 Welcome to a special night at Kino International. We are happy you made it through the rain and the cold to make sense of the digital society. It's a night to listen. It's a night to think about the world we live in, to be more precise the digital world we live in. And it's a night to talk about it. So by the way, hashtag digital society. And we're going to do all three things tonight. I'm Miriam. I'm nice to meet you, although I can't see you very clearly. And I'll be the moderator for the next two hours. This night is not a singular event, but it's a whole starting point for a series that will take place over the year 2018. And it's a series that is hosted by two institutions. One comes from the side of scientific research, and the other one tackles citizenship education. So as a first start for tonight, we'll have a short introduction talk for the lecture and for the series by our two hosts. So please welcome with me Mrs. Hofmann and Mrs. Grüner on stage. So these are the people sitting on their couch and watching us via livestream. So we just say hi for a moment. Who are these two ladies? This is Jeanette Hofmann. She is research director at the HIC, the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society. Short, the Humboldt Institute. And this one is Pietra Grüner, head of the event department at BPB, which means Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, as many of you know. And in English I learned a new expression that's the German Federal Agency for Civic Education. Thanks for being here. Mrs. Hofmann, let's start with you because I think you are the reason we are here tonight because you had the idea for the series and for the lecture. To put it in simple words, how come? What inspired or perhaps bothered you? Yeah, thank you very much. I've been doing research on internet-related issues for quite some time, probably more than two decades. And it occurred to me in the last year that it's about time to stop focusing just on single issues and try to draw a broader picture of the social transformations of our modern societies. And I also thought this idea of generating a broader picture should be both historically and theoretically grounded and not just consist of anecdotes. So my idea was that we need to invite great thinkers and I also wanted to put an emphasis on European thinkers. And there is a reason for that as well. Most of the works we see on this issue of internet and society and its transformation actually come from the origins of the technology. Especially the US has put a lot of money into research on the process of digitalization. And my wish would be that we also cultivate a European perspective of build on our European research traditions. And then finally, I wanted to create a public discourse that not only involves academics but also the broader public. And that's why I'm so glad that we convinced the Bundeszentrale to help us doing that. And you're here tonight from the Bundeszentrale from the BPP. She just mentioned, Mrs. Hofmann just mentioned, the broader picture to not to have anecdotes but to know what it's all about, to see the big picture. Do you feel the people you address, like ordinary people, citizens like you and me, do you feel like a need for that? Or is everyone just happy with smartphone and hand and social media accounts online? Well, it depends a bit on who we are talking about because we have a quite broad range of what we call target groups. But what we observed during the last years is that there is a lot of, in the traditional, the traditional community of multipliers of civic education. On one hand there, like for example teachers, there is a lot of interest in more or less pragmatic questions. So how can they use digital media in school? How can they teach certain aspects of media literacy? But on the same time, there's also quite huge interest in these fundamental questions that will be raised during this lecture. But this always, that's how what we observed is it always goes hand in hand with a mere rejection of anything that has to do with digital society. And well, I or my institution, we are not sure where this leads to. If you have this attitude, doesn't it prevent to also discover good potential of digitalization? Doesn't it prevent to think deeper and to analyze how we can shape, how we can find the right prerequisites to participate and influence the way that the developments will take? And this is a very, very fundamental question for our organization. So it's one of the core topics and one of the cross-cutting topics that we are going to tackle next year. So it was a brilliant coincidence that Jeanette approached us for cooperation. And it seems quite a good match because you were talking about the big picture, the discourse and you talked about breaking it down, being pragmatic and making sense out of it. Let's talk about expectations. What do you wish to achieve with this series? One of my big issues is the question of agency, meaning who actually drives this process of transformation. Very often when we listen to the public discourse, it seems to be that the technology is nearly an autonomous force. And I don't think that it's an adequate way of looking at the change we are seeing. So we need to get a better understanding of the interaction between society and what we see as digitalization, how we actually acquire new technologies, what kind of projections, predictions we develop, etc. So what I want to achieve is that we sort of sharpen our view of what's going on and educate ourselves. Okay. What is the best that could happen tonight, Mrs. Grüner? The best that could happen tonight is that this would be a start to broaden the platform of discussion on the topics that have just been mentioned by Jeanette Hoffmann. Because what we observe is that the discussion about all this implication on society and politics of digitalization is discussed in more or less closed circles of experts in the academic world. And I think it's the right time to open the platform for the debate and, well, let's be blunt. I don't think that we have a representative, the representation of all the population in Germany here, but at least we started to mix the communities of BPP and the communities of the institute. And this might be quite fruitful, this might raise cross-fertilization of discourses and over the year we will take up some of the topics of the series of lectures and to break it down and to make it digestible for ordinary citizens. Let's look at tonight's guest because I think that the opening night sets a tone for the whole series. Why did you choose Manuel Castells? First of all, he's certainly the most suitable person to invite as an opening lecturer because he was actually the first one with a social science background who appreciated the significance of the changes to come. He started publishing his trilogy of the information age already in the mid-90s. That was at the time when perhaps most of the people here in the room didn't even know what the internet is. So I thought he would be the best person to approach and then I sent him an email and I couldn't believe it. He answered within a few minutes and said yes, he would come. I was nearly shocked and thought this must be a ghost, it can't be him. But he did decide to come because he also liked this idea of developing a European perspective. Okay, so it was a brilliant idea. Thank you for having it and thank you for sharing it with us. And obviously 500, 400 people came tonight to hear him and to start the series. Thank you very much. Thank you. So how do we proceed from here? We'll first listen to Manuel Castell and his lecture and then afterwards we can have a talk with him. And since it's a talk about digital society we use a digital tool so you can participate in it. The only thing you need for that is your smartphone where you can type in the questions you have during the talk. I'll explain later on how it works, it's not complicated at all and so we will be able to have a conversation with a lot of people in the room. So when we announced that Manuel Castell is tonight's guest the registration numbers jumped into heights unknown before so we guessed that you know who's here. So my introduction to him is quite brief. Senoras y Senoras please welcome with me influential sociologist Professor Emeritus at Berkeley, author of the Information Edge Trilogy, Manuel Castells, bienvenido. Thank you Miriam. And I would like first of all to thank the Humboldt Institute of International Society and the Federal Agency for Civic Education for their kind invitation that allows me to be here with you tonight to exchange a number of ideas about my research I had been conducting in the last five, six years. And I really want to thank all of you for your interest and presence here through the cold night of Berlin. And I'd like particularly to be here with you tonight and I can tell you that it's the secret about why I answered immediately to Jeanette. I have a deep appreciation for Berlin in many ways. Among other things now Berlin is widely considered one of the key notes in intellectual culture and the actual cultural political innovation in Europe. And this is acknowledged and this is one testimony to human resilience and to the ability to overcome the mysteries of wars and states and bureaucracies to ultimately have this thriving culture in every aspect to relax before the lecture. I spent a significant part of the night yesterday night at the Berliner Republic Cafe which as you know is open until 5 a.m. and that confirmed my impressions of Berlin. I have been several times but I have not been in the last eight years so there was about time to come back. Of course my most significant experience in Berlin many years ago I came to Berlin even at the time in which was a divided Berlin but of course the most significant experience in Berlin was in the early 1990 when the moment was still the GDR was there but it was possible to cross the wall and with a small group of friends both Russian and German we crossed the wall like seven times in a row to make sure that that was possible and that what seemed to be