Physical Dramaturgy: Ein (neuer) Trend?

Dramaturgie im zeitgenössischen Tanz ist ? positiv gemeint ? ein heißes Eisen. Idealerweise sind Dramaturginnen und Dramaturgen während der Erarbeitung eines Stücks die besten Freunde der Choreografen. more more

GoetheInstitute

03/01/2008

The fuel of the Internet

While bloggers and print journalists lock horns over media hierarchies and journalistic standards, Web 2.0 is making Google a noiseless fortune. By Robin Meyer-Luch

Digitalisation is an inherently cyclical business. It comes in waves. Its domestication always follows the same procedure: a new bit of technology arrives which opens up a new realm of possibilities. This uncharted zone is then hyped full of potential. Its borders seem near indiscernible. Eventually, experience fills the realm of possibility. The technology's comparative advantages gradually assume contours and initial assessments are reassessed. In the end, what remains is a realistic picture of the new application.
In the late autumn 2007, the realm of new possibilities known as Web 2.0 definitively entered verification phase in Germany. One of clearest indication of this came in the form of editorials by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung publisher Frank Schirrmacher (here) and Bernd Graff in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (here). Both identified a sufficient waning in 2.0 euphoria to wager a vociferous swipe at any last traces of idealisation.

At the end of October, Frank Schirrmacher gave a speech that was intended as a hymn to the increase in value of print journalism, but actually focused principally on the journalistic inferiority of the Internet. To Schirrmacher the web is a hotbed of journalistic haste, impassiveness, and superficiality. Its "iconographic extremism" threatens the culture of writing. From the depths of decentrality rises the "infection" of poor content. The net is a looming hole in the institutional fabric of journalism, opening the doors to all and sundry and relativising the authority of traditional quality journalism. Schirrmacher responded to the protests of online journalists by saying he merely wanted to express his preference for a coexistence of newspapers and the Internet (here). But he obviously also fancied himself as a juggler of culturally conservative resentments vis a vis the Internet as media.

In early December, the deputy editor-in-chief of the online edition of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, felt the unexpected need to unleash a tirade against the "destructive forces of the free-opinion market" on the Internet. In the "faceless and characterless 'many-to-many' communication on the web," knowledge is "trampled into a grass-roots democratic mush." The "staggeringly unsuspecting public" has been taken in by the idiotic promises of decentralized information, when in fact web forums have little to offer except superficial knowledge, vulgar remarks, and slander. Graff, however, gets caught up in a breathtakingly structural-conservative, know-it-all attitude, which prevents him from making any kind of sophisticated contribution to the debate. For him, the reversibility and decentralization of the Internet are the breeding ground of brazen user-empowerment, serving solely as an end in itself and providing no sort of edification whatsoever – a kind of user-generated discourse delirium.

Graff, like Schirrmacher, is playing on the anxiety of journalism's entropic death on the net. They fear that "good journalism" could perish in the fever of participation, or, at the very least, lose its significance. What is most certainly a difficult path to a new digital information economy is reformulated as a history of loss.

Such figures appear cyclically. At the beginning of the 1990s, the American media critic Neil Postman got worked up over the deterioration of the "immune system of the information system," which would result in society being flooded with context-free information (technopoly). By the end of the '90s, the German political scientist Bernd Guggenberger had conjured up the "digital nirvana," in which "waste data" should be disposed of according to the principle of focusing solely on what is worth knowing. Such information-economy anxieties eventually dissolve as new filters, new hierarchical systems and new coexistences establish themselves.

In the meantime, the discourse economy of Web 2.0 continues to trickle steadily into the public realm. The net breeds clearly defined "issue publics" which might only be visible on second glance, or with a certain technological savvy. For instance, within just a few weeks, a 21-year-old reached over half a million viewers on YouTube with a video (here) expressing his views on misleading and false TV reporting on computer games. By the time the mainstream media caught on, the video had already been viewed over 200,000 times.

