A collaboration between @peterwurm and @grok
—
When on Tuesday, 6 August 1991 Tim Berners-Lee put up the first website on info.cern.ch, the internet was born. At that time I was working in South America, converting our mission station on Ecuador’s Pacific coast to computers. It was hard work, since the electricity broke down every other day.
Five weeks earlier, on Monday, 1 July 1991, the first call on GSM mobile had happened in Helsinki: A Nokia phone speaking to the Finnish Minister for Post and Telecommunications about his mother. It was meant to be the first ever global uniform technology standard in human history.
CERN’s software in Swiss Geneva and Nokia’s hardware in Finnish Helsinki together gave birth to digitisation in that summer of 1991. Pity, both were in a foreign language, so that the German mothers still had to wait for their sons to call them online.
Germany had only just reunified; soon the Soviet Union would break up. American political scientist Francis Fukuyama named it „The End of History”. The West had won — and West-Germany with it. On 25 December 1991 the red flag of the USSR came down over the Kremlin in Moscow, while Germany celebrated its first year of reunification.
—
35 years later Germany has missed the train. It’s not the one with the pretty blue seats and the Wi-Fi that never works. That one still arrives, yet never on time. Germany missed the invisible train, the one with the fiber optics. The one that left in 1999 when a Swedish boy put 56k on his Nokia and the Japanese started chatting in emojis.
Germany said: “Wir machen es sauber, wir machen es ordentlich.” And by the time the first cable was approved, everyone else had 5G in their bathtub.
Meanwhile, Romania sells gigabit for ten euros and Slovakia laughs in its beer. A student in Bucharest downloads the whole Ring at once while a Berlin pensioner has to wait three days for the PDF from the Amt. Germany struggles to install copper from nineteen eighty-four under new asphalt and calls it “Glasfaser-Light”. The light indeed passes through, but just because the traffic light shows green once in a while.
The difference? One says: “The future is now.” The other: “Die Zukunft kommt, wenn der Termin vereinbart ist.” Deutschland hat verloren. Germany has lost. It’s not the World Cup. It’s something much quieter, and much more significant. It’s the game you never notice you’re playing until your neighbour’s fridge is smarter than you. Until the tram announces delays in a polish accent because the Polish driver speaks English better than the loudspeaker. Until your child uploads a song in Bucharest and the label calls back from Bratislava, while you are still spelling your surname to the call-center agent in Berlin.
Germany has been lost, like an old man who forgot how to dance when the music started. While others jumped, while others learned the steps, the German old man stood still and said: „Nein, wir machen das richtig,” and while he debated, the whole world had the party and went home to charge their phones. And now he wonders how his empty hands will learn to clap when the music finally starts.
Volkswagen, Audi, BMW and Mercedes are still building old cars which have some Navigation system inside. Tesla and the Chinese meanwhile build Artificial Intelligences with car bodies that could take you anywhere on Earth and soon to the moon. The world is joining a party while the unemployed German workers are sitting at home not knowing what to do, waiting for a new future.
But slowly, slowly, 35 years later, Germany begins to learn how to dance. Yes, she missed the first beat, the invisible one. But now she finally hears the music. The pretty blue train with the broken Wi-Fi still comes too late. But look: in the carriages children play VR games that even Nokia didn’t dream of.
The fiber is late, yes. Romania has it for ten euros, Slovakia laughs — but in Leipzig a girl teaches her grandma how to FaceTime her sister in Rio on a connection that once took two weeks by mail. The loudspeaker in the tram still speaks broken English but the young Polish driver smiles and says „next stop, Zukunft.” And finally the Deutsche Bahn arrives on time in Warsaw, Zurich and Amsterdam, since they’re beyond Germany.
Yes, the copper from nineteen eighty-four
still crawls under the roads, but the pensioner in Berlin now prints his PDF while sipping beer, and the beer tastes better when you know tomorrow will come. The old man who forgot the steps now puts his hand on his daughter’s shoulder and lets her lead. He has empty hands, yes, but his daughter will show them how to clap.
Germany is learning. She is slow. She is stubborn. She is late. She is slower than Romania, slower than Slovakia, slower than Poland. But she is still faster than Austria.
And that is enough.
—
Vienna Calling 