich die Frage stellen, ob wir eine andere Welt, eine Welt, die die Welt überlegt, wie die Popstar Madonna, die sie selbst reinventiert hat und sie sie mit ihrem Profil genutzt für Äthiöse, Homosexuöser, für Hispaniker in den USA und für Frauen, die älter werden. Und so sind nicht viele älterly Rockstars noch. Sie ist ein Rollmodell. Und ihr Eintritt zur Rollmodellung oder um eine authentische Bildung zu präsentieren. Sie sahen wie ein Stilbath und unser Gast-Speaker heute, Professor für Kulturelle, Comparative Cultural Sociologie, ist nicht über die Fitness-Kultur zu sprechen, sondern über Madonna. Aber wenn ich es in die Nutschelle putze, hat er für einen langen Zeit für Selbstoptimisationen gearbeitet. Und wie kann man das in der Art der Social-Pressure, Social-Pressure, die unser Freedem ist? Also die Bewegung zwischen Disziplinen und Freedem. In 2012, er hat das Buch in der Invention der Kreativität geschrieben. Das war letztes Jahr in Englisch und das war von Zurkamp. Das ist ein wunderbares Studium in der Kreativität, die in der Geschichte oder durch den langen modernen Bereich – das ist ein wichtiges Thema für den langen modernen Bereich – und ich werde mich jetzt von dieser Kreativität aus sehen, mit seinem aktuellen Buch, das war letztes Jahr in Englisch, und das wird für heute wichtig sein. Das ist die Society of Singularities. Das Buch war letztes Jahr in Englisch. Es ist ein sociologisches Studium, nicht nur in Teilen oder Terms, aber auch in der Gesellschaft. Es ist ein Attempt, zu beschreiben bestimmten societal changes, die er fühlt, dass er generalisiert wird und die Trends, die im digitalen Bereich sind, eine wichtige Rolle in diesem kontemporärischen sociologischen Studium. Er wird uns etwas über den Effekt der Entwicklung oder der Entwicklung der Gesellschaft gegen die Society of Singularities zeigen. All das seemed very apt for us to have a more general discussion after the more specific lectures that we have had throughout the last year. So, I am looking forward to this presentation by our speaker, who was awarded the Leibniz Prize and the jury wrote that he is one of the leading sociologists of our times and has presented detailed and knowledgeable studies of relevant societal developments. So, warm welcome to Andreas Wegwitz. Meine Damen und Herren, vielen Dank für die Freude. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for these warm words of welcome. And thank you for this invitation to Berlin. It has just been said by Mr. Müller. He has just given us an outline of the topic of my presentation, digitalisation as singularisation. That is the headline of my presentation here. And maybe I can give you some information on my background. And some of you have probably attended previous talks of the series here. And of course you can look at digitalisation from different perspectives. It is a topic that is dealt with in communication theory or media theory. But my perspective is a psychological view of the view of a sociologist. So I am not really interested in the digitalisation as such. But my objective research is what this means for society at large. I am not a media sociologist or technology sociologist. We have these kinds of experts. But I come from cultural sociology. And therefore it is indispensable for me. And Mr. Müller just said that that even if you don't come from the computer or digital sphere, you still have to deal with digitalisation because this is a driving force for certain societal developments. And here I would like to give you a brief outline of the theoretical framework of my diagnosis in this book, The Society of Singularities. I assume that we are confronted with a fundamental change of our society from an industrialised society pre-modern society into a post-modern society. Digitalisation plays an important role in this transformation. It is one of the driving forces behind that. And a difficult question is as to what kind of importance we want to attach to technologies or digital technologies. To what extent can and shall digital technologies play a role for changes in our society? One could also say that some authors say that technology is the driver of a societal change from archaic societies to modern societies. So that whatever has triggered a societal change has always been technology. So there are some scientists that take this view. I want to say that technologies have an impact on society but do not determine the evolution of society. Technologies have to be learnt, they have to be acquired in our social practice, our practical life in our society. And so Gibson, for example, is one of those authors who, Gibson is one of those authors who has written about that, he calls them affordances. Technology is offered, people can use these technologies, technologies open certain possibilities and other technologies open up other possibilities and what kind of benefit we draw from that our kind of evolution is triggered by these technologies depends on how we use these technologies. So technologies have a kind of offer but have an impact on society through the way that they are used through social practice. By the way how they are used in social practice. So my guideline my basic distinction is a distinction between a modern society and industrialized society. When sociologists talk about modern society they speak about society since industrialization, since democratization, since urbanization so a society that has existed for quite a long time but within this modern society also to do with the sciences, with capital and so on but within this modern area changes have taken place as well so today's modern society differs from the modern society of 100 years ago basically and here I agree with many of my colleagues that when we look back at the last century we have to distinguish between two phases of modern society so the traditional industrialized modern society that developed at the beginning of the 20th century and lasted until the end of the 1970s and after that another fundamental structural change took place. Many agree with that that we have evolved into a kind of society I call it late modern society era second modern era doesn't matter how we call it but the question is what has changed what has fundamentally changed in the last 40 years compared to the traditional industrialized society that existed before and that still exists in the mind of many people I think in this structural change in the modern times to the late modern era I think this change becomes understandable when we have a look at how the structures of our social structure has changed and the social aspect becomes less important and the late modern society is characterized by certain award systems that gives a reward to the unique to the singular to the particular to things that are unique and that is what is interesting for people in this late modern era so what is general the aspect of generality still exists but is of less importance and has moved to the background so the social logic of the general and the social logic of the singular the beginning of my presentation and the main question for today is what is the role of digital technologies namely the change from this traditional modern era to industrialized era to our late modern era has been triggered to a great extent by these digital technologies and in our traditional industrialized modern era the industrialized technologies were such that they were standardized whereas with these digital technologies we can see that they create some singularities so they create and cause singularities or particularities and so on so my my charts are very anti-visual, I didn't want to use any pictures or images and that is what I I often use images but here I thought that moving away from the pictures and the images that we get from the internet it would be quite good to put this on a more abstract level and use words instead on these charts so the modern era has a kind of double structure so now regardless of any digitalization my thesis is that the late modern society is a society of singularities so a very abstract question as to how the social is structured the number of authors we can structure the social area according to markets or other units so the modern era that came about at the end of the 19th century has this very special structure namely that it promotes a social structure of doing generality but it also promotes a structure of doing singularity in the same way so this doing generality and doing singularity that is a traditional distinction so the singularity of an individual object that is a depends on the perspective according to Kant but here in sociology we have to find out how societies produce generalities or singularities whether they produce generalities that meet certain general standards or whether societies aim more at producing singularities so I want to look into this question under a sociologist's point of view so the modern so the fact that the modern era is guided by the principle of doing generality that is not surprising that we only have to think of the conveyor belt the roles attributed to people according to the profession that they have so our society is radically geared towards standardization this is an academia or an industry where everything is summed up under general terms so also in politics this is used there is also the term of mass societies so our modern society is doing generality so it classifies and develops categories according to generalities in generalization according to Weber and in a very formalized way so ever since the beginning of the modern era beginning with the