“Being Digital” is a book by Nicholas Negroponte that was published in 1995, 30 years ago. He founded the MIT Media Lab and advocated the idea that the digital divide between different societies and cultures must be overcome in order to create a more equitable world.
It is fascinating how he predicted the changes. Is there a comparable German digital visionary? Are we more like world champions in avoiding uncertainty and simply too slow in change management?
Negroponte examines the impact of the digital revolution on society, the economy, and culture. He describes the difference between analog (atoms) and digital (bits) information. While analog information is continuous, digital information is discrete and can be easily copied, stored, and transmitted.
He predicted that digital communication would revolutionize the way people interact. The ability to share information instantly and globally will change social structures.
And so it has: people communicate and interact, partly dependent on toxic platforms where ubiquitous personalization of content and algorithms determine what we see and consume. Unfortunately, we have far too little control over this and are mutating into data products. Added to this is the flood of misinformation, and bit hate is becoming atomic.
Digital nomads are the harbingers of our new working world, having created new professions and transformed existing ones; he wrote about the nature of work as early as 1995. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation of the world of work. Remote work and digital collaboration have become the norm.
Developments in AI and automation have created new challenges that Negroponte could not fully foresee. In his euphoria, he also failed to consider data protection, security, and ethical issues. The discussion about the control of personal data and the responsibility of Big Tech is more relevant today than ever.
Here, a German digital visionary, as a skeptic, would have had his chance in 1995 to look to the future in terms of data protection and security, but we still have plenty of that in 2025.