The motto of this year's Zündfunk Internet Congress: "What the F...?" – Intuitively, you'd like to add "Fuck"! The Internet Congress, held last weekend at Munich's Volkstheater, aimed to demonstrate that the "F" can also stand for feminism, fake, fun, fan, freedom, or future. And for its fifth anniversary, it offered a program that was informative, exciting, and truly entertaining.
Will Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg & Co., with eternal life in their pockets, head off to Mars in the near future and leave us, the internet proletariat, behind on Earth, controlled and directed by their powerful internet corporations? An interesting and also gloomy scenario, which Ole Reißmann from bento outlined right at the beginning of the Zündfunk Network Congress 2017. And in doing so, it raises the question of whether the future is really so far away?
Whoever has the data has the power
Jan Philipp Albrecht also agreed in the subsequent panel “The Future of Data” that we should be concerned about – or at least concerned about – what happens to our data.What the Freedom! The battle for digital power!" Certainly." In his role as a Green MEP, he helped launch the European Data Protection Regulation as rapporteur in the European Parliament. A set of rules that, among other things, is intended to ensure the protection of personal data within the EU. For Albrecht, it's clear: whoever has the data has (market) power. And thus, power over each and every one of us.
Shahak Shapira, another panelist, doesn't find this so bad, as he has no right to anonymity online. Rather, he is annoyed by large corporations like Twitter that don't respond to his reported hate comments, let alone delete them. His art action in front of Twitter's German headquarters in Hamburg was intended to draw attention to this. For Constanze Kurz, spokesperson for the Chaos Computer Club and another panelist, such actions will only lead to social networks like Twitter introducing an automatic deletion function that cannot distinguish satire or art actions from hate comments. In her opinion, the issue of "hate on social networks" doesn't require a hasty solution, but rather a multifaceted social and political discourse.
After this in-depth introduction, we'll take the small stage to listen to Elisabeth Gamperl and Katharina Brunner, both data journalists from the Süddeutsche Zeitung, explain how instant messaging is changing our friendships. Both are certain that we're closer to one another in our friendships than ever before: Distance no longer matters, and we always have our friends in our pockets. A tribute to the smartphone, then, which Dirk von Gehlen, editor at the Süddeutsche Zeitung, joins in with in his talk of the same name: He expresses his annoyance at the stigma surrounding smartphones and the fact that they are banned in classrooms. In his view, it's the most important tool of our time, and one that future generations, in particular, should develop a healthy and positive relationship with.
“The certainly small, five-year anniversary was a great success”
The mood is also positive Jan-Michael Heiermann, editor-in-chief of Zündfunk, about this year's event:
"From Zündfunk's perspective, the certainly small five-year anniversary was a great success. We wanted the attendees to discuss, argue, exchange ideas, and have fun – and I think we were able to deliver on that promise for our 700 guests. We reimagined the internet-inspired abbreviation WTF as the event's motto. WTF stood for 'What the Freedom?', 'What the Fiction?', or even 'What the Fuck?' This allowed us to address a variety of relevant topics and lend them a stance. This was evident in discussions and panels on gender issues or new political movements, on fundamental philosophical questions such as immortality or love in the age of Instagram. As always, the topics included perennial favorites, such as the question of surveillance by corporations or states, but also surprisingly new ones, such as the attempt to combine a conversation on stage with a virtual link to the United States of America."
“Most exciting socio-political congress I know”
And the participants also had words of praise for the Internet Congress — appropriately on Twitter, of course:
Under cover #Network Congress might @zuendfunk The most exciting sociopolitical conference I've ever seen. Keep it up! #zf17
— Sebastian Haas (@seb_haas) October 14, 2017
It's nice that the #zf17 There are also panels with 50+ women on tech topics. Other conferences don't manage that. pic.twitter.com/kldxqAbLps
— Watch Salon (@WatchSalon) October 13, 2017
If you would like to read more about the Zündfunk Netzkongress 2017, you can find a detailed report at zuendfunk-netzkongress.de.