industrialization this has been the case ever since and this is also a trend that continues in our present time but right from the beginning there was also a kind of counter trend namely a very special interest singular, what is unique in the individual in the era of romanticism that was a very important element so that this society is also interested in things that are unique that cannot be easily exchanged individuals or places or objects that are singular of romanticism, this was an important element but we also have to be clear and that is something that we often commit or make a mistake when we compare certain individuals namely that this uniqueness, this singularity that this is also created by society and that is why I am not using the term individual or something that is individual that would be the traditional term but I am using the term singularity or singularization for two reasons, first of all to make clear that these units or elements that we talk about that are of interest because they are singular or unique they don't necessarily have to be human beings so individuals or the term individuals usually refers to a human being and of course in sociology you are interested in the uniqueness of a person, of a human being but when we talk about singularity in connection with our topic here this term also refers to objects so also objects can be made singular so an Art the original character of an individual Artifact, that is what counts that is what makes it special or places that are singular that cannot be exchanged for other places or events for example or collective units can also be turned into something that is singular so a nation for example a community, so here the collective unit is treated as something that is singular so we are not only referring to individuals, human beings when we talk about singularity but this singularity exists at different levels it can refer to objects, places, people events that are unique this creates emotions and makes, becomes attractive and I'm not talking about or using the term individual or individualisation of course the term individualisation but also spring to one's mind that we are talking about individualisation processes but individual when we use the term individual it means that these individuals are released from society set aside, but when we come and that is not what we talk about here but what we want to talk about here is about how a singularity is created and unique Artifact is not is not does not become singular as such is not created or assessed as being singular so out of a social assessment so we talk about how certain processes make certain objects or persons singular and how they are praised or assessed as being singular so in this history of the modern era we have always had these aspects such as generality, like production on conveyor belts and unique objects like Artifacts these things always existed side by side in parallel, but my thesis is and I think there is proof that in this change or transformation from modern era to the late modern era the relationship between the general and the singular has changed so the modern era was dominated by the element of the generality popular parties expectations regarding once vocational career things like that here whereas the singular only existed in certain niches like in the arts for example so it was not that relevant for society at large and this has dramatically changed in the last 30 to 40 years we now have witnessed an expansion of this singularity so this singularity is gaining ground so what used to be a niche phenomenon has now turned into a kind of mass phenomenon mass orientation along the lines of what is singular so this is the main societal process that has taken place of course the logic of the generality still exists but it is a kind of background infrastructure and we will see that the digitalization in itself is a good example from which we can see in the background a lot of planetization work is going on and on the front there is a lot of singularization you would need a lot of time to explain all of that but it is not my topic for today you can follow that for example when you look at lifestyles Tobi Müller gave a few examples from my book so looking at the lifestyles of the new middle class there is a lot of orientation towards the particular the singular when it comes to traveling your own body, your diet and you can also see that in the economy and economic structure so economies are more and more developing towards more subtle differences goods are also being advertised or staged as unique for the root causes of the structural change from industrial modernity to late modernity what are the reasons for these shifts for the shift from the logic of the general to the logic of the singular then I'd give three reasons the first one is a cultural determinant so this idea of the particular, the singular goes back to a cultural tradition that goes back to Romanticism it's become part of the changing values so for example self-representation self-development everybody wants to be individual, wants to make individual experiences this is all part of the change in values so standardized lives are no longer accepted you don't want to live like all the others so one is the cultural factor then the second factor is an economic factor and here you see that how industrial capitalism becomes saturated so goods can no longer be replicated endless times or there is no longer a demand for this but things have shifted towards a more cultural capitalism so where cultural goods are being strengthened and where the particularity, uniqueness of these goods is being promoted and highlighted and then a third factor is a technological factor and this brings me to the digital transformation revolution without the digital revolution you cannot explain and understand this expansion of the logic of singularization and that is what we want to look at in a moment so these three determinants cultural, economic, technological they are intertwined of course they are not independent from one another so I will now zoom in on the digital technological aspect and the other aspects will be in the background but they will always be part of the bigger picture you can't really separate those three factors so in how far do digital technologies encourage singularization and I will take all the details that we know from the analysis of digital transformation so I won't provide you with new empirical insights but I will focus on what form does the singularization take how is uniqueness being produced but first of all you need to realize that digital technologies are the general infrastructure behind the development of singularization so this double aspect of the general and the particular is particularly visible in the digital transformation so you might be surprised digitalization, singularization how do those two go together but digital technologies standardize a lot use a lot of standardization, rationalization general patterns and of course this is true and you have to accept this as the reality that digital technologies are massively involved in working on the general in all three aspects of digital technologies so what are digital technologies it's the best word that I use a lot that you will find a lot in the relevant literature so digital technologies are composed of three components one is computing the computers then digitalization digitization of media formats and then the third one is communication networks and in order to be able to differentiate between the first two elements man of agendas theory says that you have to realize in virtual computer technologies you see a convergence of two independent procedures and that is processes, that is one the computing capacity of the Turing machine the computer and then at the same time simultaneously the digitization of media formats so one is the computer the Turing machine which is something that from the very beginning develops standardization generalization by using algorithms so computers are what Weber calls formal generalization then the digitization of media formats this means that it is possible to use different media formats such as text, images and be able to translate those before you are not able to do that so audio was different from visual and from text so you could not translate one into the other but the binary code now enables us to do this so here we have dual generality too various media formats are being translated into a general format and can be used simultaneously and parallel to one another and the digitalized component which Manowicz did not see because his work dates back a little bit was the development of communication networks and communication networks between computers here so this means the internet really the digitization, digitization of a web protocol which provided the condition for a unique communication network so this too means work on the general because the internet means universalization everybody can communicate with everyone so here we have the three elements computing where that's about translation of various formats so digitization in the literal sense and then the third communication networks where you have dual generality where you have standardization, rationalization so that is the background, the infrastructure but what is really interesting here for me at least is that against this backdrop of this infrastructure something becomes singularized and that is what is new about digital technologies we know that technology can make standardization possible, rationalization that is not new but now we