1. The information society is increasing in complexity. More and more new technological possibilities open up more and more new information sources. Which paths do you follow in your own personal media use?
As someone who was a child and young adult in the last century, I am naturally an “analogist”. I love books, magazines, the printed word. But then again so do my children who have grown up with computers. Otherwise I’m a media multitoxicologist. I use all media platforms, irrespective of whether they are square in the shape of a monitor screen or smooth and substantial like a solid book – and I do so around the clock. I also play online video games with my kids and therefore have a slightly different insight into the digital reality. In fact, that can be great fun, although not for the old paranoiacs who sense the end of western civilization around every corner.
2. The new media have made many things simpler and faster, but are associated with phenomena such as social isolation. Do we need to learn how to deal with the media?
I consider the idea of “isolation through the media” nonsense. People used to be isolated in remote valleys, in the country, when there were no telephones. Today some people are perhaps lonely because they are neurotic or depressed. But ultimately the media connect everyone to the great currents, whether they involve in-depth knowledge or superficial trash. Of course, people need a certain amount of time to learn how to use a new medium, but they are also rather deft at this. Just think how long literacy took. By comparison, people have moved rather fast in their dealings with electronic media. However, a lot of people don’t know what to do with the knowledge and social structures of the Internet. There continue to be a large number of passive media consumers for whom the Internet is at most a reference catalogue. In the final analysis it is a question of education. If you are educated, inquisitive and upwardly mobile, you will also make intensive use of the new media.
3. Young people are less enthusiastic about daily newspapers, while older people have difficulties with social networks on the Web. Are the media dividing our society? Are the media driving the individualization of society?
The latter would be good, because I consider individualization a positive concept. After all, we all want to be individuals who are different, who develop their own personalities, don’t we? And ultimately media of all kinds serve this purpose. Even soap operas have, as many studies have shown, an educational and emancipating element. Anyone who has watched the TV series Lindenstrasse all his or her life will also have learned social differentiation, tolerance and human friendship. And older people are currently catching up very fast when it comes to Internet use.
4. Are social rituals like reading the paper in the morning or watching football together being affected by the transformation of the media landscape?
Yes and no. Watching football together is the kind of group experience that is deeply embedded in our genes. People (men) will probably continue to do this until the sun burns out; it’s a ritual. Reading the paper in the morning was also a ritual that mainly men were able to use as a justification for their non-communication at the breakfast table. Newspapers therefore also fulfil functions other than providing information: they are protective shields for morning grouches and cocooning screens for public spaces such as cafés and airports. I’m sure people will invent substitutes if the printed newspaper should ever disappear – perhaps large, flexible computer screens that can be used as room-dividers or veils.
5. It is said that new media are superseding the traditional media. What will our media mix look like in 20 years?
New media seldom completely supersede old ones; usually there is a new combination and a complement. When television came along, people said cinema was dead, and the Internet should have killed off both long ago – nonsense. In 20 years the Internet will have become an “Omninet” – it will be everywhere and nowhere, the platform on which all content is presented. However, output devices will continue to be differentiated. There will still be books and magazines, perhaps even more beautiful, more elegant and better smelling ones – and foldable, paper-like screens. The crucial question is, however, how far our cognitive abilities will have developed.
6. You have predicted a “digital backlash”, a reaction to the Internet euphoria. For what reasons? Has it already begun? And what impact will it have?
It occurs on a daily basis because the Internet is not used for the purposes ascribed to it by the visionaries of the 1990s. There is a subtle offline trend – a substantial number of people find the flood of images and sounds annoying and disturbing and are again turning towards sensual, haptic, personal, real-time experiences. The Internet often does not fulfil its promise. And large sections of the population still have little use for the Internet as a network medium because they are not educated enough or do not master the relevant social skills. We can actually only gain access to the true power of the network as a knowledge medium if we think, question, communicate and work in a networked way.
7. Does that by implication entail a comeback by the traditional media?
The Internet has already changed newspapers today and made them shorter, more succinct, often also better. It works as selective factor: meaningless, superficial media are killed off by it and the others changed.
8. Let’s look at print media. What are the strengths? And what about the future?
I believe the whole concept will become meaningless in the future. A “print medium” will no longer exist, but specific media brands differentiated by content, quality, access, ideologies and so on. Today a magazine like the American Wired is already a media product on many channels and this increasingly also applies to newspapers. In the future, Der Spiegel will mean a specific world view on paper, mobile phone or your monitor screen at home. A medium that only relies on paper is a rather isolated medium.
9. What will the business models for content providers be like in the future?
Very different. Some will continue to earn money in the premium sector. Others will fulfil primarily social functions and live from club or “freemium” models – in other words, business models in which specific basic services are free of charge and only supplementary products have to be paid for. Yet other providers will stop dealing with pure content and begin marketing services and “access”. Regional newspapers, for example, might evolve into complete service providers that supply not only newspapers, but also electricity, water and credit.
10. Against all expectations, radio seems to be doing extraordinarily well in this changing media landscape. How do you explain that?
Radio is simple and straightforward, a true retro-trend against the media muddle in which people no longer know where they stand. Someone actually talks to you! That’s just great.
11. Compared with other countries, do you observe anything you could describe as a particularly German phenomenon in media use?
No, the Germans are just a little more excitable and initially see any innovation as the end of the world, before they then become particularly loyal fans.
12. Often in science-fiction films present-day phenomena are simply projected into the future. What about future research? How do you reach your findings?
Through determined research and constant correction of our models. We naturally also “project” into the future. We have to do that a little more intelligently and in a more differentiated way than our predecessors.
13. Will the future media landscape develop other tools about which we can only speculate today?
In the future, e-mail interviews like this one, for example, will become dialogues. I could then also ask you what you really think – and how you came up with your questions...
