Bodybits - Opening

Only ten years ago, there were high hopes and expectations that the revolutionary developments in communication technologies would represent a positive force of renewal for our society. People saw the promise of better mutual understanding and completely novel and improved forms of cooperation.

In his lecture “Brutal Simplifiers”, Richard Sennett addresses the question of why this promise has not materialized as expected. Following on from Jacob Burckhardt’s description of the 19th century as an era of “brutal simplifiers”, Senett analyzes the phenomenon of cooperation in modern capitalism and comes to the conclusion that it is one of the great contemporary challenges facing global society.