take this one step further and what you should not forget here is what is new and that is that digital technology changes what technology can do because it encourages the focus on the singular and unique so for 200 years technology was introduced on standardization, rationalization there was always cultural criticism here that technology kills individualism etc and now it continues to do so but at the same time it makes possible the exact opposite and that is singularization but singularization is not only becoming possible but it is also being encouraged and strengthened and of course you would have to be much more precise than I can be tonight but let me start by saying that this term singularization, singularities does not only refer to subjects but also to other entities such as objects, collectives, groups and the same applies to digital technologies of course they singularize subjects the presentation, self-representation of subjects, of people but then also of objects secondly and thirdly of groups or collectives you would have to be very precise and that is what I tried to be in my book I used examples to illustrate those various cases and tonight I can only give you a summary so cultural machine singularization processes that makes all of it a bit more complicated still because when you think about the level at which singularization takes place then you have to say that singularization takes place between the users or when the users make use of digital technologies in a social cultural space for example when it comes to profiles on Facebook singularization processes also take place within a machine so digital technologies are basically able without us users realizing that or becoming involved to singularize us as users, people analytics for example so we have those two levels of singularization one is visible for all of us we are very much involved in that in the social cultural space of the internet with web profiles, platform profiles but behind our backs singularization also takes place at a different level where machines singularize us because they are kind of observing us and can come up with an observation pattern or structure so this is what you need to keep in mind these two levels first talk about the singularization of subjects here the internet is part of the attention economy on the singular presentation of self so here the profile is the key aspect in the past one to two years a lot of many works have been published on profiles, on social media profiles and that makes so much sense because this form of profile is what defines or forms subjects on the world wide web and not only there but also in other parts of our late modern society just think of occupational profiles for example in the job markets here we are talking about digital profiles digital profiles that we know the profile first of all is defined as the combination of a picture with text just think of a profile social media, Facebook for example or a partnership platform occupational profile on the internet so the various levels where you have profiles, where you present yourself then there are non professionalized profiles for example on a blog where there is a text that you upload kind of make up your profile so the profile is a social form that structures communication on the internet so the profile is the combination of text elements and picture elements and that tries to make the person particular, singular, irreplaceable in your profile you don't want to look like everybody else but your profile needs to be a special profile where you are unique from anyone else Griezmann, US American sociologist wrote his famous book in the late 1950s that too describes how individuals try to present themselves as good as possible in their everyday life for example so it was always about however in that context it was always about being like the others so to be like everybody else but the internet is very different the way it works is very very different from that on the internet you want to highlight where you are different, you want to show that you are unique and the reason for subjective reasons the most important reason is that this raises your visibility your value and because there is a strong competition for valorisation on the internet so your profile is aimed at an audience and this audience on the internet in terms of the attention economy there is a market of attention and also of valorisation so where you are being evaluated and valued and the possibility of being more visible and valued higher is higher when you become singular when you become unique and highlight your uniqueness so Subjects to learn how to move on the internet learn how to become singular it's one of the central challenges in our late modern society and on the internet you learn that very early on and very quickly now zooming in you can look at how do subjects become singularised how can you come up with a profile we always talk about how something seems and not necessarily what it is like but how it is received subjectively and I talk about the composition of singularity here that you bring together different elements that is a central element the question is how do you become individual that's hard to say but when you look at those profiles the addition of various pieces so you have pictures you have short texts leisure activities, family aspects and just one by one they are not singular but very common but the combination of those various elements increases the singularity that is what a Facebook profile works like for example or any profile on social media the combination of various elements creates this uniqueness, singularity then also likes, links, all of that is part of this composition behind the profile it's quite fascinating really because the question of the individual that was asked in Romanticism it was a very mystic idea really Aristoteles but the individual that cannot be grasped and understood but now this singularity becomes something very mundane and it's all of that is really brought together and staged so the various texts, pictures, links, likes all of that forms a unique profile of course because that is always the aim but it's valued and valorized by other people, external people then what is also central when it comes to the profiles that it's not static they have to be changed and updated all the time so you have to add new short texts, add new pictures on Instagram for example so this is also in particular about the profile if you want to remain visible then you have to renew your profile all the time so that is also special about that you have to add new elements all the time and then another element that is also important when it comes to looking of the shape and structure of profiles that individuals try to visualize their individual experiences the feeling that you had when you last went to this rock concert you can't describe that but by posting a certain picture you might think you are able to convey this atmosphere at the concert so a picture of course is much more able to do this than a text to express what you experienced on the inside so these pictures also add to the uniqueness of your profile in this case when it comes to the internet as an attention economy of singular representations of self you can see very well how digital technologies make mass singularization possible how they expect you to be singular and how everybody participates in that I was very I took quite a bit of time to explain that so I have to be a bit more concise with regard to the other elements which you are probably familiar with from other contexts but I will interpret these aspects now against the backdrop of my thesis of singularization so the second aspect is the second element of singularization of subjects the first one singularization of subjects means the singularization in the public sphere and it is publicly visible that everybody can see and is also actively involved in but then as I mentioned before there is also a second path of singularization of subjects and that is where it is not visible behind our backs this is what we call data tracking and that's the second element so we as the users are being observed by digital technologies with the help of digital technologies we are being observed all the time and observation profiles are then also profiles that you don't upload on social media platforms but profiles that develop from data tracking so the websites that you click the goods that you buy consumption patterns all of that is being recorded and this creates a different profile people analytics comes to mind here you can use that for economic reasons or political reasons and that also results in singularization and I believe that this is quite revolutionary really and I try not to overuse revolutionary as a word but this really is revolutionary because technology does not look for the average person here but they really try to find the singular, the particular what is unique about a person so this is also a form of singularization let's compare this to genome sequencing for example a medical procedure that tries not to use standards and average values but see the individual as such as unique as individual so that is the second level as you could call it of singularization that is data tracking and then when it comes to the singularization of objects digital technologies also do that then here I think of two constellations, one is the personalized web I would call it singularized web but I was not the one to coin this term so the personalized web or internet if we take this as an object then it's not the same for