It couldn’t be more exciting before a government statement. At the end of the first day of re:publica 22 on Wednesday, the man who has always explained the world in talk shows, books, podcasts and blogs in recent years, when it was relevant, came onto stage one and explained the world Z and the adult world: Sascha Lobo.
Lobo called his speech “Any Way the Wind Blows”, the traditional State of the Union speech, which should reflect current social developments and keep a close eye on the media, politicians and the audience. A re:publica without Sascha Lobo doesn’t work. The Internet Explainer is back.
what came One hour par force ride. A big bow to what’s happening out there right now. From the change or non-change caused by the pandemic to the attack on Ukraine.
Initially a kind of intellectualized “Today Show” with commented newspaper headlines on the issues of the time, it took a few minutes for Lobo to get to his favorite topic. That has remained the same during the pandemic: the creepy digital infrastructure. On the board Germany’s penetration with glass fibers. Depressing numbers, we know that. Germany is in the lower ranks when it comes to internet speed. In front of us Greece or Oman. Germany is copper cable country, which was not surprising.
The speaker found few positive points about it. “Perhaps Germany was surprised in its diligence and thoroughness by the need for fiber optics.” You can also see it that way.
So what is driving the change in business, society and communication? Lobo cut aisles out of landscape architecture, brought digitization, globalization and moralization together, conjured up the power of networking, but also the danger of Alexa, China’s TikTok and social media as emotional machines, not without reducing the enemies of change to three common denominators: anti-rationalism, Anti-liberalism, gender hatred, which can manifest itself as trans hatred or toxic wokeness.
Phew, wild thinking, wild wind. Lobo’s titles, theses, temperaments, quotations. When the blogger with the Mohawk hairstyle spoke, far more neurons were and are being moved when listening than when Olaf Scholz spoke about the New Year.
One would like to follow that in a book instead of in a packed, hot hall after ten hours of re:publica. Nonetheless, Lobo on stage, that was indeed original again, scrappy, analytically brilliant. The simplest message this evening: perception of fake news also depends on age. That goes without saying.
Speaking of Olaf Scholz. Lobo’s final appeal to the activists at re.publica after 60 minutes: Go out and put pressure on the chancellor about change!
After two years in online exile due to the pandemic, Europe’s most important digital conference returned to Berlin with the appearance of the internet and thus world explainer. At its new location on the grounds of the Arena and Festsaal Kreuzberg, 500 lectures and discussions will take place until Friday. And Sascha Lobo is back in his element. You can work on him.