unthinkable was starting to create a world that would unite rather than separate and I was very moved by that experience and since then on I have been coming regularly I presented in Berlin the German version of my trilogy on the information age a few years ago and that continues to be part emotional part intellectual interest to be somewhat a little bit part of your society as you know some people know I spent much of my intellectual life in Berkeley but now in Los Angeles but still I spend more or less half of my time in Europe mainly in my Barcelona but also going to other places in Europe to feel the vitality of this cultural interaction my lecture tonight will be relating just for the last time sure, thank you you know the only technology that never worked is the sound technology in the lectures so sometimes I decide to just throw away the micro and peak on myself since in my young age I was a actor in theater very close to sociologist and then I speak with my own voice but now I trust German technology so now I'm going to speak with some detail from here so the topic of my lecture today to some extent is for me the most important topic of the research I have been doing for quite a while as some of this is my book communication power but throughout the last six to seven years this has been my obsession because power relationships are the foundational relationships of society this has been my leitmotif throughout my entire career power why? because those who are empowered determine shape the institutions and the norms that regulate our lives so in that sense power relationships are the foundational relationships of society are the DNA of societies however, wherever the interesting thing is that wherever there is power there is always counter power and in that sense my analysis is not an analysis of domination in the classic tradition of social sciences it's always an analysis of domination counter domination power relationships and resistance to this power and the ability and the possibility for people whose values and interests are excluded from the institutions of society to voice their dissent and to attempt the change of the institutions that construct society and in fact our historical experience then and now is always determined by the interaction between power and counter power a relentless interaction there is no social peace, sorry is an endless constant interaction between the attempt to impose interest from the institutions and the attempt to change the institutions democratically or through different means to be able to introduce new values and new interests in the institutions of society and therefore the power has always been largely exercised through two main means and this is also the way power has been conceptualized in the social sciences tradition there are many forms of power but fundamentally there are two major processes institutions of power coercive power persuasive power the power over the bodies the power over the minds meaning on the one hand power in the Max Weber tradition as the monopoly of legitimate violence by the state well I say the monopoly of violence legitimate or not over the state that's really what has been considered the main form of power but always has been another form of power that is the capacity of shape minds to elicit the consensus of the subjects by the action of different centers of power in society or at least the resignation of the subjects that that's the way it is and we cannot do much about it this is a fundamental process of power which goes long tradition in the social sciences Foucault but also to some extent the notion of Gramsci about the hegemony in society was related to this capacity to shape minds to shape the way we think however again this both coercive power and persuasive power can be resisted and irresisted and people react against their inability to be able to go into the discourse into the debate in ways that they are protagonists of the debate and that they reshape the debate and again so there is power and counter power there is coercive power and persuasive power in both cases and in both cases but particularly in persuasive power all depends on information and communication information and communication had been the critical tools of power and the critical tools of counter power throughout history why? because through communication people are connected so if the process of communication is controlled by those who are in power then the signals that people receive in their brains comes from a system of values, interests, symbols that are adapted to what the powerful think or would like that people think about themselves and vice versa the only way to change is when people who do not agree do not accept the social order communicate with other people who have similar attitudes and similar experience in my language to reprogram the process of communication in terms of their own interests and again this communication system this information retrieval system never ends and is in a constant dialectical relationship however information and communication are the key factors in the accumulation and distribution of wealth and power in society and this is about history and the actual processes that determine information and communication largely depend on specific technological paradigms meaning communication is very different depending on the communication technologies and information technologies of each type could be the printing press could be the church discourses from the church authorities but throughout history the distribution of pamphlets has been essential in any kind of revolution so in other words the way we think doesn't depend only on ourselves or some abstract culture in the metaphysical sense the way we think depends on the signals that we receive from others so the connection between our neural networks and the communication networks on which any social activity is based now and in that sense technology does not determine but is an essential medium of organizing communication and the interaction between our neural networks on the basis of communication networks the fundamental transformation of our time is the advent of ubiquitous digital communication and information networks very good student of mine German actually Martin Hilber an economist finished his dissertation with me in Los Angeles in 2010 and published his summary of his dissertation in the journal Science which is considered a standard of scientific research and his dissertation was for the first time he calculated the the entire information existing in the planet and the platforms in which and countries and institutions in which this information was processed he showed that 92% of all the information in the planet measuring in bytes 92% was already digitized now the proportion is about 95% 96% so we live in a planet in which the almost entirely information is digitized which allows therefore two things allows the existence of a common language of communication between different sets of information and second allows the ability of processing information digital technologies to recombine to exchange to move at high speed in terms of volume and complexity the communication process and how this is transmitted well the other just give me it's not really data it's illustration it's reminding you where we are in our society the currently this 92% 96% of digitized information the overwhelming proportion is accessible by internet and wireless networks of communication we have today 4 billion internet users in the world on a planet of 7.5 and we have 7 billion 7 billion on a planet of 7.5 wireless communication numbers not devices not phones subscribers meaning numbers where you can call excluding children under the age of 3 although probably this is coming the moment where they have also their personal wireless number that means that we have a planet which is entirely connected of course with different technologies different capacities and particularly different cultural and educational capacities to use this communication but we are connected and in addition we already have at this point 50% of the adult population of the world has a smartphone that is a computer in a wireless device so in this new environment a number of things are happening that deeply affect the institutions of power making and wealth making and here we have to remind which are still the fundamental logics of these institutions institutions in general in society are organized around the state and productivity and the status of wealth in our society is organized around capital state and capital are still the cornerstones of our social organization so they still dominate anything that happens even in the new technological environment although one of the critical matters about the internet is that the users of the internet have shaped the actual technologies and content of the internet use throughout their history both state and capital however operate in a given technological environment in our societies that is the digitization of everything states seek to establish and maintain power capital seeks to increase profits this has not changed power is maintained by institutional control of communication either governments or media control by big corporations the maintenance of power require extensive surveillance for competition with other states and for keeping order internally while capital expansion depends on the relentless capacity of commodifying everything transforming everything in a commodity that can be bought and sold and again in both processes information and communication meaning digital communication in our society are essential indeed the internet was characterized and it is as a technology of freedom of free communication and it is technology of free communication because simply because those who designed the internet technologies in the 1960s 70s deliberately tried to have to design a technology that would be difficult to control is one of the greatest paradoxes of internet history that even if the program that led to internet was financed by DARPA the Defense Department of the United States