In traditional media, content is first filtered and then published. On the Internet, things are often the other way around. The result is a complex and confusing plurality with a coherence that frays at the edges. Such a media reality is sometimes difficult to endure and frequently seems psychotic. Nonetheless, it will have to be endured. The dilemma facing the new technological constellation is that it provides better and therefore also incomplete knowledge. This cannot, however, be blamed on the medium, but is inherent in the logic of knowledge itself.

The extent to which the Internet has already changed our understanding of journalism was shown by the nomination of Stefan Niggemeier in his funtion as a blogger (here) as German "Journalist of the Year". The jury's decision indirectly echoed the widespread message about the relationship between blogs and journalism, namely that a blogger well-versed in the profession can uphold the journalistic ideals of steeliness, perseverance, and single mindedness at least as well as his colleagues in traditional publishing. It doesn't make a difference if one earns little any or no money in the process. It also doesn't matter if it doesn't reach more than 5,000 readers daily. What matters are the results. The decision has thrown the concept of journalism wide open, and rightly so.

And yet over the course of 2007, there was clear drop in interest in Web 2.0 ideas – it has almost assumed an air of normality. It is impossible to prevent a degree of boredom from setting in. The big star of the web's second wave remains Google. According to the most recent figures from Allensbach, the search machine is now used by 27.6 million Germans per week, which constitutes around 55 percent of the population of 14 to 64-years-olds. The search machine – the mother of all aggregators – has thereby become one of the most wide-ranging media sources in Germany. Only major television broadcasters have a larger audience.

By rough estimates, Google has made a turnover in Germany this year of around one billion euros – that makes 36.20 euros per user annually, or almost exactly 3 euros per user per month. The most remarkable thing is that almost no user can imagine that Google earns any money from their Internet searches – let alone 36 euros a year. Google's business model for its end consumers is "noiseless," to formulate it carefully.

The economic ideal to which Web 2.0 aspires is a "market for one." This means dealing in highly personalized goods, which possess the great economic advantage of having their prices individually determined by the readiness of the consumer to pay. This allows for the optimal exploitation of a market. This is what actually lies behind personalization and mass customization. Correspondingly, every keyword ranking in Google has its own price for advertising customers. This is technically achieved though the use of algorithms – the second great ideal of Web 2.0. Capitalism has been technically upgraded.

The technology journalist Nicholas Carr has written a very insightful text on the Google economy. He analyses the search engine and the content it makes accessible as complementary goods. There is a simultaneous demand for economic goods of this sort because they go together like fountain pens and ink or cars and petrol. Typical for complementary goods is that the demand for one item decreases when the price of counterpart increases. The manufacturers of a product, therefore, have a vested interest in maintaining low prices for their complementary products. Correspondingly Google has an equally strong interest in freely available content on the net as the auto industry has in reasonably priced petrol. Against this backdrop, the decision by both the New York Times and Spiegel to freely provide free access to their archives appears in a totally new light.


*

Robin Meyer-Lucht is a strategy consultant and media journalist.

The article originally appeared in German in Perlentaucher on December 12, 2007.


Tranlsation: John Bergeron

Get the signandsight newsletter for regular updates on feature articles.
signandsight.com - let's talk european.

 
More articles

Signandsight.com says good-bye

Wednesday March 28, 2012

Signandsight.com bids farewell after seven exciting and engaging years. Editors Thierry Chervel and Anja Seeliger express their thanks and say a personal good-bye to our readers - while remaining committed to the idea of a public forum dedicated to the motto "Let's Talk European".
read more

"We only have ourselves to draw upon"

Wednesday 26 October, 2011

TeaserPicIf geniuses still exist in Germany, then Friedrich Kittler, who died at the age of 68 on 18 October, was one of them. The literary scholar and media theorist wrote as much about drugs as he did about weapons, and he was as interested in war as he was in love. One of his PhD students is a Eurofighter pilot in Afghanistan. Andreas Rosenfelder talked with him in his Berlin apartment at the beginning of the year.
read more

