can you hear me? Nine. Oh, okay, perfect. That's nice. You must be the people who tweet

the word nine to me. Every day for the last three years, I have received at least one tweet that has simply said nine. So as far as I'm concerned, my work is done.

But thank you very much for coming. Thank you very much for having me here. I have to say I'm especially grateful that you had me, and especially for the advertising publicity work you've been doing, because some of my visits have been met with some controversy at times. But I know the Republica is not

afraid of a little controversy on occasion. But I want to also thank Republica for making me a media partner, along with a couple of local blogs, I believe. I've heard of the talks. But also I want to thank my own

media partner as well, the Bildzeitung. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. The other thing that's important to me, I wasn't really sure if I was

really the right person to speak to you at all. I spent a lot of time on the internet, but I don't know much about the internet. But maybe that makes me not such a bad person to speak to you in some ways. You know what you're talking about, and I'm thinking you might help me explain or understand

what it is that I've been doing for the last few years. But it was just some hesitation I decided to come. But when I heard that your main speaker couldn't be here, I felt it was my duty to invite my friend, Sasha

Novo. All joking aside, I want to thank Sasha Novo personally, myself. He's the only reason I had ever heard about Republica. And he's also

someone who made me interested in the whole topic of the politics of the internet, something I knew very little about. I think many of you remember this article that Sasha wrote a little over a year ago, which I know many found quite disappointing. But as far as I was concerned, that was exactly the way you

should feel about the internet right now, is disappointed. There's a great German word for disappointment, Entzeuschung. Entzeuschung is a, how would you translate it, a delusion of sorts, right? And the Ent is a removal of something. So you are no longer deluded. This is a good thing. Stay

disappointed in your very special German way of being disappointed. In any case, it was around this time that Sasha wrote that, that much of the NSA news, of course, had broken already. It was still breaking. One of the more

recent events at the time was the revelation that the U.S. Embassy in Berlin was in fact one of the main listening posts for American intelligence services, which was interesting for me. And it brought about an interesting invitation as well from someone at the State Department,

which gave me a very interesting opportunity to think about this quite personally, about how it is that I position myself vis-a-vis the NSA, vis-a-vis the U.S. government, et cetera. So I did what any true patriot would do after receiving such a request. And I wrote about it

in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. But I did it in all fairness. I was very careful. Oh, you can't read the close up. I was very, very careful about the details and quoted quite faithfully, the Germans love you. Thank you very much for that. But for me, it was a very

interesting time. It did leave its mark on the paper for some time to come. But that thing was, of course, fleeting, as are most things, which brings me to what it is I'm hoping to talk about, which is a little something called utopia and how one might get

there and if you'd ever actually want to get there, is the other question. Because for me, I thought I had the perfect answer for you in terms of explaining this. And as many of you might have

found if you follow my feed, tweets have a tendency to disappear. They're somewhat ephemeral. So I had to give some thought to this myself recently, and I thought about it. And I kept thinking about it. And I became somewhat reflective about my time in this,

my time in this city. I started to become reflective about the time of year and about this special, that special thing in the air and spring in Germany. I started to think about life

itself. Are there some Stuttgart in the audience? But honestly, I did actually think a bit about my own experience in Europe. I was going to say something about Europe and I looked back and I remembered my days as a young man visiting the Lorelei of

all things, enjoying Europe naively, naively enjoying Europe, very casually adopting a German identity without any

problem whatsoever. Spending time in the Netherlands, simply riding my bike around, enjoying the local cuisine. Things started to change when I made a couple of friends in Berlin. Some of you might recognize these two. And of

course there was that fateful trip to Prague. You're never quite the same after Prague and reading Kafka. But my own experience of Europe is actually based very much on my time living with a German family. This was actually just

last summer, my host mother's birthday. And this was actually just quite coincidentally, a birthday present was a map of Europe with places marked where they had visited, with the no less than three American exchange students

they'd hosted. So I don't know who gives out the Bundesverdienstreuz these days, but I would like to put in a good word for my family in Kassel. But what I'm here to talk about today is this idea of utopian negation as

it relates to Europe, and as it relates to my own little internet project. I've tried to define it in one way or another. But I don't know if it ever quite does it justice as much as to say that what I'm interested in is this word nine, saying no to any number of things, but not simply for

the sake of saying no to something, but saying no to something as a refusal to accept something. And yet at the same time, not exactly knowing what it is I might want instead. And that I think is very much the position that many of us find ourselves in today, especially dealing with

some of the main topics that have been discussed over the last couple of days at Republica. But there have been early phases of my work in which I wasn't so convinced of this idea. There were even some rather painful periods that are hard to revisit. There was even, there

was even that dandy period for a while, and the Dutch period. It's, there was of course the inevitable drug phase came with a little bit of success. There was then of course, the cubist phase, the I've been ripped off by