Research Agency they actually was not intended as a military use by any means was actually funding computer scientists working in designing new forms of computer communication and at the beginning they really didn't know what to use for they mainly they tried to use it for using the capacity the spare capacity of computers to increase time that they could use the computers by sharing the capacity of idle computers but very soon they derived to other uses and the most important first email list that developed by the computer scientists mainly in the university campuses was about sharing science fiction movies and novels and the way to buy weed everywhere this is the source of internet collaboration the however through that these technologies and that's the critical point technologies of freedom are only as free as they are used for freedom but the fundamental transformation is that all communication became digitized and interconnected and created the basis for massive global digital surveillance which is the most important expression of power in our society digital surveillance is comprehensive in an entirely integrated digital environment is what we call the digital exhaust the digital exhaust means that all the information is connected and therefore can be treated as a system the key issue is connecting credit cards phone calls computer activity search history ID numbers financial transactions email communication social networking sites and all the interaction in the social networking sites because there is the possibility of connecting everything with everything there is also the possibility of surveilling retrieving information and organizing this information in the interest of those who surveil so what has emerged particularly in the last decade is what I call a global surveillance bureaucracy that whose major quantum leap took place after the 9-11 bombing of New York because that created the basis for funding and legal support in the United States and then throughout the world of extraordinary powers given to the surveillance agencies particularly in the United States the NSA the National Security Agency but all major countries have strengthened the power of surveillance of their own agencies GCHQ in the United Kingdom it's it's probably the most sophisticated surveillance agency and the BDN agency in Germany is also a powerful surveillance agency and they are all connected that important thing they are all connected with France and Israel et cetera they are all connected and the connection is extremely important because legislation in some cases forbids surveillance agency to spy citizens of their own country so what they do is very simple and this is real life as examples the French spy the Germans the Germans spy the French and then they exchange information so that's the most direct and important expression of the logic of power in the digital age is the the formation of of a fundamentally panopticon of extraordinary proportions in which everything is known by governments with very little judicial control in fact at the same time there is a different process that comes out from the state but from capital and the logic of profit which is the commodification of information whose most important effect is transforming consumers of communication meaning everybody into data we are all data that become and these data are key commodities these data are at the basis of the business model of all the major internet companies Google and others in the sense that as they say in Silicon Valley you are not paying for the service you are paying with your data you are the currency and this goes into advertising goes into political manipulation goes into everything but the most important thing is to retrieve the information from everybody and here is certain paradox but it's a very important one a defining one because communication is free communication free in the sense that people can communicate with everybody because of that there has been a massive decentralization of communication at the same time there is a massive concentration of information meaning all the major companies as well as governments concentrate information from what from the the massive practice of people communicating with everything and with everybody on a daily basis so because we actually communicate everything the information retrieval agencies can pick up all our information without any problem precisely precisely because we are a highly communicated society at the same time there is a high level of monopoly of information both by the state and by private companies yes we have the notion that we have the rights protecting rights in terms of digital privacy well as you know Scott McNeely the founder and CEO of Sun Microsystems in 1999 already issued the famous statement privacy in the digital age get over it there is absolutely no privacy yes companies have privacy policies but Google has a privacy policy please go to the Google website and read what is the privacy policy of Google I can tell you the only information this is citing the only information Google reserves the right to obtain and process from its users is the only one name address location email phone number credit card number search history browsing habits purchases and selected content of emails other than that privacy respected this is the official privacy policy I'm not being demagogic I'm trying to be analytical always so now we are moving into the direction of a new form of total networking and digitization what is called in the pop culture the internet of things meaning that what is connected increasingly is machines connecting machines with machine connecting objects and creating a hybrid network in which we are connected among humans but each one of the humans are connected with objects and these objects are connected among themselves and the machines of different companies are organizing the connection according to their programs certainly their programs are ultimately programmed by humans but at the same time the logic of this connection follows certain protocols certain algorithms that's the key algorithms are most cases both for the governments and for companies are secret and these algorithms include criteria such as the ability of a given network to reprogram itself constantly according to some metaprogram to make it more efficient more comprehensive and faster so we are not that we are moving this is not science fiction I never do science fiction what it is is we already are in a world of not billions but trillions of networks that all of them are programmed outside control and all of them ultimately have their own logic which is partly technological and partly linked to the interest of the state and of the large internet companies now the states and companies interact through all kind of technological economic and institutional corporations they have the companies have contracts for the surveillance agencies the surveillance agencies make favors to the companies but this is not exactly the same logic in fact during the key moment in which the national security agency was given all power to do everything they wanted there was technologically they were not very advanced particularly they were not able to break some of the encryption procedures so they actually got most of the technology from the private sector and particularly from the usual suspects from Google from Apple from Facebook and the companies that originally were developing the new communication technologies but at the same time there are some important contradictions because they if consumers start panicking about their total lack lack of privacy then they could try to protect the information through the one procedure that companies fear the most encryption and control by them the battle over encryption is a fundamental battle because it's ultimately the only way in which we could protect ourselves and the ability the diffusion massive diffusion of encryption capacity which the technology would be common but the actual code of each encrypted message would be different and controlled by the user this is what punish governments and what panic companies now companies fear that if they push too much in the logic of controlling and providing information of every one of us to governments then the backlash could ring their business model that remember their business model is our voluntary delivery of our lives transformed into data for this data to be sold and organized in the entire commercial world so that we can be targeted as consumers we can predict the potential behavior you go to someplace to a restaurant they will know exactly your supposed culinary taste the same thing with books the same thing with everything that's why companies Amazon and others provides you with a list of the things that you are supposed to do because you have done in the past so you become a linear program trajectory in which you are the reflection of yourself the rest of your life and every is a very flexible programming so you change habits well this is also goes into the program and you are guided in the new direction so the logic of power it's not the same thing not the logic of commodity because the logic of power as the head of the national security agency of the United States said well you know to find indications of a terrorist activity is in the in the wall at large is like fighting a needle in a haystack so to do that I need the entire haystack meaning the entire set of information everywhere and then the programs can work but this is the logic of power again it's not the logic of commercialization and commodity so there are contradictions and even in some cases companies like Apple have resisted in other cases Mark Zuckerberg has led a movement to stop the government of forcing the transmission of data and in other cases companies simply play this game of resisting and cooperating depending on moments so it's a complex logic it's an interactive logic it's not the same there are two different logics but the two logics together control the entire information system on which our life depends which are the consequences of this but first