Why we need to become digitally resilient — and how a European operating system will help us to do so
If there is a word of the decade alongside the word of the year, the word ‘crisis’ is already almost unassailably in the lead. Even though we are in the third year of this decade, double word pairs with crisis — whether it’s Ukraine, climate, democracy, energy, or Corona — shape our perception and our media agenda. But what does this do to us as a society? Do we have to get used to crises or can we simply ignore them?
How does social progress take place? If you look at development in the areas of minimum wage, marriage for all, or the equal rights for men and women act (which guaranteed, among other things, women the right to obtain a driver’s license even without the husband’s permission), realities of life constantly develop — of course much more complex than I have outlined here. These periods of social progress are often taken for granted by subsequent generations that miss multidimensional social impulses which usually draw attention to a grievance. Sounds complex? Well, these realities of life are aggregated into political demands due to massive media attention and the corresponding discourses, and ideally, they end up resulting in laws that remedy these societal grievances and create new realities. What goes hand in hand with this is the admission that the previous status quo is outdated and unjust by current social standards.
In order to enter into this process of acknowledging injustice, a trigger is needed. This can be a current event, the result of years of lobbying, or even an individual process of recognition in the media agenda that gets spread further. One thing is certain: currently, this process no longer works.
What we are currently experiencing is a simultaneity of different stimuli that overwhelms us both socially and individually. In the hurricane of new crises proclaimed every month, we no longer know which social screws need adjusting to push forward progress, innovation, or even justice. Supposedly secure ideas about the future are eroding and driving division into extreme positions.
What we need now is (digital) resilience
Socially thinking through a crisis allows us to emerge from it strengthened — it’s almost cathartic. In this complex, globalised, digitalised world with its mass of ‘unknown unknowns’ and ever new risk factors, we need new processes in order to be able to develop further.
But what do these processes have to look like and how do we prepare for the unexpected?
What we need now is resilience. Socially, politically, and economically, we need to develop an inner strength that helps us to consciously shape our future instead of merely reacting as we do now. We need the ability to cushion crises and to strengthen ourselves internally through constant turbulence and become ever more resilient. This is what Princeton University economics professor and director of the Bendheim Center for Finance Markus Brunnermeier, among others, calls for in his book ‘The Resilient Society’ (the basic theses of which can be found here).
Building up this capacity also involves a new rhetoric that no longer brands all those minor events as ‘crises’ that we associate with a perceived deterioration of society, but instead understands change as a given and something to be harnessed. One project that can contribute to promoting resilience economically as well as socially, digitally, and politically, is technological sovereignty.
Maturity means independence
Europe must become technologically sovereign, that is one of those demands that have been voiced in various dimensions in recent months, two examples being Franziska Brantner, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Ministry of Economics and Telefónica CEO Markus Haas, but also from us at Incari. In the course of the permanent crises they remained unheard. But because it is a crucial prerequisite for resilience, it is one of the things that we should pay particular attention to.
For a society, being able to act in a technologically sovereign manner means not being restricted in its digital activities such as the development of key technologies by data security policy, by economic concerns, or by dependencies in the value chain. The term includes individual competence in digital use, as well as the protection and security of data at all levels, and for companies the guarantee of fair competition under equal conditions.
Our contribution to a resilient Europe
On one hand, we can only achieve such a complex goal as technological sovereignty on a pan-European basis, but on the other hand, it should not be understood as a protectionist, ‘europe first’ approach. Rather, the European path should offer an enriching alternative to the strongly individualistic US-American “Big Tech-Silicon-Valley-Capitalism” and the authoritarian Chinese (and Russian) Big-State-Approach and at the same time strengthen the maturity and the identity of the European society. To this end, a secure infrastructure must be in place, comprising both trustworthy value chains and electronics as well as corresponding software, hardware, and architecture.
In our recently published white paper ‘An appeal for a technologically sovereign Europe’, we laid out in detail the hurdles we need to clear along the way. The white paper further details why there needs to be a pan-European innovation and technology hub that is prepared to take the risks of such a development and establish rules that will make a technologically sovereign Europe truly feasible.
At Incari, we want to contribute to the realization of such a hub. We are working on the development of a completely new digital ecosystem that conserves resources and is based on five pillars:
- an application development platform with which we democratize HMI development.
- a digital marketplace that enables secure and barrier-free marketing.
- a European operating system, the Incari OS, which combines what is technically possible with what is desirable, thus creating a new narrative for Europe.
- hardware devices that guarantee resource-saving planning reliability.
- computer components that make all our columns faster and more flexible in their development.
One thing is clear: Only if we as a society become self-determined in our digital actions, i.e. technologically sovereign, can we escape permanent crisis communication and face the unforeseen in a resilient, courageous, and forward-looking manner. The next crisis is bound to come, but perhaps we will simply no longer perceive it as a turning point, but merely as a (digital) springboard.
Good design should make people’s lives easier — at Incari we are convinced of this. We are a Berlin-based software provider that creates the HMI development platform Incari Studio. We create the required tools and technologies necessary for developing future-based HMI systems in various industries. InterFaces is a platform to explore what such systems can or will look like at some point in the future. Follow us on Twitter: Incari_HMI, Follow us on Instagram: Incari_HMI, Follow us on LinkedIn: Incari HMI Development.
