3 posts from Dezember 2006

When I went to Dusseldorf airport recently, one problem at the heart of the German Krankheit (German disease) beacme crystal clear to me: It's all about appearence and no or little substance.

Some weeks ago, i visited the airport in the West German city of Dusseldorf. Not that Dusseldorf differs in many ways from other German cities, on the contrary: It seems to be German society in a nutshell, hosting the well-off 10 per cent and extremely poor parts of the society.

Walking through the departures hall, the following image lept to my eye:

 

Now, one has to keep in mind that this is the official departure hall of Lufthansa at the Dusseldorf International Airport, not Erich-Sixt-Airport. The ads are by German car rental group Sixt. Actually, not only here, but also at the gangway-fingers, and all over the rest of the place, you will find quite obtrusive Sixt ads. Not only that. Also take a look at the following movie:

 

This is an aerial approach to the Düsseldorf ariport terminal, not the Vodafone headqarters in that town, as you may think.

Now, not to be mistaken: Ads are and will always be part of a traveller's world, and other airports do display advertisements as well. But what you see in Dusseldorf, as happens all over Germany, goes further: Public assets and their dignity as public places are being sold off to a cheap make-beleive of an advertiser's wonderland.

This goes so far that often projects having been financed and funded publicly are no longer recognizeable as such, or that form follow the advertiser's needs, not necessarily function. Football stadiums in Germany, almost wiithout exception, are named after beer brands or other corporate sponsores. Of course, this does not prevent that more often than not these projects have received heavy public funding before.

Corporates are not so much citizens in Germany than a-socially behaving parasites, joy riding on the back of taxpayers' Euros.

Which brings us to two quite important observations of symptomps of what I would call the "German Krankheit", the German Disease:

 

• on one hand, appearance overrides function, and everything is tailored to the need of sponsors. The world of make beleive that does not deliver on its promises, as long as the consumer can be billed and bombarded with obstrusive messages. It seems that the country is being sold off as a huge billboard,

 

• on the other hand, such behavior sheds some light onto the way that Germany ticks these days: Everything is measured to its market value. Even if you ask, what's so special about that. Beleive me, Germany is going to the extremes, as it always does in implementing a concept. Which means that people are getting forced into a hypercommercialized environment, and funny election results to the tunes of the 1930's should only be a question of time - actually tacitly, Germans are quickly getting fed up with the way globalization is implemented in preemptive obedience towards corporates by courage-less politicans.

 

Actually, in a TV broadcast in September, former German chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, has compared today's Germany to the Weimar Republic Germany in the 1930's. There is little to join to that remark, except for the observation that German politicians 2006 AD seem to be willing to strectch their good luck to the extreme and seem to go on living carelessly on borrowed time. 

Starting January 1, 2007, all owners of a PC connected to the Internet need to pay the public radio fee. Nobody really knows what justifies that, however it is only one late symptom of the German Krankheit.

Strange it is. While politicians in Germany mimick their support for the Internet, saying they were ready and willing to foster the future, what they do seems to point into a different direction. All Germans with a TV- or radio set are and have been subject to a kind of public tax which has to be paid monthly. Independent of if they use their TV for actually watching TV, every German owning one is obliged to support the public broadcasting system with a fee totalling at about US$ 20, every month.

While the quality one gets in return is arguable, the tax isn't: The Gebühreneinzugszentrale ("fee acquisition agency") has constructed a network for data acquisition that some critics liken to the former East German secret service, the Stasi. Not only do inspectors roam the country's windows at night in search of flickering tubes, word goes that they use the tactics of intimidation in trying to get into homes for inspection. Not only that: The GEZ, being a public agency, is known to buy data from commercial address traders. In a shoot-and-forget-manner, everyone living or having lived at a certain address is then invoiced. Admittedly, receiving mail from the GEZ is a way of doing genealogy for the lazy - other than that, being in contact with the GEZ is hardly very amusing.

Of late, the state agency has switched from molesting citizens into open derision-mode.

On airport baggage trolleys they have installed ads reading: "Finally home. Have you paid your GEZ yet?" That is so funny, one could emigrate or jump right back onto the plane.

Even public broadcaster SWR ran radio ads on their channels saying "we are at the world championships thanks to your fees". Great, I finance the decadence of German public sport reporting I thought.

