Digitalisation: private or public? Today without the use of digital tools it is hardly possible to master everyday life in our urban civilisation. We are almost completely dependent on them functioning properly. During the pandemic large areas of communal life were shifted from physical space to virtual platforms. Will they ever return to real space? The process started modestly with the first PCs, following the invention of Internet it picked up speed and, since the global presence of efficient networks and smartphones at the latest, it satisfies all our major and minor daily needs. In our euphoria about this brave new world, we tend to ignore two essential aspects: the global digital infrastructure with its logarithms, server farms, radio networks and data lines that makes possible all these comfortable services that we can avail of everywhere and at any time - quite different to the real road network or public transport - does not belong to states or cities, but to private concerns. These are run by managements that are not elected by the public but are appointed by the owners of the businesses, to whom, alone, they are accountable.
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