Surveillance on demand

Monday 17 October 2011

The Chaos Computer Club's sensational find of a German government trojan has shed light on an extreme case of state surveillance. Spokespersons of the club, Constanze Kurz and Frank Rieger suggest that this is not an isolated case of enforcement overstepping the limits of the law. In an interview with Joachim Güntner they talk about the promise of efficiency, the antagonism of freedom and security, and the society of digital control.
read more

Signandsight revisited

Wednesday 23 March, 2011

We're extremely pleased to be back, after a bout of financial flu, buoyed up by your many mails of encouragement! The new streamlined signandsight.com will no longer deliver feuilleton or magazine summaries, concentrating on getting you full translations every week instead. Please follow us on Twitter and eventually Facebook too!
read more

Against obscurantism

Tuesday 2 November, 2010

TeaserPicTwo years ago Argentinian philosophy professor Horacio Potel was taken to court for running three non-profit online Spanish libraries featuring hitherto unavailable texts by Heidegger, Derrida and Nietzsche. He talks to Beatriz Busaniche about his country's draconian copyright laws and the vital importance of free access to our common heritage.
read more

Open Excess

Tuesday 26 May, 2009

As the world awaits the decision on the Google Books Settlement, there is much uncertainty and debate about what it will mean for authors' rights. In Germany, literature professor Roland Reuß has added to the confusion by launching an attack on what he believes to be another enemy of the freedom to publish: Open Access. Publishers, journalists, authors and other sympathisers have signed his petition, which is now in the hands of Chancellor Merkel. Their arguments are hair-raising, deluded and dangerous, says Matthias Spielkamp
read more

From closed circuits to communicating tubes

Monday 18 June, 2007

European democracy exists largely within nation-states, and not in the continental dimension. Even the ponderous TV channel "Euro-News" has not succeeded in creating a European public sphere. But without a European consciousness there will be no European federation. For this to happen interpreters are needed, to explain the motives of one side to the other. By Adam Krzeminski
read more

How to save the quality press?

Monday 21 May, 2007

When gas, electricity or water are at stake, the state must guarantee the energy supply for the population. Shouldn't it do likewise when the other type of 'energy' is at risk, the quality press? All over the world, financial investors are increasingly replacing patriarchal publishers and imposing their idea of profitability. Philosopher Jürgen Habermas argues for state support for the quality newspapers.
read more

The press and Europe's public sphere

Thursday 9 May, 2007

Newspapers by nature cover local matters. That belongs to the rules of the game. But what happens when the rules change? Only when they take an active interest in affairs abroad will paper's coverage on their home turf improve. Arne Ruth, long-time chief editor of Sweden's Dagens Nyheter, tells why cross-border journalism can help make the separate realms of Europe a single public space.
read more

Cultural diversity? A pipe dream

Thursday 22 March, 2007

The UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions entered into force on March 18. Rüdiger Wischenbart gives a quick overview of the realities behind translation.
read more

Knowledge and its price

Thursday 6 July, 2006

We live in a knowledge society, but it knows very little about itself. Information technologies allow us to organise knowledge faster than ever, yet we are regularly warned that we are losing touch with knowledge. The total of all stored knowledge is an exotic 5 exabytes, but a closer look reveals a network of one-way streets, detours, and barred routes. By Rüdiger Wischenbart
read more

The future of journalism

Wednesday 17 May, 2006

Crisis is nothing new to the press. Newspapers will continue to exist, alongside the Internet, soon in paperless form. They must offer their readers exclusive news, bold opinion and captivating language. Mathias Döpfner, head of the Axel Springer media empire, answers Rupert Murdoch.
read more

The medium is English

Monday 15 May, 2006

Are there British intellectuals? Are they better than the rest? Or do they just happen to be speaking the right language at the right time in the history of public debate? By Naomi buck
read more

Prospect's blunder

Monday 10 October, 2005

Prospect magazine's list of the world's top 100 public intellectuals speaks tellingly about the provincialism of today's global media, but says nothing about the ideas behind today's global world. By Arno Widmann
read more