Anyhow:  Should anyone have thought being invoiced for no face value (a favourite institutional pastime in this country) stopped here saw himself badly mistaken this year. The prime ministers of the German states decided, that any computer connected to the internet triggered the obligation to pay radio fees. Theoretically, such is their "rationale", they could be used to receive TV and radio programmes from the German public broadcasters.

OK, none of them really puts up a full TV programme stream in narrowband or in broadband, just like the Norwegian NRK does. Most of them don't even offer live radio streaming beyond a 28 Kbit/s equivalent bandwidth. Anyway: The theoritical possibility of receiving such programmes was enough for the prime ministers to impose the fee. Oh, by the way: UMTS (WCDMA) cellphones, of course, have become subject to the same fee. The fee-satus of badly done dental jobs is as of yet unknown, although one has heard that theoretically one could start recieving radio programmes. OK, better not be German and let it not be a German radio station then. I have to admit, I own a dynamic microphone which, on bad days, throws a loud signal of Czech radio to my preamp. Maybe I better sell that before the inspector knocks twice.

 

 

 

Kommentar: Das Ende der Fahnenstange

 

Spätestens, seit Wolfgang Schäuble vergangene Woche seine Keule  geschwungen hat, wissen wir: Das Internet ist Teufelszeug und  eigentlich ein Ausbildungsplatz für Terroristen.

Wie schön ist doch die Welt der Telefonanbieter, in der praktisch nichts stattfindet, weil alles unbezahlbar ist. Sicher: Ein Problem hätten wir durch ein vollständig prohibitives Internet gelöst: Keiner würde mehr mit keinem kommunizieren, weil es schlicht unbezahlbar ist.

Das verringert den Aufwand der Überwachungsbehörden ganz erheblich.

Andererseits, Hilfe ist aus unterschiedlichen Richtungen auf dem Weg und Schäuble kann sich zurücklehnen:

Die Telekommunikationskonzerne gieren nach neuen Einnahmequellen und haben breitbandige Inhalte als Ziel ihrer Begierde fest in den Blick genommen. Anders formuliert: Wer künftig noch über YouTube oder  Jumpcut Videos hochladen oder ansehen will, muss damit rechnen, sich künftig vor den verschlossenen Pforten eines Bezahl-Portals wieder zu finden. Der Grund: Die Deutsche Telekom will zum Beispiel YouTube die  Datenübertragung zu ihren Kunden in Rechnung stellen und damit für dasselbe Datenpaket zweimal abkassieren: Bei ihren Teilnehmern und
bei YouTube. Überflüssig zu erwähnen, dass die Zeche immer der  Endverbraucher bezahlt.

Mit der GEZ-Gebühr auf PCs werden viele PCs schlicht keine Verbindung mehr mit dem Internet haben und wieder genutzt werden, um Haushaltsbücher zu führen, mit der Data-Becker Weihnachtsdruckerei Kärtchen für die  Lieben zu designen oder Sudoku zu spielen. Man will nicht von einem virtuellen Ausreiseverbot sprechen, aber die Tendenz ist dennoch klar.

Über Hintertüren wollen sich die Geheim-Dienste Zugang zu jedem beliebigen PC beschaffen, um zu Fahnden. Wer nichts zu verbergen hat, muss schließlich auch nichts fürchten.

Oder?

Sehen wir das Problem einmal von einer anderen Seite an: Wussten Sie, dass Menschen, die ihre Flugtickets bar bezahlen, zum Beispiel in den USA schon den ersten Schritt zum Terror-Verdächtigen gegangen sind? Jaja, doch: Es entspricht der Logik der Dienste, dass Barzahlung weniger darauf hindeutet, dass man gerne Kontrolle über seine Ausgaben behält

(was mit Bargeld leichter ist als mit Kartenzahlungen)

als vielmehr darauf, dass man anonym bleiben möchte und daher sicher etwas finsteres im Schilde führt. Kommt es nun spitz auf Knopf, ist man ruckzuck Staatsfeind nummer Eins. Fragen Sie den friedensbewegten  Sänger Cat Stevens, dem die Einreise in die USA verweigert wurde, weil er sich - das ist sicher über ein viertel Jahrhundert her - den  Glaubensnamen "Islam" gegeben hat.

Gehen wir also Wohlgemut ins Jahr 2007 und stellen uns die

 Frage, welche Überraschungen es für uns bereit hält. Man möchte wetten,  in der Informationstechnologie haben wir mit der Debatte um die Egoshooter das Ende des schwarz rot gold beflaggten Fahnenmasts noch nicht gesehen.