I’ve been living in Berlin for three years now, and after all this time, I still find it a similar but distinctly different world from where I come from. Berlin is a micro-world within Germany – most Berliners will tell you that if you live in Berlin, you aren’t exactly in Germany. Physically, sure. But mentally and emotionally, Berlin is another place altogether.
In the last couple of months, I’ve found myself in yet another micro-world within a micro-world. I’ve landed in the world of the Techies. The programmers, designers, creatives, and bloggers who are on the tip of the technological evolution, and are loving every minute of it. The ones fighting for data-protection, who can explain in accurate and complex detail exactly what and where all this “data” is and what could potentially be done with it. The guys and girls who stand around at parties, Twittering about the party and checking their messages to see who might be on the way there.
Tonight I am sitting at an Election Night party taking place after the Atoms and Bits networking conference. The Atoms and Bits conference was a chance for do-it-yourselfers throught Berlin to meet with each other for grass-roots style discussion groups and idea-sharing sessions. The main theme is “do it yourself” – i.e. take control, understand what’s going on around you, and make it what you want it to be. “It” could be anything from a website, to a political campaign, to a self-designed line of clothing.
The attendees are all creative types, and for the most part, heavily teched-out. The conference itself, and the party now, offer free W-Lan connections to anyone with a laptop (or iPhone)… which is most of us here. As I sit here in the gathering dark, I look around and see a sea of laptop screens glowing blue in the twilight, their owners tapping busily away with coding or social networking services.
Here are a few photos of the Election Party, to illustrate my point:
See no evil, hear no evil, code no evil: the three branches of media all together on one bench.
Early in the evening – the sea of laptops just beginning to build.
An analog relic, still providing the best sound quality to true enthusiasts.
An even more rarely-seen analog artifact – pen and paper!
A workshop participant offers self-made T-shirts and on-the-spot silk screening for blank bags, shirts, etc.
Markus Beckedahl of the blog/political platform Netzpolitik.org
Well-known Twitterer mspro, who also helped to organize the Atoms and Bits conference
