Innovation vs. privacy

DW: How do you define the role of journalists in the Internet age?

Jeff Jarvis: Journalists are important - more important than ever because we have more information than ever. But journalists have also to reconsider their role. They're no longer just the gatekeeper. Now people can exchange information on their own, thanks to the net. And journalists have to add value to that flow. They have to confirm facts and add context. And more important than anything else: Journalists must ask the questions that ought to be answered. So we by all means need journalists, but we need journalists to invent themselves in this new world with all the new opportunities they have.

Is that because the sources of information are changing because of the Internet?

Not only the sources of information but also the fact that we have a collaborate conversation with the public that we couldn't have before, when we were a one-way media. So, now, the first skill we have to learn as journalists, I think, is to listen. At CUNY, where I teach journalism, we are trying to work on a new degree, what we call social journalism. And the first and primary skill we want to teach these journalists is to listen to the communities. And then serve their needs.

In Germany, we have a particular and ambivalent attitude towards privacy on the one hand and transparency on the other hand. What is your opinion?

Privacy matters. And it matters greatly. It matters perhaps more than ever. But privacy isn't everything. We also have the opportunity now to share with the public. The Internet is a tool of sharing, and sharing is a generous act. It means that we can come together and learn more together and act together. And it would be a shame if, as a society, we get so scared about privacy that we lock ourselves down - from that opportunity of sharing.

It's a shame, for example, that the 'Verpixelungsrecht' (Ed. note: German residents could request their buildings be pixilated out on Street View) that was invented around Google Street View, meant that in the end Google gave up on Street View in Germany. Thus, the Germans lost something. I think that we have to look at a balance constantly: Yes, we must protect privacy; and yes, privacy is our own commodity that we own and control ourselves. But we also have this opportunity to share as a society and I want to live in a society that decides to generously share with each other.

Do you have Google Glasses?

Yes. In my bag (laughs).

Do you use it?

Not that much. It's a little bit awkward. I was at the Google I/O Conference in San Francisco last week, and they are working on the Google watches (points at the watch on his wrist). The Android watch and the similiar device from Apple take away some of the functions of Google Glass. Google Glass has three functions. One is: we are able to take pictures of the world and record that. Another is to get alerts. Another is to get instructions and directions. Well, the watch can give you those things as well. We'll still, I think, find a role for a camera. But I think the next camera that comes along will probably have a big red light on it to make sure people know when it is been used.

You know, people think that Google Glass is some surreptitious, secret sort of thing. If you watch me and try to take a picture of me with it, there is nothing subtle about it. You roll your head up and down and then you say 'OK, Google!'. That's not subtle at all.

Daniel Suarez' books describe how technology can even kill people once it grows more autonomous. How far is this away from reality?

Listen. Whenever there is a new technology, there is fear and perturbation about it. Indeed, the first discussion of a legal right of privacy in the United States did not occur until the year 1890. And that was because of the invention of the Kodak camera. And people didn't know what to do: 'Oh my God, my picture can appear anywhere.' Well, what happened? Our norms and our laws caught up with the technology eventually. We figured it out.

We will adapt to the Internet. The worst thing we could do is to try to shut down the change that it enables right now - out of fear of the unknown. The unknown is where innovation happens. We should be encouraging that, going towards it.

Do you have advice on what we as the community can do to somehow educate politicans on handling the Internet?

You have that problem in Germany, but we have this problem in the US as well. We're trying to convince the politicians to keep their hands off the net. Governments have the best motives sometimes to interfere. Even companies like Axel Springer will try to get them to interfere. But the net is not under the sovereign control of a nation - nor should it be. That's just its power. But that is also why it is very frightening for nations and governments - and disruptive.

Some governments and other institutions will try to control the net. We, the people, should just keep going around that and exploring the new opportunities and the new freedoms that this new technology brings us.

Jeff Jarvis is an American journalist and commentator on media and technology as well as a professor at the City University of New York. His publications include "What Would Google Do?" (2009) and "Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live" (2011). DW interview Jarvis at the Global Media Forum it hosts annually in Bonn, Germany.

Interview: Silke Wünsch