History knows moments when a society changes its self-understanding through a simple symbol. Portugal 1974: carnations in rifle barrels. A dictatorship collapsed, almost without bloodshed, because young officers understood that gentleness can be stronger than violence. Revolution then meant not destruction, but transformation of institutions.
Today, Europe once again stands at a threshold. But the rifles are made of code, the carnations of algorithms. Artificial intelligence does not arrive with thunder, but like dew: quiet, pervasive, unstoppable. It reshapes routines, decision architectures, educational pathways. Its revolution is not a technical gimmick, but a system question.
The Blind Spot of the Enlightenment
Frank H. Witt, economist, AI researcher, and entrepreneur, emphasized in the opening of the series Systemfrage KI that the true blockade is not technological but cultural. Europe clings to the myth of the “divine spark” in the head, a legacy of Kant, who declared humanity a metaphysical exception. But since 1926 we have known how neurons encode information. The brain is not a sacred vessel, but a stochastic machine that constructs realities out of probabilities.
From this misunderstanding follows an entire political posture: every machine that enters our sphere appears as a threat. While in Singapore or Hong Kong the symbiosis of human and machine is considered progress, here it is perceived as an attack on self-image. Witt calls for a necessary “culture of AI” – an attitude that does not belittle humans, but finally enables them to take the “we” seriously: I and my machines and the others.
The Political Class on Idle
The diagnosis of Jörg Müller-Lietzkow, President of HafenCity University Hamburg, was even sharper. The problem does not lie in laboratories or lecture halls, but in the political class. GDPR and the AI Act are examples of laws that block more than they shape. Europe exports talent and imports products. The pattern is well-known: we develop, others scale.
What is lacking is a desire for the future. While Asia is already running billion-dollar programs and embedding AI naturally into infrastructure, education, and administration, Europe responds with training obligations and paperwork. A digital renaissance, Müller-Lietzkow argues, will not arise from timidity but from institutional courage.
Renaissance Instead of Retropolitics
That the federal government under Chancellor Merz nonetheless clings to the rhetoric of re-industrialization – steel, cars, batteries – shows the reflex to conserve the past. But renaissance means the opposite: a new beginning. Deep Tech instead of retropolitics. Agentic systems, reasoning models, robotics in everyday life, an economy that moves from reproduction to reinvention – these are the true growth fields.
The digital renaissance is not a technical add-on but an institutional reconstruction. Universities must shift from rote learning to design work. Capital markets must stop chasing the safe returns of the past and invest in the long horizon of leap innovations. States must stop treating energy and infrastructure policy as costs and recognize them as prerequisites for sovereignty.
Europe’s Second Chance
The parallel to the Renaissance of the early modern period is more than rhetoric. Back then it was not just about inventions, but about the courage to change worldviews: from the geocentric to the heliocentric universe, from estates-based society to open society. Today it is about the shift from anthropocentrism to co-intelligence.
The real question is therefore: does Europe dare to correct its self-image? Without a culture of AI, there can be no digital renaissance. Without a digital renaissance, no place at the table of world powers. Whoever clings to the worldview of the 17th century will not shape the 21st, but merely consume it.
The carnations of the past were symbols that changed institutions. The codes of today could do the same. But only if we have the courage to see them not as threats, but as invitations. Renaissance never begins with technology alone. It begins with humility.
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1 Kommentar
这篇文章说得对！欧洲真的需要一场数字文艺复兴，而不是沉迷于过去。我们应该像亚洲那样拥抱AI，而不是视其为威胁。机构勇气和创新思维才是关键。