Accursed Land of Pixels!

Now we have reached that blessed state – Germany is a land of pixels. Probably the only one world-wide. And it makes me angry.
It seems like many people have not yet realized that we are living in a globalized world. And that the internet is the show window of this globalized world.

So let us assume I am in New-Delhi, Peking, Mombasa or wherever else on this world. And let us further assume that I wish to show where I live to a young Indian, a young Chinese lady or a young man from Africa.

I wish to use Street View in order to show him my home. Strategically spoken, there is not much else you can do with it, anyway.

So I run through the streets – and find that every other house is nothing but a set of pixels! What will the young man or the young lady think?

Perhaps the Germans are ashamed of their houses? Or perhaps they are so arrogant they do not want to show them to anybody? The person I am talking to will be very surprised. After all, they always took pride in showing me their houses.

And if I then tell them that people in Germany are afraid their privacy (Privatheit) might be violated, I will see incomprehension mirrored in their faces. Because they have as little idea as I what the word privacy is supposed to mean. And do people in Germany have nothing else to be worried about?

There are probably a lot of people all over the world who would like to at least visit us in Germany virtually. Especially people living in those countries where they know they will never be able to afford visiting us in the real world.

And then their virtual visit is through streets where many of the buildings have been converted into nothing but pixels. I made the same experience myself this last weekend. I plan to move to the south-west of Munich in the near future and wanted to take a closer look at the neighbourhood. And I ended up in streets where half of the houses were nothing but pixels.

My spontaneous idea was: I would not wish to live next door to these kinds of people. If someone is scared just because their cottage might be visible in the internet, what will I be confronted with from them if I have them as neighbours?

Our global visitors are probably just as surprised when being confronted with our pixel mania. They might ask strange questions, too: Why do you only see pixels? What kinds of people are we talking, if they want their houses to be nothing but a pixel blot?

I guess most of the “pixellers” do not even know the meaning of the word internet. And they probably do not really know what they are doing or what consequences it has. But they are against it as a matter of principle. They oppose a new world, one which, at least partly, is really hard to understand, after all. A world that is weird and consequently they cannot like it.

To be sure, it was rather easy to voice your opposition. Ironically, the procedure was advertised in the internet. It took neither a huge effort, nor a lot of civil courage. All you had to do was send a fax.

But they do not take into consideration what the entire world will think when visiting the internet and having to run through a landscape full of pixels. So now we not only close our borders against the evil economically motivated refugees by FRONTEX, but also make it impossible for any potential virtual visitors to take a look at our houses by hiding them behind pixels. Can anybody be more stupid and egoistical?

One way or another, I get the impression that we cannot get rid of a certain German illness. And that we still nurture a special German character. It seems that we now have to continue our special history in the internet.

Or is this the much-talked-about German cultural orientation?

But perhaps there is a good side to all those pixels. Perhaps it will help to give us a new image: instead of being known as the country that caused the great wars and committed the most perfectly organized crimes against humanity, we might go down in history as the pixel country!

And that would certainly be some progress!

RMD
(Translated by EG)

P.S.
I took the Prussian coat of arms from the central media archive Wikimedia Commons. The copyright is with David Liuzzo.