Microsoft phase. There was the radically nihilist phase. And of course, there was the I just sold my book in eight fucking countries phase. That is one of the strangest

images I've ever, I've ever beheld. But let's, let's return to the roots a little bit. That avatar is based, of course, as many of you know, on the German Jewish philosopher Theodor Adorno, someone whose work I

spent a great deal of time with in my old job as a professor. And I've tried very much to think about how relevant Adorno still is in a very kind of broad sense. And, and his work has taken on its own life

and what it is that I do. And in fact, it's become much more like a voice that's closer to my own than that of any particular person Adorno included. But in what I'm doing, I've tried very hard to think about the ideas that are still very current in Adorno's work. Many of you, of course, familiar

with the notions of negative dialectics, or the culture industry, even if you haven't read Adorno's work, these things have entered the vocabulary in such a way that they're almost unavoidable. So I try and what I do to honor the spirit of

Adorno's work. I don't like to in any way cheapen it, say by suggesting that Adorno is still alive living in Chicago and driving a Chevy Malibu convertible. Please note the American flag on the left. But I've tried very hard to honor Adorno. I

would not want to in any way cheapen or commodify the work, the ideas, the thoughts of such a prescient critic of commodification, nor would I in every way want to betray the legacy of their critique of capitalism, nor would I, nor

would I want to violate an aesthetic sense of a thinker who is so, so trenchant in his critique of aesthetics and the connection to politics. I also wouldn't want to cheapen the German cultural tradition as a whole. And I would not in

any way want to reduce some of the greatest masterpieces of European culture, speaking of Europe, to a cheap joke or to a cheap political punch line. And sometimes I feel bad about the

effect my work has had. I apologize to any museum goers that day. But I know that no matter what it is that I've done with culture and with Europe, the Internet will always go a little bit farther, just a little bit farther than I'll go myself. So what would Adorno think

about this? The Internet itself has an answer, believe it or not, which is disappointing in its way. I am happy at least to have found a fan or two primarily in Slovenia and the philosophical

community. Some of you will recognize Joseph Stalin. That's not fair. It kind of is fair. So what it is that I do, how do I, how do I create some sort of or a type of position or

attitude that I think somehow enacts this notion of utopian negation? And I think to talk about that, it's important to remember a few basic definitions of comedy. This one ingenious, but not my own. Comedy is tragedy plus time. You

probably need no reminder. But of course, Twitter comedy, tragedy plus time minus time. And let there be no mistake, German Twitter comedy, tragedy plus time minus time minus comedy, plus fart jokes, plus or minus Hegel.

So you can take that home now and do what I do every day, but much better. So the thing that's important about a project like mine is to have realistic goals. To know that there really isn't that much you can accomplish by writing

a few jokes online. But still, there are ways in which you can address an entire, an entire philosophical tradition in a very, in a very precise and somehow quite effective way. It's

also very helpful in terms of some vocabulary that many might not have gained yet. It's a very good way to impart a greater lexicon to those who are learning German as a foreign language. And so I've tried also of course to communicate something about a German Lebensgefuhl, if you

will. A certain just way of life that I think many of us have become quite familiar with in the present. But the other thing that's important of course is to think about these terms that have been all around Republica for the last days. Politics. Politik. Realpolitik.