of all democracy is threatened by comprehensive surveillance because there is a symmetry between the surveillance and the surveillance meaning state and companies have access to information to the users of information to the users of information and the users don't so it's one fundamental difference in asymmetry in our society privacy is of course obliterated by the commodification of data without consent so this analysis and this logic apparently moves toward the so-called Orwellian universe of big brother controlling everything fortunately things in history and in our society as well are more complicated because people have their will and their capacity and even if they don't know technology they have a passion for their freedom in general terms and institutions of society are not one-dimensional institutions they are the result of historical struggles between control and resistance to control so wherever there is surveillance and where there is breaching of privacy there is also counter surveillance and the defense of privacy operating along various lines of action such as there are there are a number of legal regulations dependent on the institutions political judicial institutions for instance there is more protection in the European Union than in the United States by far let alone in China however state both state and capital tend to counter the autonomy of these institutions this unstable balance depends on policy choices and ultimately there is in the case of government there is always one key argument national emergency security in a world threatened by terrorists in a world in which the powers of governments are constantly increased there is always the possibility to activate some legislation which goes to through the judicial authority like FISA in the United States with to obtain permission and with the judicial permission then they can operate legally with total control of information how this works very easy FISA has a number of judges and I could tell something similar about Europe number of judges which are accredited by FISA judges that are in principle independent judges but statistically speaking no one single decision by the national security agency has been reversed by a FISA judge not one in the last 20 years that the institution existed so national security and emergency had become the cover of every attempt to curtail the liberty and privacy that democratic societies in principle have but again there are still a number of judicial and legal protections that limit the power of surveillance also technologies of privacy protection encryption and others which hackers continue to develop every day as a way to resist the control and the monopoly of information there are also a number of activities by legal social activism number of organizations such as the electronic frontier foundation Greenpeace and others that try to show the limits of the surveillance power for instance Greenpeace was able to detect the location of the repository of data of clandestine data by the national security agency in a remote area of Bluffdale, Utah and then flew a blimp over the repository Greenpeace blimp with an arrow saying here is there are the data of your illegal spying which of course created the whole uproar in other words and the electronic frontier foundation files constant lawsuits against the United States the same thing in the European Union are multiple actions as well as in the UK multiple actions of legal defense against the system hackers have developed all kind of technology networks to protect free communication and freedom of information in this particular context for instance the network constructed originally from Sweden but later expanded to other countries tour the onion router that for instance was able to maintain internet working partly in Egypt in 2011 in the time Egypt cancelled internet or tried to cancel the internet for five days until they gave up because they were not able to then a very important activity of the whistleblowers like Snoutham and others Snoutham is only the last one that there were many others within the security agencies of the United States and of the European Union people who out of principle decide that they have to denounce what's going on Snoutham what happened with him is that he knew what happened to those who were whistleblowers before him who were literally damaged for life you know persecution in terms of confiscation of their goods of their homes or their everything they were ruined forever so he prepared his exit way in advance to start his activities of collecting data about what the NSA was doing as part of a heroic mission to respond to this kind of against the principles of the American democracy of course he ended up in a Moscow suburb so everybody has concluded that it was a Russian spy from the beginning was not such he tried to do something else he tried to ask for political asylum in some of the democratic regimes in Latin America particularly he was trying to go to Ecuador but he couldn't he couldn't because once he was in Moscow escaping from Hong Kong every flight in which he was suspected that he could be including the flight the flight of President of Bolivia Evo Morales would be intercepted over the European airspace to search the plane to detain Snoutham so at one point just simply he couldn't move at all and so he's still there and I would guess that at one point the Russian influence starts being significant but was not the origin of his of his resistance and as well as the very controversial case of but important of weak leagues in which they are not the whistleblowers but they publicize and they distribute throughout the world the informations of illegal or not public activities from governments and companies that should be known by the citizens but they are not they are not so in other words this is to show that the more we go deeply into this system of systematic surveillance and breaching of liberties and privacy at the same time in many different ways individuals organizations social activists, technological activists react and create a counter dynamics which is different moreover there has been the rise today nowadays of what is known as citizen journalism using surveillance technology to surveil the surveillance and to surveil those abuses of power police brutality to financial wrongdoing these today one of the most important transformations is that anyone with a cell phone with a camera meaning all the cell phones practically can surprise some personality some bureaucrat, some politician some leader of a company anyone doing something wrong or ethically wrong or legally wrong and can take the picture and upload it immediately and that starts a whole process of denunciation, protest and sometimes legal action this is what social movement these days do systematically against police brutality everywhere that's an incredible instrument of control that's why every time that people start talking about well, we are in a terror state because all these surveillance comes up in our life but I can tell you that politicians these days when they do not behave and many of them don't they live their lives underground most of their lives they spend their time making sure that nobody sees them, that nobody knows about their financial deals et cetera et cetera et cetera so it's both, it's both we surveil and we can't surveil all the time and then of course there is a fundamental change that has taken place in social movements around the world with these particular technologies has been the rise of what I have studied lately of network social movement that is social movements that start outside traditional political parties and traditional institutions and that they organize their own connection on the basis of spontaneous uprising usually triggered by outrage and not necessarily by ideology and then from there they grow into major social movements such as Occupy number of years of the Spanish 15 of May movement and movements all over the world in Latin America in Asia even in Africa so the social movements of our time are movements in which the capacity to organize their own communication networks on the basis of their own ideas and their own outrage shared with others without necessarily having an organization without having a common ideology without having a common project these have been completely transformed thanks to their capacity to use a free communication system to bypass the traditional controls now as you know a number of people but usually traditional media and as well as the politicians of all kind have downplayed the importance of these movements and well they get tired, they produce nothing well in my book Nervos of Outrage and Hope I showed a number of key examples of actual political change and political transformation in many countries linked to the triple effects, to the second level effects of these social movements that do not happen in one day because they are not violent movements in any way but they use the transformation through the minds of the people so the process is social movements organize themselves on the basis of horizontal new forms of free communication networks based on the internet and wireless communication interactions symbolic actions sometimes through the internet but mainly is through the combination of internet and occupation of urban space and the connection between the two sets of Nervos, urban networks and internet networks on the basis of this they create what I call a space of autonomy this space of autonomy is the beginning of the ability to connect with other people who are equally outraged and at the same time start deliberation and process to provide alternative projects in society without going through the same traditional channels of political organization all right these movements through their action even if they don't seize power in the sense of occupying the state what they do is they influence the transformation of consciousness in the minds of people as has always been the role of social movement social movements are fundamentally aiming at changing the values of society as the environmental