all of us but it's tailored to the needs of the user so we see different things when we sit in front of our computers and open the internet browser for example on Facebook in our news feed we see different pieces of news or when we search for terms on Google the results will be presented in a different order depending on the other searches so the online environment is as the user so that is also a form of singularization so because the environment is tailored to us as the user to our needs and at the end of the day we are not aware of that we are not aware of the fact that it's not objective but tailored to us then another item here is softwareization so software itself becomes a technology so it's easier for us to be creative to create new objects new pictures new graphs, new texts all of that they are basically limited to certain standardized creativity because we are using certain tools but they make it possible for us to create text pictures etc. it's much easier for us by using this technology than for an artist who has to be genuinely creative and then last aspect is the singularization of communities which is also a central aspect so not objects and subjects have become singular but also the collectives so groups become singular and that is what we are talking about that the coming about of communication communities so on the one hand side the World Wide Web is a global network through which potentially everybody can get connected to everybody else but in actual fact certain communication communities come about and some of them are pretty closed off and separate from others so they are digital communities digital neo-communities they come about voluntarily around certain political theories around certain hobbies around certain interests and they establish a kind of group which in itself is singular so communities are kind of singular communities and they as a whole are singular it's not the individuals of which these communities are comprised that is singular but the community as a whole is individual or singular and therefore on the basis of that creates a certain feeling of identity so i think for me it you can also interpret these elements and you can interpret these elements as a kind of mechanism that does not promote the general but the singular feature of the communication community for example the singular feature that makes you stick out in this competition for attention things like that and what are the consequences of this digital singularisation if this really takes place in the way that i described it if we can interpret it in the way that i did then we have to ask ourselves what are the consequences of that i do not want to give any lump some condemnation in this big danger so in the beginning people were quite optimistic about the social media like democratisation boosted democratisation and so on now this has turned to the opposite that digitalisation creates a lot of pessimism like surveillance distraction so i do not want to highlight opti along the path of seeing it too optimistic nor too pessimistic but digitalisation opens up new possibilities and it also makes it possible for us not to have to be like others and it also provides small groups to form a community that organises themselves around a certain interest so in the early industrialised area that era that was difficult it was discredited from their own small groups but here digitalisation offers certain advantages and is a step forward but there are also disadvantages to this digitalisation and i want to mention four of them the first disadvantage is the compulsory creation of a specific profile so to create people are under constrained to create a unique profile that seems to be the expectation by society towards people something that in the past was a kind of opportunity for an individual person to develop certain special specifics that this now becomes a kind of compulsion because if you do not stick out then you stay invisible you do not get any attention at all but people have to make sure that they develop valuable singularities there are limits towards accepted by society so singularisation is a kind of tight walk so you should not become too conformist but not exaggerate either so there are new constraints that individuals are subjected to secondly erosion of a general public today we have lots of these small communication communities that form the question is do we have a general public so the hope of the internet wars that we get a global public so we now experience an erosion of this general public so the question is where is this general public now tell me this aspect everybody now gets their own tailored news and this means that there is no foundation basically for a general public a third possible disadvantage is the current moment towards what is new because what is new creates a singularity and draws attention and things that are new everything that is new contains the promise of sticking out of being singular of being special and that means that more connections and links are lost sight of very quickly and the fourth disadvantage that is this emotional culture of the extreme that is generally speaking this culture of singularity works very strongly with emotions and so this is very much in contrast to factual presentation of things which is not considered to be emotional whereas everything that is singular works very much with emotions this goes back to the era of romanticism where emotions were very important and what is general is very emotional and what is extreme is even more emotional that is what we can see on the internet so the internet also creates a kind of positive effect culture emotional culture so people always search people try to present themselves in a positive light try to talk about positive things so the singular in a positive sense of the word but in this also at the same time in this competition for attention negative feelings are also created so this this kind of internet culture can also create a lot of envy we cannot benefit from this system so we get a very polarised situation on the one hand side we have a very positive presentation by many people we focus on positive emotions but on the other side we also get a lot of focus on negative feelings and negative contributions and expressions on the internet so we can talk about that in more detail during the discussion thank you very much Andreas Rechnitz for this input we could talk about that for a long time we have about 40 minutes for us here on the panel and I would like to suggest that we split our discussion into 3 parts about to what extent singularisation is a result of digitalisation maybe we could expand on that in the second part of our discussion here we could talk about as to whether this has resulted into a crisis of the political or whether we can see the opposite when we for example look towards France at the moment and then in the third part we could talk about agency about control, about room for action what is left for us to be done on the basis of the diagnosis so I would like to present the panel to you Andreas Rechnitz is known to you in the centre of Jeanette Hoffmann who is a member of the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for the Internet and Society founded in 2012 and now she is one of the research directors and she represents the Wissenschaft Centre Berlin in this Humboldt Forum and she is also a professor for internet science at the University in Berlin and leads different important research groups in the status of this lecture series making sense of the digital society so welcome to you here on this panel Thomas Krüger has been head of the Federal Agency for Civic Education ever since the year 2000 so for 18 years now so the other member of this lecture series this agency's task is to offer civic education programmes to promote democratic awareness political decision making and information and to strengthen civic society all these seem to be things that are under threat by digitalisation as we heard and you are trying to counter these trends with your agency and maybe has quite a lot of experience with transformation processes he was one of the members of the movement that led to the fall of the wall and the collapse of the GDR and he also used to be one of the mayors of one of the districts of Berlin Mr. Reckwitz, I would like to start with you the era of Romanticism and when I discussed this with the other members of the panel we also mentioned Romanticism so the question was isn't that a kind of dialectical sequence of dialectic development of the history of this development towards Singularisation and we all came up this all for all of us this record the period of Romanticism but I think it is important when we talk about Singularisation that we keep this era of history in mind this short-term diagnosis and look only at a short period of history but that we look at a longer stretch of history, namely we ask ourselves where this emphasis on Singularity comes from and here I think it is really the era of Romanticism in the 19th century which was not only a philosophical or cultural or artistic period but also a cultural societal era and this had a major impact on citizenry and Rousseau developed this idea of authenticity of fulfilment of one's own potential, the uniqueness of nature the uniqueness of culture the uniqueness of certain places so this has brought about this greater degree of sensitiveness sensibility for what is unique so this dates back to the era of Romanticism this was kind of the seed for future cultural developments so this was only a very small