Qualityland

PRIVATE TUTORING

Peter stands in front of the bulletproof glass screen, watching the old man as he lies on his back and stretches his legs backward until his knees come to rest alongside his ears.

“Yoga,” says the old man. “The embryo pose.”

“I didn’t come here to do back gymnastics,” says Peter.

“These aren’t back gymnastics,” says the old man. “This is yoga. Come on, lie down.”

Peter obeys.

“On your back,” says the old man. “And now put your legs in the air. Hold. Hold. And now let your legs tip backward until they touch the floor.”

The old man chuckles.

Peter gives up, because this isn’t how he wants to die. He can just picture the news item that Sandra would make out of it: “A Useless died in QualityCity today when he broke his neck during a back gymnastics exercise led by a crazy old man. If only he had gone to one of FitForWork’s studios. They are currently having a promotional week, et cetera, blah, blah, blah.”

Peter stands up.

“Kiki advised me to go public with my problem,” he says. “But she also thought I should close a few knowledge gaps first.”

“She put it that tactfully?” asks the old man. His legs are now spread into the splits and he is stretching his arms forward.

“Well, she actually said I had less understanding about my situation than a trained monkey.”

“And I’m supposed to give you private tutoring?” asks the old man. “Do you think I have time to throw away?”

“She said you’d say that.”

The old man stands up.

“And what did she advise you to say in response?”

“That I should act as though I’m going to give up and go, and then you would call me back, because in reality there’s nothing you like better than letting the knowledge from your overflowing pool rain down on a dried-out little plant like me.”

“That’s what she said?”

“She said that you’d get off on being able to flaunt your geeky knowledge in front of some brain-dead idiot.”

“She’s not particularly polite, is she?”

“No.”

“But she’s right, of course,” says the old man. He walks up to the bulletproof glass screen. “Now then, my young Padawan… The force is not with you.”

“No.”

“I’m going to tell you the most important thing first. On the internet, there’s no such thing as ‘free.’ If you’re not paying for a service, someone else is. And this other person isn’t paying for it out of kindness to humanity. He wants something for it. Your time, your attention, your data.”

“Wow,” says Peter. “Just wow! I can literally feel this completely new realization flooding through me and expanding my horizons.”

“Sure, sure,” says the old man. “Arrogance. Young people’s prerogative. So if you already know that, why don’t you act accordingly, hmm?”

“You mean that I should barricade myself inside a bulletproof glass box too?”

“Seeing as you’re so smart, I guess you can tell me what cybernetics actually means?”

“It, er… has something to do with, er… cyberspace?”

“Wow,” says the old man. “Just wow!” He takes a drag from his oxygen bottle. “Cybernetics is a made-up word borrowed from the ancient Greek for ‘to steer, navigate, rule.’ Every time a group of know-it-alls want to look particularly clever, they pinch a word from the ancient Greek. For some reason, we call that humanistic education. But I digress. Norbert Wiener, its founder, defined cybernetics as the scientific study of the control and regulation of machines, living organisms, and social organizations.”

“What does that have to do with me?” asks Peter.

“You’re a living organism,” says the old man. “Are you not?” Suddenly his eyes widen. “No! Actually you’re not! You’re a zombie, right? An undead with no will of your own! How could I have overlooked such a thing…”

“I’m not a zombie!”

“You know,” says the old man, “the real joke is that back then, in my youth, we genuinely believed that the internet could be the means to emancipate humanity. How naïve we were! Even though we knew where cybernetics comes from.”

“So where does it come from?” asks Peter.

“Finally a good question!” exclaims the old man. “It originated in the war. Norbert Wiener was a mathematician who dreamed, during the Second World War, of being able to bring Nazi bombers down from the sky.”

“The Nazis from the musical?” asks Peter.

“Correct!” says the old man. “The problem was that the ground-supported anti–air force defense, steered by humans, was much too slow and imprecise to be able to hit the quick bombers. A machine had to be invented. A machine that, with the help of a feedback loop, was capable of adjusting its own behavior. And thus cybernetics was born.”