movement as the feminist movement as the identity movement of many different kinds so the same thing with this kind of Nervos social movements through their action the minds of the people change and eventually in some cases political changes also happen at the level of institutions example of this transformation of the Spanish political system through the actions of the parties that resulted from the 15 main movement particularly the so called Podemos which now controls about 20% of the Spanish vote or the most recent example because I like also to show the examples that happen with some effects after three four or five years after the movement the example in the Chilean presidential election in which the leaders of the student movement of four years ago now decided to create a new party because neither the right or the center left respond to their aspirations and they in the first election they have obtained over 20% of the vote and therefore they are becoming the arbiters of the new election the new presidential election in Chile and for you to see they had the leaders of the movement were so young that they could not reach the legal age to be president so they have to ask a friend a nice woman could you be our presidential candidate because we cannot if we win so in other words the connection goes through communication networks that creates a process of mobilization that ultimately affects not just the people who are in the movement but the society at large for instance in the case of Spain there were 70% of the population was in agreement with this movement in the case of the United States against what is considered the failure of the Occupy World State Movement it actually had a significant success and obtained a support of about one third of the population in terms of of the support of the movement and the hostility only of 20% of the population there were significant in changing the public opinion particularly among the young people of America now when someone would say well okay so what a nice political effect Trump point is the Trump as much as one can say the mystery of these ignorant sexist, racist arrogant, narcissistic guy becoming president of the United States has to be understood as a reaction against the establishment of both the Republicans and the Democrats that what made possible the election of Trump but on the other hand there was also another anti-Stalisman candidate in the Democratic Party that had serious chances and in fact the studies show that he would have beaten Trump in the general election Bernie Sanders, senator who was part of the Occupy Movement literally part being in the camps of the Occupy Movement and therefore triggered a huge mobilization among the young people that was crushed in the process of nomination by the bureaucratic apparatus of the Democratic Party to present in the most unbelievable mistake in politics to present the superstalisman candidate Hillary Clinton financial establishment and political establishment against the anti-Stalisman candidate so even with that Trump being as as he is Hillary won the popular vote by 2 million but Trump concentrated his support in key states where the working class had been hurt by globalization and he was able to win but Bernie Sanders both had won in these same states and was actually pushed out of the race by their own Democratic Party establishment this is not to go now into this electoral analysis is to show that there were also important effects of the network social movements in the political system even in the United States I could go country after country when there was a movement it doesn't mean that because there were no movements in our countries when there was a movement that had a significant effect now these social movements could not have existed without the capacity to communicate through digital nervous of communication absolutely not could be some protest but what they were what they did was possible because of this new communication technologies problem is of course that they were able to do so but at the same time they were somewhat prisoner of the network technologies that existed they communicated through Twitter through Facebook through Instagram etc however they are very conscious of that and they have developed a series of new technologies of communication that could be encrypted and not controlled by for instance Facebook just in case toward the future particularly they developed some technology encrypted technology on N-1 the problem is that very limited it works very well in small networks but not in large networks but a number of other experiences and ultimately all these movements are massively using a different kind of networking technology Telegram that was developed in Germany by Russian hackers that immigrated from Russia but work on the possibility of generating encrypted technologies for the communication of social movements independent from the other major institutions so internet ultimately has become has shown its potential as a space of free expression and disintermediation of communication control that's why the defense of internet freedom has become one of the fundamental political battles throughout the world because of course internet in itself cannot be controlled but it can be intercepted in many ways and also those who propose messages that are anti-establishment in the internet identified for instance in China and punished however I always say having studied in depth the Chinese system of control that yes the messenger can be identified and punished and sent to prison and there are many many hundreds of Chinese activists in jail however the message cannot be intercepted the message as such would have to be intercepted in the entire internet and this is literally impossible so if you are the messenger that's important but if you are the message you can go on and live and communicate and diffuse and in that sense internet is a space of free communication free communication doesn't mean the kind of freedom for the uses that we would like in the formative terms the Trump movement was very active in organizing networks of racist and sexist mobilizations and the same thing in Germany with the neo-nazi parties an alternative for Germany etc etc so the fact the internet has free communication it doesn't mean that this is for the good uses according to each one's taste is for whatever happens in society internet is the mirror of society how good or how bad society is each one of us that is immediately reflected in the internet so the key question is not about if technology is good or bad because it's not as the great historian of technology, Marvin said technology is neither good or bad neither it is neutral meaning what? that is very important but the effects are undetermined internet is used to be and is a free communication system but the uses of this freedom are socially determined social media, social networks now are largely taken over the communication space and largely pushing aside the mass media mass media were not always reliable the first system of communication and not always as truthful as they want to say they are for instance remember the great New New York Times reporting the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq helping to trigger the war but to a large extent the most important thing now is not the replacement of one system or another but what I call a general cacophony of information and ideas in the social networks the period of post truth lies are called post truth so everything is there lies, bots that multiply by hundreds and thousands the fake news that are circulating in the internet and in the social networks can we do something about that yes and no because technologically even if some of the bots programs can be deactivated by fake news is literally impossible to control if people produce fake news if people pollute the information over the internet so the only answer is the ability educated citizens informed citizens to actively participate in these exchanges and correct the information and correct the ideas according to their experience, to their values and to their interest and I finish the issue is that in a new technological environment which I have tried to show the historical novelty we still have the oldest social struggle we still have the struggle against the abuses of power from the state and the exploitation from monopoly companies and this struggle continues to be and will continue to be in defense of the freedom and dignity of the humankind new technologies all the issues all forms of oppression and all new forms of struggle and response to the oppression thank you for your interest coming Miriam thanks for coming so it's time for our talk now and not only between Manuel Castells and me but between you and him if you would like to tweet yeah because I have my own if you would like to twitter the hashtag is digital society and if you would like to participate here or from your couch or sofa or whatever wherever you are you can use your smartphone if you need the internet right here at Kine International the password is digital 2017 so you can just open your browser and go to the website that is down here manti.com and the next step is that you type it in the code you see there 847094 and with that you should be able to type in a question it's the same like in twitter it's 140 characters so be short be precise with your questions and let's just try out if it works good question the problem is that we said 500 people in a room if we have one microphone it's a question of power who gets it so we chose to use that tool so that many people can participate I can tell you one problem there is no escape in that sense you can counter with your ideas what the surveillance tries to impose but this is being recorded and it's being streamed so we are in the system you know we one thing sorry that I anticipate but this is a critical point how well it's very simple don't be in facebook don't be in twitter don't be in any social network at all don't be in youtube don't be in anything don't use google of course don't use Baidu if you are in china