Wi-Fi and the Righteous
The re:publica—Berlin’s annual gathering of internet people who understand the future better than everyone not at the re:publica—ran for the fourth time last week, roughly 200 meters from the Friedrichstadtpalast, and I was there for all three days of it. With Malte, Paulchen, and Sara in tow. Doing what everyone does: attempting total domination of the Wi-Fi, maintaining a steady interior hum of revolutionary imminence, and luxuriating in the warm communal certainty that we were the ones who knew where society needed to go.
Day one had the best talk I’ve attended in years. Peter Kruse on networks, on us, on everyone else, on the whole surrounding machinery—the kind of lecture that makes you want to reorganize your entire life on the train home. Followed directly by a session on how to make serious money from your blog, delivered with the self-assurance of a man who has clearly done exactly this, which I found morally suspect and probably practically correct. Then a panel dissecting the particular horrors of German television. Then the usual rhythm: hunting for a spectacularly tall acquaintance named Christoph who kept dissolving around corners, running into feeds made flesh, mentally noting which alternative fashion girls at the nearby burger place I might conceivably have spoken to—in the sense of absolutely not, but the thought was there.
The second day I ate badly—Indian, McDonald’s, a coffee that tasted like it had been filtered through a gym sock—and paid for it in dulled concentration all afternoon. I nearly fell asleep during the WikiLeaks panel, which I mention because concealing it feels worse. The feminist session I sat through with the glazed grin of someone who agrees in principle and cannot focus in practice. Three fashion bloggers were genuinely delightful. Bre Pettis showed up with a 3D printer and I would have stolen it from him if I’d had a plan for the exit. The actual highlight was a slightly stocky Indian academic named Nishant Shah, who talked about digital life without making it sound like a product pitch and closed his set by playing Matt Harding’s "Where the Hell Is Matt" video, which still does something uncomfortable to my chest regardless of how many times I’ve seen it. Then I went back and slept like the recently extinguished.
Day three recovered. Schnitzel and roast potatoes. An hour watching videos with a blogger from Kiel whose defining characteristic is aggressive unpretentiousness, which after forty-eight hours of the conference felt like clean air. The re:publica closed at the Kalkscheune with decent music, good drinks, and women considerably more attractive than the average panel room had suggested was possible. Sara got catastrophically drunk. I walked her home, we cooked what turned out to be the most violently spiced pasta either of us had ever encountered, and watched Friends on DVD until we fell asleep, which is the correct way to end a conference.
My conclusion lands where every honest participant ends up eventually: the digital bohème has a self-consumption problem. Three days of talking about how to use the tools to do the things the tools are for. Circular. Constantly returning to the instrument instead of picking it up and playing. The conferences are good, the people will stay with me, and some of the panels actually shift something in how you see things. But the habit of instrumentalizing the instruments—talking about Twitter to people who use Twitter about using Twitter—is a spiral with no productive end.
What I want from the next one: less mood maintenance, more actual departure. Less congratulating ourselves on being the people in the room who get it. And when the era of the fashion blog finally ends, the surplus of unsolicited genitals on Chatroulette will be the least of what we have to reckon with. Thanks for a good three days. Same time next year.