A utopia for digitized structures simultaneously contains its opposite, its own dystopia. The “non-place” or “good place” referred to as ‘utopia’ can also be interpreted as a “bad place” under the same flag of digital connectivity. What appears to some as a social paradise (freedom of information or communication) is a socio-technical hell for others (data collection, surveillance).
The creation of the internet – the early form of a digital utopia – is rooted in the Northern Californian flower power movement of the 1960s and 70s. When state-funded start-ups, also based in California´s North near San Francisco, developed the first usable digital products, they raised high hopes for a better society.
A digitized environment with digital tools reflected elements of a digital utopia – idealized notions of peaceful collaboration, inclusion, transparency, and the free flow of information and trade. However, this brief phase of digital utopianism came to an end in the 1980s.
Marketing people of tech companies began to use digital utopian set pieces for propaganda purposes. See the example of the Apple TV commercial “1984.” With the commercialization of the internet by oligopolistic technology companies from Silicon Valley, the dream of a digital utopia vanished. Ironically, the same companies continued to exploit people’s dreams of a digital utopia and promised to make them come true – and continue to do so today. They promote freedom, education, and a prosperous society via the internet, digital and AI technologies. Yet what they are striving for is the monetization of digital data.
Source (for further reading in German):
Schmalz, G. (2026). Digitale Utopie. In: Noller, J., Reinhardt, K. (eds) Handbuch Philosophie der Digitalität. J.B. Metzler, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-70086-0_14-1