don't use anything and in addition don't use credit cards and never give your ID connected to any electronic transaction that you have and if you do bitcoin be careful because bitcoin also transmits data ok so the way not to be in the digital exhaust is not to conform to any of the current practice and habits of society that's why it's so tricky so we're not citizens anymore I see that it's working the tool is working we I would like to ask you to just type in shortly why you're here you have already typed in some questions let's just see why you're here tonight because Mrs Hoffmann for example she said I'm here to have the bigger picture that's why I'm here my reason for being here so let's just check out the tool if it works and write why you're here what your reason is to be here interest is one answer to better understand our society today is one of the reasons that you this is the audience that's not me and there's someone writing master thesis on discursive power on twitter so it's a concrete academic interest I would say ok so let's go on to the question part so you can type in your questions now I just put on the next slide so you should be able to type in your questions and we continue why we're waiting for the questions Senor Castells I switch between Spanish and English I'm sorry oh I'm sorry you mentioned that shaping our minds is where power comes from the key to shape minds is the fundamental source of power and you once said that torturing bodies is less effective than shaping the minds this is why pure repression won't last so let's see where that power exactly comes from how does it work let's have a closer look at it well it can be promoting the main thing is resignation can be promoting the idea that your life is better if you simply mold your life what is happening already and the instructions that you do if you are a good citizen in the sense that you just follow the norms and you follow instructions as women of three generations ago were told by their mothers and grandmothers you have to do this way and this way or you will not be able to marry and then you are in trouble that's one way the other which is more and more frequent is what I call resignation meaning there is no other way and the system in terms of when you don't follow some of the basic rules of society you may end up in very bad situation in terms of paying your rent going on with your life having a regular job that determines everything else that happens in life so ultimately since alternatives to the existing order are not very visible since what used to be party politics has become two different versions of the same form of life and domination well then people are discouraged in terms of any possibility to change their life so they go into their intimate life their private life they go into try to make my life in a way that at least I have some pleasure of existence with my friends, my love my family, my work but only as long as you keep it within your individual existence and projects you will not find obstacles if you try for instance what we just discussed for instance if you don't want your life to be known completely known in every detail you have to become a marginal person in this society imagine that you don't want to pay with credit cards well because by the way the most important element of loss of privacy that we have through your credit card everything is known because then it's connected to everything else so try to try to have a life without a credit card I can tell you people who can do it drug traffickers and professional criminals they don't use credit cards they pay cash because they are not afraid that someone taking the cash from them in the street so that's the critical matter the critical matter is that there are certain norms of society that you have to abide by these norms or then you will be marginalized as long as things are ok meaning that you have a life which is not dramatic then it's alright for you at any moment where there is a financial crisis an economic crisis a job crisis or simply the incapacity to accept stupidity in your daily life in terms of what happens in the school or in the office or anywhere at that point any disaffecting behavior becomes stigmatized and then you start having the series of gestures that poison your life so you better stay quiet and behave that's what I mean and that's how life is shaped in the minds and this is reproduced in the mass media this is reproduced in the schools this is reproduced in the institutions this is the normalization of life is through all the systems of communication that ultimately define what is good what is bad, what is dangerous what is standard the effect of power is resignation is what? but how can we be active citizens participate have a normal social life with a credit card and not resignate well the general experience in society is that people accept resignation as the less evil until they cannot take it anymore and so that's why in terms of now talking about some kind of political neuroscience there are two key emotions that shape human behavior most important fear most important emotion shaping human behavior is fear fear is the most important one we all move our life in terms of fear being afraid of this or this or this fear that nothing bad happens to us the antidote against fear is already another emotion which is known as outrage meaning when you cannot take it anymore and then you explode so that's why my book is from outrage to hope because then the third emotion is when you project a different life which is hope so the sequence is you are afraid and therefore you don't move or anything you accept whatever at one point things are so unbearable that you explode can be individual can be social, can be at the school can be in your job can be in society at large and then from there this explosion is communicated through communication networks to others and then what is an individual experience becomes a social experience through the act of communication and that leads to the deliberation of other possibilities which induce hope which is the potent positive emotion to transcend your current state of life and this is where social movements come in a quick and a very tricky question from the audience is the internet beneficial for or a threat to democracy is the internet beneficial or is it a threat to democracy? Internet depends internet depends on what we call democracy if by democracy we call the reproduction of the existing institutions without deliberation or challenge from the citizens internet is a threat to powers that be in every country you know I have been so many times in commissions of different governments, institutions, the European Union the United Nations etc about the internet policy and the first question the government represented is as always is how can we control the internet and when I say difficult as the governments that try to do it and you cannot it's like controlling electricity internet is the basis of the entire information communication system in our societies and therefore they are not interested anymore in doing anything about the internet in other words governments do not like the internet they in general, I'm talking in general of course there are exceptions etc etc but why not because governments are based in terms of their power on the capacity to control information and communication and internet actually removes much of the control of communication from the hands of government institutions and every time that they use national security for instance to curtail internet freedom before for instance in the 1990s with Clinton in the United States they tried to use what everybody has used a child pornography of course we are all indignant about child pornography so they tried to use child pornography as a way to develop a number of controls over the internet well one of the examples of what I was telling you before about the judicial protection of freedom in that particular case in the United States the act of what was called the act of decency in the internet by Clinton a democrat a liberal democrat it was actually struck down by the federal courts in a sentence that was quite interesting in terms of the language the federal court of appeals cancelled the law as an attempt to curtail freedom of expression and added yes it is true that much of this freedom of expression in the internet is chaos but citizens have a constitutional right to chaos which I think is an interesting notion so to a large extent the governments to a large extent governments would like to divide the internet between the youthful internet education business etc and the free education of everything in the internet which is in the essence of the internet culture and that's a debate in society should we be free of communicating even if this creates many uncontrolled expressions for instance to take a clear example sexism internet is full of sexism so should then cut off the internet well the bad news is even if we want it we cannot there are some critical voices here one says where is the theory the other one says why didn't you talk about society about about society and yeah very legitimate question and the other one says that these are phenomena that have been described 50 years ago why do we see no theoretical advancement why is science so populist alright so a really very important question well I talk about society because that's my job I'm a social scientist and I try to understand the process of society I'm not a technologist I'm trying to study and I have been trying to study the interaction between new technological forms and social processes of every kind but about the theory I actually I don't do theory I try to do research which means understanding real social processes in the world of course we need some theoretical tools but I don't do theory for the sake of theory I try to understand and what I need some concepts I create the concepts or I borrow concepts sometimes and use these concepts to organize the information that leads to the understanding of a particular social process many of the theories for instance about social