The old man looks at Peter.

“You’re looking at me gormlessly,” he says. “I guess I need to start simpler.”

“Please.”

“A simple cybernetic system is a thermostat. It compares the actual temperature—the actual value—with the desired temperature—the desired value—and regulates the heating if necessary, repeatedly comparing the new actual and desired values, readjusting, and so on. Did you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“TheShop is also a cybernetic system. A much more complex one, of course.” The old man scratches his head. “Did you know that, in the beginning, it was strictly forbidden to use the internet for commercial purposes?” he asks. “It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it?”

“It really is.”

“The final restrictions were lifted in 1995, and commerce overtook the net. Nonetheless, we still believed back then that the internet could break the monopoly of the big companies. We thought that a market with countless alternatives would emerge, because with an online shop it was easier than ever to reach customers worldwide. But the exact opposite happened! The most powerful monopolies that have ever existed came into being.”

“Despite the internet,” says Peter.

“Nonsense,” says the old man. “Because of the internet! It’s called the network effect. And it’s demonic.”

“What’s the network effect?”

“The use of some products is dependent on the number of product users. Imagine you find a telephone provider that offers you the most reasonable tariff, but unfortunately with one small catch: you can only call people who use the same provider, and you’re the only user.”

“I understand.”

“Really?”

“The more users such a network has, the more useful it is.”

“Yes. And once a provider has reached a critical mass of users, it’s extremely difficult for a new competitor to catch up with this usefulness advantage. The network effect is a self-strengthening effect and leads to the creation of monopolies. Or perhaps I should say, to the formation of a dominant platform. Take TheShop, for example: the more customers TheShop has, the more providers are forced to offer their wares with TheShop, which leads to TheShop having even more products on offer, which means more customers find what they’re looking for at TheShop, therefore TheShop gains more customers. This is where the cat bites itself in the tail: because the more customers TheShop has, the more providers are forced to offer their wares with TheShop, and the more…”

“Okay,” says Peter. “I get it. The internet is evil.”

“Nonsense,” says the old man. “I’m not saying it’s an evil technology. I’m just saying that one has to take its beginnings into consideration. It’s not a coincidence that the so-called cyberspace is increasingly becoming an immense control machine that steers robots, living organisms, and social organizations.”

Peter takes a notepad and pen out of his jacket pocket. “Perhaps I should make a few notes,” he says.

“Good idea!” says the old man. “Good idea. You know, we thought that the internet would have a democratizing effect. We thought it could generate equality of opportunity. Instead, the income divide is greater than ever. What did we overlook?”

“I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

“Correct. We didn’t take into consideration that the digital markets function according to the winner-takes-all principle. That’s different to the nondigital markets.”

“An example?” asks Peter.

“Let’s say there are two ice-cream parlors on your street. Ice-cream parlor A is a tad better. Where would you go?”

“Well, to parlor A.”

“But everybody thinks like that. So there’s always a huge queue in front of parlor A. Sometimes they’ve even run out of your favorite flavor before you arrive. And parlor B really is only fractionally less good and not as crowded. Where would you go?”

“Parlor B.”

“And that’s how the clientele divides itself. Because ice cream can’t be copied and given out to all customers at once. Completely unlike…?”

“Digital products,” says Peter. “When you get me to complete your sentences I feel like a stupid schoolboy.”

“Rightfully so, rightfully so. Thus, from that we can conclude even if it were only minimally worse, there would be no reason to use the second-best search engine. Winner takes it all. Loser gets nothing. In the digital economy, nobody needs the second-best product, the second-best provider, the second-best social network, the second-best shop, the second-best comedian, the second-best singer. It’s a superstar economy. Long live the superstar, fuck the rest.”

The old man scratches his head.

“Well. And that brings us back to you. Let’s get to the real topic of our little extra tutoring hour. Let’s get to…” He pauses dramatically, then makes a grand sweeping gesture: “Peter’s Problem!”

He looks Peter directly in the eyes. “Do you know what your problem is? You’re not a superstar.”