10 September 2018

Austria insight by Fashion.at publisher Karin Sawetz: Discussion topics digitisation, integration and sexism

Today, the summer holidays have ended officially in whole Austria. The country's people are back again with their most beloved themes which had been enriched with new facets over the last two months: digitisation, integration and sexism. For each of the three words exist various definitions. Alone by finding a consensus for the contemporary meaning of the three terms, it would be much easier to communicate. So, if someone means that digitisation concerns primarily the equipment with hardware and neglects the necessity of abstract thinking for using artificial intelligence driven machines or for estimating the functionality of computer networks - last mentioned are the pillars of the digital environment we increasingly depend on, reduces people's thinking to the materiality of computers or tablets and positions the members of a society as brainless users who haven't any other choice than being obedient victims of the arbitrariness of network architects respectively network owners. Austrians now have the choice to decide how digitisation should be defined for an open accessibility to all levels or that the abstract level of the new digital era is too far away from the more common 'haptic comprehensible' reality. (In German, people would say for 'comprehensible' probably 'fassbar' or 'begreifbar'. The German terms reference haptic moments as source for understanding.)

The next word people are battling around is 'integration'! It's a word which stands also in context to battles; especially the ones in Syria and Afghanistan. War refugees from countries which are under fire get asylum in Austria. Now there are discussions about the definition of integration. What does it mean 'to be integrated'? Perhaps it should be mentioned that the successful integration can be reached by fulfilling an integration contract. It's a sort of ticket to receive the rights of an Austrian citizen - with all the positive consequences. In the meanwhile even Austrian born citizens without any migration background and/or punishable offenses get so called 'integration contracts' which document officially their status of being an unwanted person living in this country. The battle around the term integration is ongoing - and there is no end in sight. The fronts are hardened by different definitions of integration. It's not a rational fight.

The third term is 'sexism'. The word consists such as digitisation of two levels: one is the haptic level, the other the abstract without materialization - except the fact that the officially documented gender 'female' reduces the rights, career opportunities and (pecuniary, social) living standards of a woman. A foul at the first level - the haptic, is annoying for a woman and in many cases without any chance for revenge. Neither haptic (a man is stronger) nor in front of court. Many women believe that they won't get their right and therefore, they never even start to roll out the legal processing. The second level of sexism exists because of people's cultural programming which leads to the prejudgment of other persons and their work.

Culture and how it 'programs' our perception and faculty of judgment is key to the definition of all three words. In this sense, Fashion.at publishes content for a free minded society and runs its researches on fashionoffice.org/survey for keeping an eye on computer networks. Fashion.at is published since 1996 by an officially non-integrated Austrian citizen (without migration background or offenses), Mag. Dr. Karin Sawetz.

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