movement do not really understand what is the novelty of social movements when it's based on free networks of communication much of what is the analysis of surveillance relates to all theories of surveillance and construction of the discourse that do not really interact with the process we observe now I would make one exception that is Foucault which I do think that he would be interested if he could see that beyond the institution that he mentioned as surveillance other panopticons could be experiencing humankind but fundamentally I would say that if you would today I certainly did not use a theory per se but in my books I developed theory on the basis of my observation and on this particular topic I had a 600 pages book called communication power which at the end of the book on the basis of all the information and analysis and clinical analysis I have produced proposes a theory of power which I call a network theory of power so I certainly today I didn't introduce much of the theory of power although although I implicitly refer to the logic of networks as critical in our type of society but to be more blunt I'm a very non-typical social science in that sense I don't think that facts per se explain anything we have to construct analytical frameworks but simply specific analytical frameworks to explain something if it's possible to relate to ground theory and to general theory maybe but that's not my personal interest my personal interest is to understand the world as it works because what I would like is that people can use my analysis to change it let's talk about power and counter power there are some questions here from you one question is would you suggest that there is a balance between power and counter power as you gave examples for and another question is does the digital age make counter power more effective more effective mm-hmm well the balance is always unstable institutions are what I call crystallized power that is power relationships that at one point in history were dominant and constructed a constitution state laws that create the framework for human behavior so power is institutionalized the institutions are an expression of power but not only of power where also institutions are the expression of the resistance to this power for instance the most typical example is not just the logic of capital and business interest it's also the logic of the working class struggles that developed for many decades and ultimately created the welfare state workers unions workers rights etc it's both things at the same time but it never ends every time that there is an economic crisis the main attempt is to cut down the wages with the idea that this will increase the profits and the economy will work because profit will be increased so it's always an unstable matter women rights women rights again 30 years ago were almost entirely ignored in many many ways the feminist movement and the women movement in general in many countries in most countries have completely changed the consciousness of women and therefore the women condition in many ways so this has changed in terms of legislation in terms of women to positions of power in terms of what is taught in the schools in terms of the gender relationship at all levels of society but at the same time the reaction in many cases is violence against women which is not prosecuted with too much energy in many countries and in many instances so it's constantly it's a constant struggle to reinstate the women rights that were conquered decades ago so that's for me is an example that the situation is never completely stabilized are we making progress toward more equal rights in every aspect depends on countries depends on issues what was the stigmatization of homosexual right to marriage for instance years ago now has been normalized in some societies but not in many others and the stigma and discrimination continues to work against homosexuals against transsexuals and in the entire society so again there is a constant struggle to defend new frontiers of human rights and at the same time a constant attempt to re-establish instruments of discrimination and oppression the most important thing in Europe these days is xenophobia the hatred of people who are apparently different in cultural or ethnic terms the hatred of people who try desperately to make a new life in the context of rich affluent Europe well this is a human right which has been denied in practice under the pressure of certain segments of the population so this struggle never ends there are two questions there's a question in Catalan by the way which I cannot read you afterwards it's time to say if you want to change language let's change language there's a basically fundamental questions are the non-digital citizens powerless this is one question because we were talking about the 4.5 billion people being online and what happens to the others and the other question is do we have a free choice in a digital world that's a very good question well first of all I was talking about regular internet users in terms of the now in terms of connectivity I insist that not necessarily through internet but in terms of connectivity everybody is at this point everybody with some exception is connected if we have 7 billion numbers of mobile phones in practice of which half are the so called smartphones right the other thing is in terms of users of the internet the big divide is not any more access or not access the big divide is because literally at this point the large majority of people have access to internet and it's almost saturation in many countries and those who are not connected through their homes like in many African and Latin American countries they are connected through internet cafes schools workplaces etc the most important divide in the actual use of internet these days is age is age the large proportion of people who are over 60 let's say don't practice the internet in developing countries in places like Germany or the United States or England certainly also they are internet users but in most cases in the these billions that are still missing most of it is not linked to lack of possible connectivity is lack is fundamentally age and this is I always say when I will be gone my generation will be gone will be no problem of digital divide in terms of internet use it will be a problem of other problems than access one important thing about this is that the most significant divide is digital and educational divide because the moment we are all connected to the internet the ability to know what to do with this connection how to access resources how to use these resources to develop your own life your own project which is ultimately education this is what becomes the most important divide so what internet does it reproduces and expands the most significant divide that has been all over history education the level of education determines what people can do or not with the internet and we have studies in the schools that show that children from poor families you introduce internet in the school these children do even worse children of middle class families with internet in the school they do much better because they have the cultural resources to actually use the internet for anything they want while the poor children with no background of education in their families they ultimately use it for games for playing without any access not only to education but to a broader exploration of the wall of information so if the divide is for example it's not the access because there was one question here that said is the struggle for power different and the global north and the global south and by what I listen to you right now you would say no it's not no let's say the most important difference there is in terms of the quality of the connection the quality of the access not as we used to say in terms of the capacity to use the internet the global south the large majority of the population has access to the internet but the quality of access and what to do with this access is what is different from the highly developed countries in which the education system allows people to understand and process information you said that education is the answer and one question here refers to that what are the rules so who provides the education in principle the schools in every society are institutions that provide the education the problem is that schools are still based on a very old pedagogy not only technology pedagogy in which are determined on the basis of the authority of the teacher programs that are marked by educational bureaucracies rather than by the pedagogy that internet would allow which is the ability for children to develop their own ideas and their own explorations guided and supported by the teachers and the issue is that the freedom of exploration is not part of most of the programs of the educational system so that is where the problem is in Catalonia we did a comprehensive study of all the primary and secondary schools and what we found is that the school system was such that teachers at home would use the internet children at home would use the internet but not in the school because it was not part not only the technical part but the use of internet in the school was not made possible by the type of organization both institutional and intellectual in terms of the content of the programs I have a very simple question we're talking about power and counter-power social movements negotiating power so what is it that keeps us as a social and digital society together and what is the kind of glue between us and a digital age oh simple question the fundamentally the sharing of values the sharing of values and the tolerance to share these values in other words if we have different systems of evaluation life different systems between what produces equality or not in society if we do not agree on some fundamental principles sharing these principles and making sure that everybody accepts the idea that are being translated into practice then there is a breakdown of the basic social solidarity for instance the European Union is largely disintegrating