The Digital Question

This came up yesterday and it's a curious view of Germans and how they see things.

So the FDP Party went and asked for a public survey/poll from Forsa (the Institute).  The question is....do you (as an average German) believe that German politicians are preparing in a sufficient way....the general population for the digital age and all the things that come with it (privacy, control, populism, etc)?  The answer....around 83-percent of Germans said 'no'. 

The vast majority of Germans don't see the government on the front-end of this advancing culture.

I sat and pondered over this.

Frankly, you could have asked this in the 1960s and Germans (for that matter, even Brits or Americans) would have said that things were advancing awful fast and the government even at that point....was not out front.

Does it even matter?  Is there any politician (from France, the UK, Germany or the US) who you can look back upon twenty years ago, and put faith into this guy or gal.....being at the front of the new modern era, with gadgets, toys, or software?  I don't think such a 'creature' exists.

Is this something that you'd even want a political party to tackle?

If you didn't catch on real early (say in 2010) about Facebook and the privacy issue or personal data problem.....you were probably awful naive.  The business with Twitter and public comments?  If you don't grasp that forty comments in an hour could easily trigger you to get peeved.....shouldn't you just log off and avoid looking at comments?

It sounds like the FDP folks are trying to convince Germans that you need some political establishment looking after your little world.  But man, that sure does sound like the script to the book '1984', if you ask me.