niche at that time only a few small group of people actually thought about that or produced and wrote books about that and now we can have a look at how this continued about 200 years later so this stress or this emphasis on authenticity well this apart from certain cultures, this kind of culture of singularity became institutionalised in the area of arts in the artistic world so and now in modern art modern art is about being different about breaking rules sociology has never really had a great interest in in the artistic world so, but more in mass culture but in the arts and artists have always stressed what is singular and I dealt with the whole area of the arts more in detail during my research and I think it's very interesting because art is something social and it's not and so art introduces something that the people, that the protagonists of romanticism did not have namely in the audience and the romantic ideal was that authenticity is something between me and my own feelings and now here we have an audience with art, that is certain art critics or an audience as well this artifact is unique, that is special so singularity needs an audience and now we maybe have a kind of disillusioned form of singularity but it only depends on my own feelings but it needs an audience which says that something is special and as I said it's always the audience that gives an assessment as to whether something is singular so we are not only people of the era of romanticism but we have moved forward in another instant, the audience a kind of social group, a social instance and we are exposed to that audience when it comes to determining whether something is singular so in the era of area of art there are only very few recipients of art but now with the internet there is a big audience where all producers and recipients and a word that was not really mentioned during your presentation that is the term of neoliberalism and I would like to pass on the micro to Jeanette and last year the term neoliberalism was mentioned during all the presentations and lectures that we have had and something that came before digitalisation we talk about neoliberal, economic order as we have had it in the UK or in the USA so neoliberalism for you as an internet expert is that also a useful term in classifying a certain era well, I am a bit surprised by your question because I have tried to collect and come up with some arguments in order to react to what Mr. Reckwitz just said may I react to what he said or do you want me to comment on neoliberalism and the internet I would say that the internet is a child of neoliberalism digital data networks could have been developed conceivable in a completely different way as we have now them they could have been developed top down by the government, by the state and developed from the top so they would look very different from what we now have there is always a kind of interaction between possibilities areas of spaces of possibilities and this could have developed in a completely different direction we just lack the imagination to think of a different kind of worldwide web but it would have been more likely to have a different internet if it had been developed in the 1970s or 1980s so it is more an accident also an international development but I would like to go back to what Mr. Reckwitz just said when I read your books and listen to your lectures I always have two impulses namely to look for counter examples but I think many of your readers and listeners feel the same that you automatically search for theoretical or empirical descriptions that would counter what you disprove what you just said I want to pick up and mention three examples that come up immediately to my mind that is the printing press for example so your last piece of work was printed and it has created your singularities it was not the internet but it was the printing press that created your singularity and the printing press also was important during the era of Romanticism so the figure of an author who does not only pursue a certain job or vocation but now expresses his feelings and his soul he was able to do that thanks to the printing press so much of the success can be attributed to the printing press and also the thought of Walter Benjamin's artifact of reproductability namely the aura of the artifact disappears as a result of a technological innovation this brings me to my third point Elena Esposito's contribution concerning fashion so she said originality is created by imitating others so by that she describes a kind of paradox thing so my thesis namely in the past we had a trend towards the general and today we have a trend towards the special the singular so we have not a kind of paradox paradoxical relationship that we also sway from one side to the other that in certain times it is one aspect that dominates and in other times it is another the other aspect and this in particular has an impact on societal elites and not so much on those who spend that time imitating others well of course you mentioned important aspects so the question is are we talking about a certain class well firstly of course you can do very rough representation of that and when you give a presentation it's always of course quite large scale so this general the logic of the general and the logic of the singular I could have a closer look at that and how these two are linked I see that as a responsibility for me in my research but also in earlier times of modernity or going back even further we did that briefly so I would be very open when it comes to that but really to differentiate between those two aspects that as I see it as something that has not been done before so the conventional individualization aspects that others use do not bring us any further here so something has changed from industrial modernity to late modernity a lot really post industrial society but also in that relationship between those two a lot has changed but you can't give a quantitative measurement you can't say before we are 20% of singularization 70% you can't quantify that but what you can do is see there are certain areas for example where this development flourishes one mistake that we should not make is it's never about absolute objective singularization but it's about the social societal process how things are valorized and then you can say okay this is a mass product or phenomenon and there is the theory there is innovation that copies this innovation and then a new innovation has been developed and that is what we generally talk about when we talk about singularization too so it's a process that when you look at it from the outside it's very dynamic so singularity is taken from the people and given back to them again for example when it comes to old buildings they were considered for the rubbish tip at some point and today they are seen as something very precious so these shifting values that is very interesting in terms of the sociological perspective but I don't think it's an elitist phenomenon the internet is not an elitist phenomenon it's social media too it's not only stars film stars, movie stars that present themselves as singular but it's the new stars so it's a new medium that focuses on singularization where we see the democratization so it's not only the elite you said towards the end of your talk that it is an achievement to have mass singularization I didn't really always see that while reading your book and it's interesting also what you say about real estate the real estate industry would need a few more cultural sociologists it seems at least in Berlin there are quite a few but what I would like to talk about now young generation, the youth that is an important aspect in the work of Thomas Kruger you are doing more and more programs aimed at young people so not only aimed at academic audience at scholars but also at younger audiences and here I would like to come back to profiles if I understood well what you said you are talking about singularization effects at something that brings about authentication authentication so you authenticize and here I'm not sure whether there are different attitudes for how you deal with that for example younger people more playful less serious when it comes to that your experience with your youth programs do you see the differences that I just imagine that I just voiced is it a phenomenon you know from your work well yes it is our experiences are very contradictory because there are some youngsters who are very playful when it comes to social media profiles and others are much more serious like me so for example when I created my profile on Facebook I thought about it for a long time what would make me singular and then I decided to take a picture where a child is surprised so with many young people we work with when it comes to the internet we observe a lot of playful attitudes they are less serious when it comes to profiles they change their profiles all the time depending on their latest experience in everyday life they respond to that and use it playfully they always want to come up with a composition and I thought you described that very well what differentiates them from others from what I've observed it's always temporary so there's much more variation much more playing with your own profile and that is where young people differ from well the the good megalactic tested semesters like ours so could you to end this around and say that this is the code of the general now that it's that you learn how to represent yourself can you compare that to exploding cities in the second half of the 19th century where