the most important thing is that the European Union when everything went alright and was no major crisis well people accepted some solidarity mechanism let's say taking the typical example Germans helping Greek but when things are different when the issue is that there are scarce resources then people who are not like us don't deserve support and therefore the mechanism of support, help and solidarity breakdown what is easy to observe between Germany and Greece is also within each country within Greece, within Germany when situation is such that people need support they only support those who they consider to be like themselves and that's when a major issue here is that this is a rule that could apply to very ethnically, socially homogeneous cohesive societies but it doesn't work in multicultural, multi-class multi-racial societies which are most of the European societies nowadays and therefore the ability to accept common codes of behavior is being challenged by the practice of social inequality Germany is better in that sense but overall the entire European countries like the United States are reaching staggering levels of economic and social inequality and therefore this deludes social cohesion because of the idea that everybody agrees on some basic principles is betrayed by the observation that those who have power and resources have increasingly more power and resources and do not care about the weaker segments of the population so it's a process of social fragmentation which is amplified by the internet and that's my point in relation to the internet because if because through the internet everybody has access to information and has access to what's happening and can debate and can organize discussions in the social networks about the reasons for the inequality and the injustices in society so in a society in which there is consensus internet reinforces consensus in a society in which there's increasing inequality and increasing cleavages between the population and increasing conflicts internet amplifies these conflicts and therefore contributes to disintegrating social cohesion. We have like five minutes left and there are like 120 questions left so let's choose some of them There is one question about post-digital society how could a post-digital society look Mad Max or Blade Runner I don't remember the films too well Can you repeat? How could a post-digital society look and it refers to the two films Mad Max or Blade Runner and I don't remember them too well so we just have to cut out this kind of reference So what is a post-digital world like? Well I never frankly I never talk about the future because it's methodologically it's impossible seriously but I don't want to escape the question in terms of the which kind of futures can be imagined I would not call it post-digital because digital is a system of communication which is there to stay forever will be deeper and more extensive forms of digital communication as we cannot say what's happening in a post-electricity society we will have electricity that manages everything but the issue I think is about which kind of new forms of social existence are being formed Well the easy answer is the new institutions and new forms of social existence that will be constructed and developed by the humans in terms of their own societies and that ultimately will be determined in terms of power relationships and the negotiations between those who exercise power and those who exercise counter power as always has been in history but if we see now following this methodology if we see the current connections we observe is the more we develop our technological capacity the more we observe a huge gap between our technological power and our capacity to live together and our capacity to tolerate each other and our capacity to correct injustices and to correct inequalities institutionally speaking so we are moving we have been moving the last 10 years and we continue to move toward an increasingly violent conflicted world among other things because we are all related in the planet now so called globalization is simply a networking of all the global networks in every domain of life we are together but we are separated by religion by institutions by democratic institutions by class by levels of development and we do not have the mechanism to negotiate these dramatic conflicts because the nation states are defenders of their own interests and not defenders of the overall interests of humanity and the United Nations has never been anything else but the expression of the power of the nation states themselves so the gap between our technological capacity and our institutional and moral capacity to manage the problems is increasing and the worst possible scenario is how to unleash this incredible technological power we have for instance transforming human nature per se and the weak and institutional capacity to move toward a common well-being rather toward the specific interests of groups who are the most powerful this is the issue so at the end let's come back to the focus of the series which is a European focus and we talked about it in the introduction in the talk do you think we should develop a specifically European perspective on digital society and what could it be made of? No, frankly I to start with I don't think it's such a thing as Europe to start then that's my latest book published a week ago it's called The Crisis of Europe and shows why the European Union is disintegrating only the beginning the ideal of a united Europe of a sharing project of Europe was a wonderful idea that I always supported as a person as a citizen but what we observe is the contrary is the fracturing of Europe and the inability of Europe to act as one single entity and one other thing because we do not have a common European identity what has been common in Europe? let's be serious what has been common in Europe has been killing each other for several hundred years including the 20th century that's a sad observation but so the idea of creating a European project requires developing a common practice a common practice of being Europeans with things like share labour market share also are educational institutions share media systems but the only thing we have common in Europe is what we have with the rest of the world which is precisely the uses of internet now the European Union does have a somewhat joint internet policy so some forms of economic and technological policy can be European that would be the perspective but not the digital society because the digital society in an extremely diverse social situation has different expressions and different forms but Europe does have some commonality in terms of the internet related digital policies which commonality there is a much stronger emphasis on the public interest than for instance in the United States there is somewhat more protection of privacy and of citizen rights in Europe so there are a number of things in the values of Europe which are widely accepted in the population which make it for a more humane and decent form of entering a new technological age no question about that and that would be some to some extent the superiority of Europe over other areas and nations in the world so in that sense a European perspective is the attempt to have a control of the technological transformation closer to the values and interests of people's lives okay so you're an optimist and a pessimist at the same time that's life we have come to our last part of the evening and this last part is called the quest and it's a questionnaire and it will be the same questionnaire for every guest of the series and of course we hope for different answers from everyone or no answer or no answer at all that's possible as well and short answers of course and this is how it works I start the sentence no I don't play games it's science it's a questionnaire yeah okay but you made a questionnaire but I cannot answer the questionnaire okay we'll see if you don't like the question you don't answer if you like it you answer no because I don't like the method you don't like the method what is your method the method is what you just expressed okay so with our previous warning yeah we thought it should be some spontaneous thing no no that should be spontaneous no I have been spontaneous the whole evening that's true but you are not being spontaneous that is your questions are not spontaneous so why should give spontaneous answers to non-spontaneous questions first with you it's not but it's a game I may ask you the questions and then you respond and then we discuss oh my god this is like let's try the first one okay because this is a fun one if I had the chance to reinvent the internet I would this is a problem the question that I raised for myself or I have never heard this question we are entering like the realm of fantasy and power and you have the power to do everything you want within that question here but I don't so I cannot imagine so thank you sorry about that because I have great respect for you but this kind of that top gimmick no but you are a wonderful person and moderator and everything but we can have a drink together rather than trying to answer these questions thank you Miriam for your work we of course want to thank you that you're here tonight yes of course why not we are happy you're here and we wanted to give you a present from Berlin and since we are not exactly a wine region and we cannot compete with great Spanish wines this is a little like foodie package little things nice things to eat from Berlin and thank you very much for being here and coming thank you very much for understanding so you are very much invited to stay here for a drink and the next chance to get more of the European perspective is the 30th of January our next guest will be Christoph Neuberger a communication and scientist and professor and we will be very happy to see you again and right now because we have so many questions left you ask of course you can stay for a drink we will be right there at the Panorama Bar and have a real live chat with us and with Manuel Castells thank you very much