EINSTEIN WAS RIGHT
Meeting people and Meeting places
“When you listen to the radio, think about how people came into possession of this wonderful tool for communication…
…it has a unique function in regards to the reconciliation between nations. Until today, nations learned of each other almost exclusively through the distorting mirror of their own daily press. The radio shows them to one another in the most lively form and primarily from a sympathetic view. It will thus help to erase the feeling of mutual alienation which so easily turns into distrust and hostility.”
Wise words. And also profoundly prophetic, given that they were spoken not in the 21st century, but in 1930. Mind you, it was Albert Einstein doing the speaking, and he’s known for knowing a thing or two.
This was part of his opening address at the 1930 radio exhibition in Berlin, the modern incarnation of which is now in its 100th year. These days it’s known as IFA, but has only this year ditched the word Funk - the German for radio - from its title. It’s no longer the Internationale Funkaustellung - now IFA stands for Innovation For All.
There are many big tech expos on the calendar, and of them IFA has always occupied a special place for me. Not only does it mark a decent halfway point through the year - and between one CES and the next (as documented in how to survive a trade show) - but it also takes place in my favourite city in the world.
The City
Wandering its streets and districts has always been an incredibly moving experience for me. I love the people, I love the graffiti, I love the mix of new and old architecture, I love the walk along the river, but, above all, I love the honesty. I think of Berlin not so much as a city, but as a story of the 20th century. It’s all there to see, if you want to.
Berlin wears its heart and its history on its sleeve - from the preserved pieces of the Wall and their explanatory signage, to the German history film beautifully projected onto the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus in the evenings. There are many memorials to the victims of the Second World War, and of them, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is by far the most jaw-dropping, the most haunting. If you haven’t taken some time to walk through it, please do.
I’m sure many places would choose to sweep away the darker parts of their past, confusing “moving on” with “covering over”, but Berlin does the opposite. Its attitude seems to be not “let us forget”, but “lest we forget”.
I’m also constantly discovering new, cool places to go. Last year I spent a couple of hours in Liquidrom, bobbing about in a pool listening to chilled dance music, and walking the runway of the old Tempelhof Airport, now a public park.
This year, when my flight home was cancelled and I found myself with an extra evening to kill, those kind people on social media (they do still exist) suggested I take a stroll through Treptower Park. It was 28 degrees, there were deckchairs, and I sat there with hundreds of others eating cheap, delicious currywurst. There were worse places to be laid over.
Whenever I’m there, I try and get to a few regular haunts, some of which I humbly recommend here:
The Reichstag Building - avoid the queues to walk around the incredible glass dome by booking a table at the restaurant on the roof.
Carillon - a space age classical bell tower.
The Hackesche Höfe - behind the buildings of Rosenthaler Straße lay hidden squares of shops and restaurants.
Graffiti Alley, Mechanical Monsters and the grungy bar - you may not see this alley at all. You may take one look and think “I might just avoid that”. You may pop your head in and admire the beautiful graffiti on the walls. But walk all the way in and round the corner, and, if you time it right, you’ll find a cash-only bar playing loud metal music, giant monster sculptures and the Monsterkabinett in the basement.
The Show
When I started visiting IFA back in the mid 00s, one of the things that stood it apart from other tech shows was the way that, although the massive Messedamm site contained nearly 30 halls, some were small enough for big companies to take them over entirely, and theme them. I remember one hall transformed into an infinite winter forest, with mirrored walls, fake snow underfoot, and twisted icy trees. To top it all, every few minutes, everything would go dark, and there’d be a thunderstorm.
This, as we say, was TV gold.
But times have changed, budgets are down, and although you can still find the occasional space dome and the odd Barbie photo op (finally the picture at the top is explained), the most recent IFAs have gradually settled into a more traditional-feeling trade show. That, I feel, coupled with its timing (straddling the end of the summer holidays and the start of the new school year), have made it a tougher sell for big media to cover.
And where CES’s timing at the start of the year means it can host all the product launches that are “new for 2024”, most other tech shows have to hope that there’s a new exciting thing that everyone’s talking about, and which brings forth a wave of new exciting things featuring the thing.
But drones, ultra-thin laptops, and 3D TVs don’t come along every year, and conversely, AI is around every year, which means too much crying wolf has made it hard to believe that this time will be any different.
Mind you - last year was:
There are certainly new innovations if you know where to look - the startup halls are always good fun, and I came across phones that masquerade as e-readers and kitchen appliances that use a new wireless power standard, allowing you to run a food processor on your induction hob.
But the world of business and marketing is changing - we can watch product launches online, we Zoom and Teams our meetings, and we’re trying to cut down on travel. And ironically, if expos become too big and noisy, the biggest companies - undoubtedly the major financial contributors - decide they don’t want to get drowned out, and start running their own events, on their own schedules.
But the new IFA boss (I’m pretty sure there was a new IFA boss last year too) told me he has plans to make the event into something more than just a tech show...
NXNE?
Every spring, Austin, Texas welcomes musicians, film-makers, artists, and tech thinkers, for SXSW (South-by-Southwest) - a citywide cultural event which has gained more than cult-status. This sounds like the model that has inspired Leif Lindner in his plans for the future of IFA.
And I can’t think of a more exciting city to host Europe’s version of SXSW. It already has an underground feel, loads of interesting locations, and plenty of clubs and venues that look and feel cultural, subcultural, anticultural.
Was Einstein Right?
It’s fascinating listening to Einstein - for a start, it’s not often you actually hear his voice, and also not often I’ve seen him comment on anything other than high-end physics. His observations about the national press distorting - sorry, shaping - each country’s view of others is still absolutely on the nose. His thoughts on how communicating more with each other helps break down nationalistic, bigoted views are also wonderful to hear.
Radio has been the springboard for so much of our modern technology, and today we send and receive any information we want through the air, on devices more powerful than even Einstein might have imagined (ah, who am I kidding, he would have imagined them).
But as for radio erasing feelings of distrust and hostility, sadly the way we use those radio waves - the type of things that arrive on our screens, the algorithms that control what content we see and whose opinions we hear - is fuelling those very emotions.
It’s far too easy to think of different people from different places as different. But I’ve been incredibly lucky in my career to travel the world, and in doing so I’ve found that by going out and meeting different people, it’s helped me understand that in many ways we’re all the same.
So maybe, instead of hearing about things over the radio-powered internet, trying to meet as many people as possible in the flesh would be a way for us all to understand each other.
And if it’s at an international cultural event in a city like Berlin, even better.
UK viewers can watch Click at IFA 2024 here.
Timely and useful as I'm visiting Berlin in a couple of weeks. Graffiti alley and the mechanical monsters sounds right up my street as well as being a good name for a band!