Netzpolitik. And I've done my best to explain them. But of course, what is the Internet most interested in? The Internet is still most interested in everyday culture. But also some more traditional cultural aspects as

well. Sometimes you're faced with the task of explaining the German Santa Claus. And if you're a good boy and you reveal the secrets we're not supposed to have, you'll be visited in Moscow. It's a lovely tradition. And I do my

best to explain that as much as I can. But also I don't limit myself to Germany. I mean, I'm interested in Europe. That's what we're talking about. The kind of Europe that's been created in this particular format, in this particular way, and an effort really to

address many common misperceptions about politics or about any number of aspects that are related to that one just walked by too fast. Roland walking into a bar. But also

it's important for me to contextualize your European news for the broader world as well. You're really not sure what to make of these things if you don't have a somewhat larger context. So I've tried also to keep up in many ways with Germany's in particular many

attempts at multiculturalism and multilingualism. You will remember this issue of the Beidzeitung. But I also do try to get to the root of some of the key problems facing the continent today. And especially to

address questions of lawmaking and legal tradition as well as of course scientific discovery and innovation that's become so important to Europe. And of course also very important to address some of Europe's finest traditions. And I do the best I can to do

that without shortchanging Europeans with some explanation of the world that I know in the United States. And so I try there as well to address any number of aspects that must be quite confusing to Europeans about the United

States and our political culture for one thing. And I also try to address current controversies, revelations with a nice Rammstein reference for the kids. I think I misspelled Rammstein. But the other thing that's

important of course is to address tensions that are with us right now. If there's, do we have drones in the audience? But trying to address what I would consider defining

tensions. In being so foolish as to take on the task of giving myself the topic of the entire Republica, I found rather quickly that this question of finding Europe is really very little, has very little to do with finding Europe and has much more to do with inventing a Europe or

fighting for a certain type of Europe that you want. And there's a type of Europe that I want you to have. And that's why it's very important for me to think about the discussions that are taking place here and will continue to take place and hopefully also the action that comes out of an event like this. So the other thing that of course is important is to give some idea of the scope of

current events, current struggles, current problems within a global context, but also in making the jump into print that I've done somewhat recently, also to address some of these questions of U.S.-German relations, but also

tensions within Europe itself in terms of economic problems, economic troubles. I've certainly addressed the question too very recently of migration, immigration, asylum, et cetera, and tried also in a way to speak to problems that are by no means European

alone, but in fact are very much world problems, although they're often not quite seen that way in the United States. And so certainly most recently I've had much more to do with questions of, I think that's the only one of

those I've ever liked. I kind of liked that one only because I could use that title that I enjoyed. But I know that there are a lot of ideas out there about defining Europe. This is from Burleigh Monster, who also created our friend Sasha Nobo, but who's been helping to

channel Habermas in many ways about what kind of a Europe could come about, how it might come about, and what kind of struggle is involved. So I've tried myself to think a bit about how I might define Europe. And I've thought of it in terms of aesthetics. I've

thought about it in terms of economics and economics and technology as much as I can. But of course also thought about it as well in terms of questions of international relations and broader networks of power. But also very

much, again, defining tensions internationally but also within Europe itself. And again, within a larger intellectual framework as well has been important in terms of positioning whatever it is that Europe is now and is on its way to becoming. So what is it that I have to

show for this? There's no mass movement that's going to come about overnight by any means. Very little influence in politics in the United States, I'm sad to report. Also very little impact in Europe itself, although there have

been some efforts made on occasion. But there have been small rewards along the way, small moments of recognition, of shaping the youth of the United States. For instance, this is my nephew who will be paying some rather

intense therapist bills in the future. But every now and then, even out of the blue, a message in a bottle shows up on paper from Europe, which to me have been these moments that I consider quasi-utopian along the way,

very everyday, stink-normal utopias of some sort. So I want to leave a fair amount of time for conversation, but I'll end at least with a couple of words. There's a lot of sense that I've gotten, or at least it's been reported recently, about people's sense of

frustration in dealing with the politics of the Internet. And certainly I think this is something that you should not necessarily shy away from, but embrace. This is something that I find many of you are probably uniquely qualified to deal with, a European culture that

really should not become any more American when it comes to dealing with disappointment and bitterness and regret. You've been trained in many ways to live with this disappointment in a way that I think could be quite productive for all of us. And I'm hoping that in many ways

you'll take the opportunity of being disappointed to hope again in some rather different way. But a type of hope that I think you'll find in many ways, there is a discussion that's happening all over the place now on Twitter, on the Internet, which in fact

takes aspects such as recent blocking of Twitter, Google, et cetera, in Turkey. It's becoming an opportunity for a very lively discussion online. There are also very good signs, too, in terms of European connections that are being made that we might not have

expected. Did the bikers ever arrive? That story kind of died before I found out, if they made it here. But there are other small steps that you yourself can make in terms of dealing with some of these problems. So I

don't want you to feel helpless. There are definitely things that can be done. But for now, I'll simply wish you the very nicest Wochen Untergang I can. Thank you for your attention and look forward to your questions. Thank you very much.