all of a sudden you had new public codes a public code and a private code so you had to learn the public code you can't have an authentic life in a big city it's way to tiresome and on the internet I guess it's a similar phenomenon you can't be authentic, you have to learn this code so there's this it's self evident that you stage your own self representation on the internet so it's the social logic of the singular that is just there but you learn certain practices and methods how to go about this so for example this logic of combination, composition how to compose certain elements in order to achieve uniqueness or the constant renewal to have differences when you add for example new elements so yes there are scripts, there are patterns and that is also interesting from a sociological point of view it's not completely unpredictable but there are patterns, there are practices there are sometimes even manuals that advise you how to go about this how to become singular, how to stage your travel experience do you have brochures like that how to represent yourself on social media at the BPPB Federal Agency for Civic Education well no no, really our work is based on our basic law but from my own background I can give you an example the issue of singularisation is something that I am familiar with as a social practice because in the late years of the GDI it was a matter of survival so what we know today as the unique travel experience the special vegan deal that you prepare at home so not being part of the norm that was part of the norm so that was also the general rule back then so for example our special travel experience to the former Soviet Union when we did not have valid papers so that were the tests really to test your courage in the GDI there is not mass singularities like Mr. Heikwitz described for today's era and that is where we see a major difference so it is probably part of modernity in general that the singular was always part of the general code but as a mass phenomenon it is only part of today's era supported by digital technology so that the institutions have to respond to that and in my experience there is no panacea for how to go about there is no blueprint we have always been successful in civic education with people who are well educated we invite them to a seminar and then they give all the arguments that is what civic education looked like for a long time so this process of asserting self assertion and today's civic education is much much more diverse we have very different formats aimed at different target groups so you have to think carefully about which target group you want to address with a certain event so civic education is becoming a privilege that is only given to those in a comfortable situation who are already interested in politics but is it not our role as an institution to represent and address the whole range of political interests for us it means that we try to reinvent our work every day because there are strong expectations with regard to civic education but there is not one blueprint but much more diversified blueprints for civic education to be successful that is a new experience and we have to respond to this development and we can only be contradictory in responding to that so is an idea well I would like to ask Mr. Reckwitz for western that just that I thought about just now so if I get your definition of singularization correctly then it is also to differentiate between pluralization and singularization but when your diagnosis is that you also achieve this singularization are we not really talking about personalization and is that the same for you or to put it differently individualization which is something that algorithms do today and singularization how are those three linked to one another so that question how to define those three and differentiate one from another so there is a great demand for definition and was never the center of sociology to deal with those phenomenons but we see the need for well differentiated definitions so why am I not talking about individualization well I don't want to say that you can't use this term it's a good term to use in certain contexts but it also means freeing subjects from social structures and social links and relationships but what comes after this freeing which direction do you go into freedom of freedom from and singularization is then about the scripts, formats that you are pushed into so it's certain practices certain forms of observation so it's social activities so now personalization maybe you're right in my book I reached a point a very difficult point when I realized that there's not only social-cultural singularization but also this digital technological form of singularization and that really went beyond my original definition of singularization so I called that machine singularization but this form of singularization does not share many of the aspects of sociocultural singularization nevertheless I continue to use the term personalization in defining machine singularization but it's a very particular case of singularization you could use a different term here for example personalization you could use personalize instead of singularize but so you basically see that you have those two modes of singularization the machine singularization or personalization it's two different things that are however intertwined so this brings us to the political aspect you do that a lot in the last chapter of your book where you talk about the crisis of the general that you interpret as the crisis of the political and that is the conclusion of your book or the outlook of your book that you provide and we've talked about that a lot micro targeting Algorithms are very good at that so focusing on the individual means shift in paradigm towards cultural economy so these are effects of singularization and we've talked about that a lot during this series of talks and events and today there are a number of strong repolitizization it's also part of friendships again today things that you did not talk about 10 years ago there are new trenches there are new groups that form Arab Spring, the yellow vests in France it's not a central phenomenon only in Paris there are new movements that use digital technologies digital tools a lot and without Facebook algorithms they would probably never had the relevance and importance that they have today so Facebook helped them to achieve something that we don't know what to call yet is it a social movement, is it resistance is it a phenomenon of the general or is it an effect of singularity looking at France as the most current example well I'm not trying to determine singularization as something that will remain like this so in the last chapter of my book I also talk about the lack of satisfaction with these singularization processes because they're not successful well you would need to look in much more depth into this so from post-industrial economy here the losers of this process the new middle class this is very strong in France is the middle class not part of this protest the old middle class is there but we have to differentiate between the two and be very carefully in doing so but anyway I believe we have those counter tendencies the re-socialization of the general also in the political era when it comes to the basic income the guaranteed basic income it's something that should be guaranteed to everyone so something that is valid for everyone so we have those counter-developments the question is how strong are they what is their effect what will be their effect what do you think when it comes to France sociologists are mostly wrong with their predictions well you would really have to reconstruct the general also in terms of political demands it's about very mundane demands so will they be able to make a program based on those demands I don't see this at the moment so the demand is a particular but the movement is a general one is what I'm saying from this stage in terms of quantitative terms ok so Thomas Kruger what I just described with the term re-politisation something that I believe I see in the whole of Europe and the western world is that something that makes your work easier at the BPP is your work easier today than 15 years ago you've been the president of the BPP for 18 years now so you've really been there for the entire process of digital transformation as the president of the BPP maybe you can tell us a bit more about the developments in terms of civic education and work has it become more difficult or easier well I would say that we are in great demand now but we don't have the solution and what we need is a solution for precise strategies in the field of civic education what we need is top down as an institution what we need is learning settings environments where we have interaction where we see responses from the various aspects of society social strata to current challenges and what we see more and more in our work is what Mr. Reikwitz describes as effect so society society focuses more on emotions they are the protagonist advocating open society a liberal modernity how they call themselves and their movement and then on the other hand we have the orientation towards communities, closed communities homogeneous communities we see that in our work in civic education and it's a major challenge it's not only a question of left wing, right wing when it comes to communities you have very left wing communities too collectives communities the farmers in Bavaria to defend themselves against Monsanto and not use Monsanto products you could say they are ultra conservative because