Data scandals Are Just a Symptom - Apologies are Irrelevant

If we consider the helpless whining and simulated outrage top media executives and federal politicians show in the face of "social networks'" data scandals we will have to diagnose "complete technological cluelessness on all societal levels"* as being at the core of this mess. But so is also "conceptual cluelessness about the nature and details of large scale electronic multi way communication", as shown in the public statements of CEOs, politicians, supreme court judges, university professors and on and on. Like rabbits staring at snakes and oxen gazing up mountains our leaders and their experts stand before the current changes, rattle on about innovation, destruction, lots of new jobs and at the same time call for the state or supra-states to undo global competition and protect their excessive windfall incomes of the past century.

This in turn seems to be connected to the total replacement of serious media ecology, political and cybernetics research and education by "constructive" buzzword bingo juggling from members of the academic and media elites who desperately cling to their salaries, critical speech engagements and party invitations which are of course all still based on their usefulness to the really rich and powerful and their lobbies and government boys 'n' gals.

While the assistants of said academic and communication elites work away like crazy, naively dream of starting the next billion dollar company or at least be named a vice president of an incumbent and by either way of becoming an investor angel at the age of 39, the professors and chief editors join "important people"-study-voyages to California, get mesmerized by staring at the tiny lights on 20.000 cloud servers and labs peopled by the smartest Indians, Chinese and Koreans. Then they return home and destroy all cool and reasonable reflection in their own campuses with freshly knit prefabricated legends and myths of the future.

This Globe is entering a dangerous pre-revolutionary state of its elites who really just bluff along, a thing which today's global political processes and vocabulary clearly seem to favour. The political process in turn seems to be unable keep pace and in any way to change fast enough, to turn around and so promote a more competent mix of people to all levels and the top. And it is not just the West. Just look at China. Hu's group of scientists and engineers from the PRC's youth league that Deng's long term policies had swept into power from 2002 to 2012 have finally just been pretty completely dethroned by Xi's princeling faction who have all studied politics, law and materialist joint anything economy.

These data scandals and their inappropriate handling are just symptoms of a broader crisis that the end of the Gutenberg Galaxy is bringing about. And by the end of the Gutenberg Galaxy I do not mean falling sales of print products which, too, is hard to compute and if true but a symptom. But then again, if not a journalist or privacy fanatic, you should relax. After all it's only our rights to secret youthful sins on one hand and print, TV and regional websites and old age pension individual percentages on the other that are under pressure and maybe at stake. The positive relation to democracy of the latter that is so convincedly and a bit less convincingly affirmed over and over might be nothing more than a barely understood weak correlation and is by no means proven.

In the meantime brick & mortar industries and their related financial services still seem to go strong. Construction of motor- and railways, houses, machines, robots, aeroplanes and automobiles, crop raising, animal husbandry and energy redistribution while still losing jobs to China & Co. will soon need millions of ethically firm technicians, programmers and data analysts from our brilliant schools and universities to keep up the pace. And after that we will still have Mars to conquer and populate. Imagine that!

Just look at what 15 year olds do. There is some hope there. We do not despair yet in St. Mary's parish.

* cit. M. Wolkenkuckucksstein directly from a Visagebook-Post