The “World” Has Already Ended, You Are Just Not Aware of It
Sorry to inform you about this.
The internet has only been in wide global use for approximately thirty years. During this time, the management of activities in most countries, communities, organizations, and in people’s personal and professional lives has transitioned from paper-based to digital-based.
The transitioning occurred gradually, then suddenly, fundamentally altering our societies and relationship with politics, culture, nature, science, and each other. It felt inevitable. Politicians, industry leaders, public decision-makers, and influential voices in culture unilaterally embraced the digital transformation as “Progress” due to the obvious productivity benefits of digital interfaces and new possibilities of connecting with other people, accessing information and creative work. When the American tech giants came knocking at our door, we enthusiastically let them in. Now, they are in charge of our utility consumption and have a spare key to our house.
The eagerness, intensity and pace with which the world went digital can best be compared to the global lockdown restriction that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the COVID restrictions were implemented due to a public health emergency, the digital transformation was implemented to reap the benefits of a business emergency that American Big Tech companies told us about. Either we would adapt or be left behind, they said. We swallowed the story whole, and enthusiastically, like Ibuprofen and Aspirin during a bad headache.
Now, it’s clear that the digital transformation of societies was unfortunate. We have voluntarily stepped into the cage that American tech companies laid out for us, and are finally forced to deal with the consequences. The main consequence was that the world ended. There is no longer a “world”. What is this world that you are talking about?
Correct me if I am wrong, but the “world” that I - and probably you since you are reading this - was brought into was devised by the “West”, spearheaded by the US and the EU. We drew a map of the Earth, agreed on country borders, a common history, trusted the same science, read the same books, watched the same movies, agreed on the same philosophical ideas and social studies. The “world” was consolidated after the Cold War, as I think
alluded to in his famous essay (and later book) “The End of History?”.This world no longer exists. Today, there are digital platforms, and then people’s subjective experiences on the platforms. The truth is no longer achieved by consensus in the West, but by what “content” people interact with and are emotionally stimulated by on social media. Information warfare has overtaken our mutual understanding. We are still early in this process of rewriting history, but if you have any doubts, take a look at so many ridiculous, a-factual and a-historical statements by leaders of the US, such as Donald Trump and Elon Musk, or read through the National Security Strategy of the United States of America (2025), which may symbolically mark the official end of the US/European common understanding of the “world”.
Facts are no longer valuable in themselves; they are defined by the accounts and talking heads that have the influence, power, status and money in the US, and the narratives that are pushed by algorithms. What can we do about it?
I can tell you what the EU can do: release itself from the grip of American tech platforms such as X, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Google, Amazon, and OpenAI and create new, sovereign platforms. Of equal importance, we have to stop relying on American cloud providers. When should the EU do this? Twenty years ago.
Then, and only then, can the EU continue to exist – even as the world has ended.