that's what they vote but they're using left wing practices and that is highly interesting these processes are highly interesting and we can no longer use the old ideological classifications to measure those new developments and movements because that would always mean that you don't tell their stories properly and what really shocks me in your description Mr. Reckwitz and the response of the people to that is that this topic of the economy becomes a topic of the background despite the fact that there is so much precarious living conditions in both at the regional level and global level so many inequalities so neoliberal capitalism that it takes also the form of cultural capitalism as it's using a new tactic a new strategy so in the attempt to accumulate interest and attention we have to fight for something again and I believe that this criticism of the economy that we are losing in the current debate that is highly emotionalized the debate about values, about the way we want to live together that is a topic for us in civic education that we are trying to analyze at the moment and we try to develop new forms in those developments because I think it's impossible that we no longer talk about what this cultural capitalism produces so the shift from criticism of capitalism to extreme effect economy as a fourth negative consequence of singularization well I can only agree in my presentation but you see that this shift from industrial modernity to late modernity is a multidimensional shift where various aspects are intertwined and today we focus on the technological aspect of digitalization and the third aspect however is the economic factor so this shift from industrial modernity to late modernity can only be understood if you follow this shift from mass consumption mass production that reached its limits in the 1970s when we saw saturation basically and when we talk in this way about capitalism it seems like capitalism was a person who deliberately takes certain decisions but capitalism looked for new ways to generate digital goods the digital economy today is a growing industry but other goods are also becoming singularized in the tourism industry for example so in past modernity there was a generation of cultural assets Botanski's book just a few months ago one segment of cultural capitalism was described very well so without the cultural economic transformation we can't consider the bigger picture but of course you're right when we have a public debate that focuses on culture then we sometimes lose sight of the economic aspects but you have to really consider all those aspects together but at the end of the day I believe we don't want to talk about pure capitalism criticism but instead we have a digital development here, a technological development that has its own aspects and also cultural aspects but in the public debate there's always the need to pick out one factor that is the driver of the whole development either the economy or politics neoliberalism or technology but to really consider all those factors together that is something that we should focus on more I think we have only talked about two thirds of the questions that have come to my mind I think it's quite a stimulating debate here on the podium but now it's your turn and you would like to collect a number of questions from the audience, there are a couple of microphones in the audience and they will be brought around and of course you can ask questions to anybody on the panel here with the exception of me well thank you very much for the talk for the lecture, I have three different questions the first question points into the direction of this often being called a phenomenon of the elite, so a higher middle class things like that but I think we can also apply this theory to a kind of precarious sector like people who work in the area of caring for the elderly so so good care would be a part of the logic of singularity would you say that this makes sense when we have a look at the practical work or when certain emotions are created and the second question that came to my mind when I read the book is that there is often a link between emotions are created only if something is unique but I would say that a lot of emotions are created also in situations of solidarity so because then you, how can that be I mean here you are part of a collective and not as a singular entity or is there a trick behind that question this regards neoliberalism so the neoliberalism definition that I know is the one by Bourdieu and that is the dissolution of collective structures and a targeted way to replace it by market structures so if you say that this is a definition which is far too wide because you mix up different things in that and you don't agree to that or not or three fairly complex questions so I think it would be nice if the terms that I use would be used as tools with which you can see certain things but others not because their possibilities are limited and maybe the terms that I use shed some light on certain aspects but if you try to use these terms to look at the care industry and talk about singularity there and there's also the higher value is attached to what is singular than to what is general and applying that to the care industry is pretty difficult in detail and this second point is certainly one of the weaknesses of my books that I linked this term of emotion to the singular and one could also ask oneself whether we have also this emotional side to the general attached to the general sphere so for example in the political sphere there's also involves emotions so the actual situation is more complex than I described in my book so neoliberalism I'm somewhat sceptical about this term because it's kind of an old purpose tool now maybe it was easier 10 years ago but my understanding is similar to your understanding that neoliberalism has to do with competition, introducing competition even in areas where there was no competition before but neoliberalism is also a term that applies to politics state action or government action but neoliberalism is not everything there's also a logic of capitalism to neoliberalism of course as an influence on the economy but it does not determine the economy the same holds true for internet interesting what you said that we know that the internet could have been imagined in a different way than we have it now if we say that the current phenomenon of singularity is a result of neoliberalism that is not really I think we cannot really say that my understanding was that this is the kind of competition of private people of the private and that is what I would call a neoliberal trend also so we are running out of time so there are still the possibility for you to ask questions and then we have a look at our twitter account so this is less of a question than more of a comment I work in the field of environment politics and therefore I am interested in the transformation of the political sphere and what you mentioned by the way the difference between romanticism and digitalisation is that we now have a global audience and at the same time the audience is also a producer I can see that with our energy shift we see that this is not only about introducing renewable energy forms but everybody now turns into a producer and consumer of energy so this the term of singularity doesn't maybe cover everything because we also have globalization behind all that so singularity means here that we produce pictures and images and this is disseminated globally and we can reach enormously big audiences and they can react to that when I think about what this means in terms of political control then this would mean that the traditional political institutions are no longer represent such a clear cut political institution because we have an unlimited number of producer and consumers of politics basically and that is I think why we have this political crisis in terms of our large political parties or the appreciation of political institutions whether I would call that singularisation or no but I think yes singularisation sorry individualisation and personalisation this differs it's not the same but in the same way I think singularisation requires a kind of global audience but I think this process of globalization can be expressed with the words used by Mr. Reckwitz so globalization means that we have a kind of global stage created with these new technologies and on this global stage we can then have the formation of singularities so I think that is how one could express it but what you presented in your presentation was the basic technologies and the logic of the general are only a basic infrastructure I would not agree with that I would say that this infrastructure also has an impact on what we can express in terms of singularity maybe I can give an example for that so in the academic world we have something which is called the Hirschindex so because we are all now given figures which represent the impact of our work so it's kind of a Hirschfaktor and has a great impact on where academics can publish their work and what kind of audience they get so this is very important for our work and it is all pathological so here we cannot talk about mere infrastructure but what you distinguish here is in fact so closely intertwined because what can become singular is determined by what you could call the logic of the general and this stack factor has a global impact, a global effect of course there is also a globalization in the academic world and this is of course an infrastructure sets the conditions the form and also limits of what can