Digital technologies now dominate our everyday lives – from smartphones and social media to Alexa and AI. In my third book, “The Analog Revolution,” I explore how these technologies will change society – and conversely, how societies can shape digital technologies. Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter or the spread of disinformation on Facebook and TicToc are only the surface of what is at stake. In “The Analog Revolution,” I contrast a negative and a positive development path in four fictional scenarios and detailed analyses. We still have a choice, we do not yet live in a repressive digital “singularity”.

Table of content

1. MonoNet
1.1. Scenario: Googlonia
After another 9/11-style terrorist attack, Google, Facebook and the NSA become fused into on big entity. Ben, a German engineer, finds himself in a dangerous situation when he looses the data glasses every citizen of Googlonia is obliged to wear…

1.2. The Big Grab for your whole life
-L’Internet c’est moi
-Digital Ecosystems
-The Beginning of directed evolution
-Singularity as destiny?
-The new forest inhabitants

2. DarkNet
2.1. The clouds of the future
-The missing link: technology as geology
-Welcome to neo-nature
-A social network called carbon
-Ingress instead of progress

2.2. Scenario: Taifun Thomas Tyrell
IT Economy has been so successful at spreading consumerism world-wide that the environment is trashed and the world’s climate runs amok. Amidst ecological turmoil, the world’s richest retreat into “Powerdomes” from where they control the remnants of the Internet. In one of the powerdomes, Thomas Tyrell, a former Australian prime minister and leading climate skeptic, learns that a lethal hurricane has been named after him and a UN special squad is on its way to do justice…

3. LifeNet
3.1. Scenario: Mindpeace
A tough “Analogue Revolution” takes place: a global uprising against surveillance, military control of the Internet and total commercialization. The revolution is triggered by Paul, a former Wall Street Banker turned meditation teacher. Millions of people become “Analogans” or “Analogitarians” and stop using digital devices. Others ask IT companies to get paid for providing content. Google’s CEO realizes that his companies future is at stake. So he teams with Paul to transform Google into Zoogle. Paul uses this opportunity to start his own project: Zoogle Glasses that help people connect with nature in a deeper sense…

3.2. The Analogue Internet

-The Internet comes from the forest
-Mountains, Seas and Giants
-Porous Borders
-An unanswered invitation
-On Earth, in Earth
-A walking ecosystem
-Consciousness, everywhere?
-Panarchy instead of Ego-Shooting
-The Internet of Animals

4. AllNet
4.1. Technature
4.2. Scenario: Day Omega
Two Indian programmers working in Berlin are charged with Zoogle’s project to expand the Internet into a planetary nervous system that includes nature and makes animals, plants and mountains integral parts of the “Internet of Things”. When they encounter fundamental problems, they embark on a trip to their native India to discover what could reconcile the digital and the analogue worlds…

4.3. Technology’s anthropology, Nature’s anthropology