So, are there any questions? Please raise your hands. And I come along.

Don't make me ask myself a question. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Hello. So in your tweets, you often play

with a German language. Do you think it's easier for you because you're not a German native speaker? What was the first part? I actually just didn't hear. You're playing with a German language a lot in your tweets. And do you think that it is easier for you because you have a certain distance to the German language because it's not your native language?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's kind of interesting because in my old job as in fact a German professor, I was never quite good enough with the language. I started very late. I have an accent, I make grammar errors, all these things. And I always felt extremely insecure about that. But in fact, what it is with for what is that I'm doing now, it can be an advantage to have a distance from the

language, you recognize things that you would not if the language were that natural to use. So yes, I do. It does lead to some very bad puns, however, that one might have better judgment about if one were a native speaker of the language. Are there any more questions, please?

Oh, yeah, that's what I thought. And then, of course, there is no camera here. I'm sorry for sitting in the back. Um, I had a lot of fun and your talk, but I didn't quite get the message you

wanted to get across. Do you want to hear it again? Yeah, in 140 characters, please. That I'd probably be better at doing than in summarizing here. Well, this is

the thing. The message that I've had is really one of a type of encouragement, I suppose, in that what I've seen, and I could really only talk about the Internet or talk about Europe from this tiny little perspective of one particular project that I've been involved in. But

what I've seen, and I wasn't someone who spent much time online at all in the past before this, but what I have seen is the potential for a certain type of community to come about that I've seen done some very generous and very

interesting and very innovative things as a result of people liking a stupid Hegel joke, people liking a bad pun. And that to me has been really interesting because I think primarily what I've found is that there are people who have come together, there's a type of community that's formed that

would not have if essentially there wasn't the fun, there wasn't the kind of playful aspect of what it is that I'm doing. And I'd say what I've tried to do is just give you some taste of what that looks like, right, but also to ask you in a way to consider if that isn't maybe an

important element to keep in mind in terms of facing the kind of struggles that you're facing right now. The message that I've been getting, both from what I've seen of Republika last year on the live stream and what I've seen this time around as well is that these

are extremely difficult issues in terms of questions of net neutrality, which I think is a terrible term, but extremely important issue. Certainly the questions of surveillance, but also these questions as well that have very little to do with governments per se and much more to do with private

industry and what a company knows about you, how in fact the data that is collected can have an extremely significant aspect, extremely significant impact on your life in a way that we might be more used to thinking about within the context of the state. But actually what I think

is one of the main issues right now in the United States at least is very much that question of conglomeration of data within a commercial context. So for me, primarily the point that I've had if any is that of this is a long struggle. It's going to take a lot of energy and for a long time and a lot of organizing and while these are serious

issues, you need to keep in mind as well what is it that can keep you going? What is it also that can speak to an audience of people who doesn't necessarily have the same investment in some of these issues? They might have that investment. The Internet might be just as important to them if they don't know it. To me, the project

that I've had online has been largely one of translating what I consider important issues into a language that works on Twitter or that works for an audience that isn't necessarily already interested in these topics. So if anything, the message is that of don't forget how to communicate

some of these issues and how to connect with people about issues that matter and you'll have to fight for for some time. That's not inspiring. That's just the way it is. You know that these from what I've gathered in the talks I've gone to so far, we're

not talking about a very sexy struggle when you're dealing with EU politics. These are things that are grueling and extremely detailed from what I gather and these are things that are also hard to communicate. And so some of the things that I've seen online be very effective have been when things like Netspolitik have used more

humor in a lot of the message that they're communicating. You can question what kind of an impact does that have? How effective is it? But I do think that that's significant in terms of that initial connection with someone that, in fact, maybe there is something that's at stake for me as well in these issues that, well, the

computer internet experts seem to know something about. So, other question? Okay. One more question. No, I think. Oh, the moment. Yeah. Yeah. They're about to go. I'd like

you to. Yes. I can give it like you to ask how much your career in academia influence your nihilistic perspective and somehow how you decided to go from a very close environment