result of something of a development and predetermines or pre-influences development and this globalization now is a challenge for the nation state so the splitting up of the world into nation states no longer fits our period of globalization and potentially the internet has a globalization the impact of the internet is has a globalizing impact but the question is as to whether we also have a global audience because that is quite a challenge for a nation state so if we have national politics and a global audience well how shall this go together this is certainly a challenge for a nation state this is somewhat limited by the language barrier but we can say that we have the possibility the internet is global but the audiences are often national in these yellow vests we see the pictures but still it is a national phenomenon so there seem to be global connections people have friends in other countries of the world but still there seem to be clusters of national audiences or national publics the question is as to whether this will stay like that will evolve and change but it seems to be fairly firm fairly robust, fairly strong this kind of national organization of the audiences and if we have a kind of transnational audiences then these are audiences that are tapped and used by elites so in the European sphere we can see there are quite a few platforms that offer text in several languages and they try to organize a kind of debate but those who take part in these debates are either cultural or political or academic elites and I think that is quite striking so these are not big public spaces we have them in our own national audiences so we are looking at our Twitter account so I think you need a microphone read out the comments and the questions that we have received through Twitter two questions, one question to everybody and one to Janet Hoffmann the general question are those who are not able to learn the new coding of singularization or will we return to the old trends of generalization of the general so of course they are part of society but there is something that we are observing those who are not recognized as being singular that they are disadvantaged in our economy of attention they are disadvantaged on our labour market they are disadvantaged with regard to fulfilling the standard in an industrial world this was sufficient to meet the standard but in our society of singularity that is no longer sufficient and you no longer get attention and this leads to frustration and people look for other valves those who are completely excluded who don't get any attention anymore and as a result of this crisis of the representative we also have a kind of mobilization that people look for new feelings of belonging in new groups so we have both phenomena those who are completely excluded so look for new alignments and new possibilities to empower themselves so enrage people who only listen to their emotions we can call them racists for example but the main result is that people get mobilized by that and re-enters the stage the political stage was was directed to Janet Hofmann you said that the internet is a child of neoliberalism and that it would look different if it had been developed by the state in the 1970s so how would you with distributed letter chain and blockchain how would you could share these DITs develop without neoliberal counter structures is not yet clear into which direction this will develop but we know that the greatest applause for this technology comes from libertarian tech groups and this applies to all of the visions as to how this technology can be used because obviously it contains the promise that one can do without a kind of central government or central state this could be replaced by technology namely that these procedures are somewhat autonomous that make state action impossible or not necessary anymore whether this will be the result in the end we had known but looking back we can say the internet is the child of a neoliberal orientation so cultural revolution and individualisation we are also part of that process but we cannot make any forecast on that because other movements could also have an influence on that which could then maybe shift into another direction so a final question to conclude I think it's probably a complex question but I would still ask you for a concise answer to that so this question regards our position as to how to how to deal with the negative consequences of digitalisation you mentioned those four disadvantages so how can we react to those four problems the attempts to deal with that through copyright law or just through transparency offensive that is what the EU tries to do and I think pretty European at least Europe is trying to find a solution for that or maybe academia could do something from sociology one could offer some solutions so maybe you could comment on the room for man that exists in order to reduce or minimise this singularisation effect I think it is important to say that technology determines everything or that the internet or technology forces us to act in this or that way but technology also depends on how we use it in our social context so there's always this possibility to take action this agency possibility it's not really an answer to your question but the imagination of sociologists of people in the political and cultural sphere of the economic so for example this was the imagination and many things are many developments are unpredictable and unforeseeable we have seen quite a lot of things and the populist movements that is also agency people who take action new movements the movements of the sovereigns and things like that that is something that is not foreseeable so I think economists and political scientists are always better in making such forecasts there are better than sociologists and we as sociologists do not forecast this you said that you can no longer do this top down you said that this is kind of like a self learning algorithm that is how you proceed about that do you see a possibility to teach agency in a better way I think institutions always have to review their own practices in civic education of the 1970s there was a kind of creed it's called the Bortelsbacher consensus which determines and defines the main rules of the game of civic education everything that is controversial has to lead to a controversial result the ban of overwhelming people so that is as a teacher in political education you are not allowed to overwhelm or try to convince your kind of student but you have to provide them with the tools to shape their own political views and that is something that we are debating very intensively at our agency at the moment because at that time this was subject to the principle of rationality only rational arguments were valid and emotional emotions were carried outside and now we are confronted more and more intensively with emotions emotions didn't play a role at that time and I think in our learning situations today we can no longer apply this ban of overwhelming people without reflecting emotions or the role of emotions because the political education comes from a tradition from a tradition where we always try to discuss everything rationally and where we try to keep emotions out and now emotions are so much in the forefront so that you can no longer continue along these lines regarding empowerment we had this action a YouTuber against racism there was a kind of remix by a rapper from Dusseldorf and then there was a remix produced by the people from the community of recipients they put their own versions of this song on the web and this turned into a kind of movement where we even had some festivals where people presented what they produced was a kind of co-production by the learners and that is one of the standards that we now apply to civic education namely that civic education has to be done through co-production learning forms not that somebody gives a lecture to the audience and tells the audience well democracy is this and that but we have to have this kind of elaboration process Janette, you had the longest you had all the time to think about your answer well I would like to talk about two things it's only for the past ten years that in the broader general public we've started to understand that algorithms are not a natural force that has just fallen fell out of the sky so for a few years now social networks are being put on those social networks in terms of accountability to explain the logics of their algorithms which are focused or aimed at producing high rankings for emotional contents so we can expect that these logics do not only have to explain and justify themselves but will also have to change that there is societal pressure on the operators of these networks and the algorithms that they use my second aspect is about what we describe as which issues that is political parties who make targeted use of topics such as migration even in times where no migration is taking place they push these issues to polarise the debate, emotionalise the public debate and this is where politics policy makers have the responsibility to change this focus and focus more on subjective arguments instead of increasing strengthening the emotionalisation which for the English word so that was a nice way to conclude our evening I had a present hidden somewhere in here oh it's disappeared, no it's still there so a little present for today's main guest Andreas Räckertz, thank you to Janet Hoffmann, Thomas Krüger of the BBB thank you to all of you in the audience who have stayed for this long and I'll see you next year