Ours is a confusing time. In the developed world we have enjoyed affluence for long enough to have a hard time appreciating it. We especially love our gadgets, where we can still find novelty – but we also have strong evidence that we would be peering over the edge of a precipice if we opened our eyes more often.
It pains me to intone the familiar list of contemporary perils: Climate change first of all; population and depopulation spirals utterly out of sync with our societies; our inability to plan for the decline of cheap fossil fuels; seemingly inescapable waves of austerity; untenable trends of wealth concentration; the rise of violent extremisms in so many ways in so many places… Of course all of these processes are intertwined with one another.
Given this big picture, it certainly came as a surprise to many of us (to me most of all) that this year’s Peace Prize of the German Book Trade was given to a figure such as myself who is associated with the rise of digital technologies. Aren’t digital toys just a flimsy froth that decorates big dark waves?
Digital designs have certainly brought about noisy changes to our culture and politics.
excerpted from Jaron Lanier‘s acceptance speech for the 2014 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade