Engine Room – Reality Repair

I was thinking about that day. And here’s what happened: I listened to one of the new podcasts from my favorite radio station, “Making of Ö1” by and with Bernard Wellinger. There have been two generations of journalists who have been invited to learn from each other in the media field as part of an initiative called “Reform the Future”. And he wanted that too. Which is commendable in itself, because a good (or rather: bad) part of current social debates – keywords: impression, abolition of culture, identity politics – is nothing more than a barely camouflaged generation struggle. Ö1 has taken it upon herself to give more young people a chance to express their opinions – the cliché of the widow announcer and the opera shrine no longer holds true. Then in this conversation between adults and children suddenly appeared a sentence that puzzled me: “Real life happens in real life – not in the middle.” It came from the twenty-second corner.

If I get it right, it is meant less by the traditional media department, i.e. newspapers, radio and television (although there are some things to note), but rather the brave new world of digital and virtual reality. When asked, there was talk of the infamous “bubble,” the system’s intrinsic tendency to mirror oneself in social media echo chambers and Instagram & Co’s perfect illusion machines. Finally, the indispensable modern word that everything is “toxic” was also heard. .

Well: I did not expect such a judgment on the world of media today – which already holds the future in itself – from the mouth of the radio designer who is in the beginning. So far, it seemed to me that the line between old and young is very clearly connected to the use of new media, which requires an open mind and the will to discover. Anyone who thinks all this is no longer for him (or her) is subjectively correct, albeit in a very sad sense. Of course, I also refuse to get to know TikTok myself any better – and I’m working on a limited time budget. I feel merging the technical possibilities with the human being rather than reading decades-old science fiction novels rather than immersing themselves in the parallel worlds of contemporary gaming, digitization, social media and artificial intelligence. I mean, half of humanity lives in it. Working insistently to devalue their currency, dehumanize and abolish them. And the virtual world has always been equal to the real world, if not more real. Error?

Then suddenly the young man turns the corner in an old but constantly new way and declares that future pessimism is lost. Or rather: pessimistic. Attribute that this generation is “lost”, meaning lost in an unjust present. The reform of the future, so that Ö1 sounds in unison, is only possible through dialogue, quick learning and courageous handling. The toxicity of insisting on outdated models of thought and action requires effective remedies: courage, spirit, and inspiration. I call that tax exemption a ray of hope.