towards a wider yes, perspective like that one provided by the net. How did I decide to make that step? Yes. I was asking how much your academic experience influence your nihilistic

perspective? I would say for me this step wasn't very hard because I didn't have a choice. I was failing at what it is that I was doing, which was I couldn't find a language within my academic work that meant anything to me anymore. I actually had difficulty in trying

to write academic prose in that I found that I was just rehearsing the same cliches time after time. And so what it is that appealed to me is, in fact, that language is still present for me somehow, right? But what I'm mainly interested in doing in these things that, yes, they're dumb little jokes, but they're trying to work with the language that's out there that I can

work with in a very different way and that I think is trying to recontextualize philosophical ideas, but also trying to recontextualize some language that you might know within the context of politics or marketing or whatever it happens to be to do something different with, to have a different form of recognition of, in fact, these ways of thought and structures of power

that are with us every day, although they're not terribly obvious to us at all times. So I would say it's always there. And what it is that I like about doing what I'm doing is, in fact, the opportunity to take that apart and do something else with it. So one more question.

Oh, yeah, over here. Hello. So the struggles on things like net neutrality are partly a war on words. So I think

newspeak is a thing who plays a big role in this. So it's a war that government and the people fight about words or descriptions. Can you help invent new words? I'd be happy to help. I mean, this is a conversation I've had with people here the last couple of days is what

other what other words are out there for for that dot and spice around. Right. And I've that is challenging. And I think it's extremely difficult. And I've learned about some interesting resources that are out there where the attempt is being made. I don't think there's an easy answer to that, but I actually think that's quite crucial. I mean, it might sound like a really surface kind of

marketing PR kind of question, but I think it's actually central to to organizing broader support for any number of these issues. I think it's very hard to get behind a concept of neutrality. I mean, that is not a that is not something you imagine a glorious struggle behind the notion of neutrality, no

matter what it happens to be. But the associations with that, for instance. So I think that's a key problem. And I don't have any easy answers for that. I mean, you see that for me, it's been about trying to somehow take those terms and do something with them, recontextualize them somehow. But reinventing them and establishing them is a whole other task.

I mean, a difficult one. But I think it's one that has to be taken on. No question about it. We have one question, and it's here, Hinton. Hello. In some of the tweets, you're quite critical about Europe as well. So maybe you can just say one or two sentences about your perspective on Europe and maybe

how we can find Europe as the slogan is. Yeah, I guess for me, it's a question of it's not a matter of finding anything. I mean, it's very much a question of creating, inventing the Europe that you're going to have, want to have. I mean, it's a struggle. I mean, it's interesting. And just yesterday

in, I guess it was the New York Times, this was about Germany in particular. But a question about an opinion column, Tom Friedman, about, well, Germany is doing so many things right, but it has to finally become serious as a global player, which essentially means coming to terms with its with its global power and

especially in terms of the military, et cetera, this antiquated pacifism, et cetera, et cetera. These discussions are taking place, I mean, all different levels. But I think that it's primarily what I've been noticing over the last days is that these questions about the very specific issues in the I don't know if you use the term Internet community are

in fact seems to be more and more European issues. I mean, from some of the talks that I've heard, we're talking about policies that are coming from Brussels within the context of the EU. This actually means some sort of investment, re-engaged, reinvigorated investment in whatever that EU project

is, despite the fact that, again, speaking problems of language, that's very, very tricky. I mean, my sense is that it's very hard for people to engage with a number of these these issues and EU policy that are central to their lives, but seem so very far removed. And to me, I think that much of the work of organizing for

creating the kind of Europe that you want is going to be focused on finding a way to translate the complexities that these things take on within that context into a language that people can understand and understand what's at stake.

I mean, I would think that's probably the main legacy of my time in academia is, in fact, that was always the question. It might be writing a paper about a play from the 18th century that very few people know, and yet you had to identify what is at stake in that. Why does it matter to read that? What is the argument you're going to make about

that? And how can you actually make the case that this is worth paying attention to? If anything, that is the world that I'm coming from and the challenge that I found in it. And I think that translates into any number of the issues that people have been talking about here for the last couple of days. So that's a very broad answer, but that's the level at which I'm operating on in

terms of those questions right now. OK, thanks. Eric, thank you very much. Your applause, please. Thanks. Thank you.