At the JKU Corona Update Gerald Bast talks with Linz colleagues about the digitisation boost forced by the COVID-19 crisis

Inspired by an article artist and media theorist Peter Weibel published in the Neue Züricher Zeitung on March 20, 2020, Meinhard Lukas, rector of the Johannes Kepler University Linz (JKU) invited on April 15, 2020 rector Gerald Bast as well as Martina Mara, Head of the Robopsychology Lab at the Linz Institute of Technology at JKU and Markus Poschner, chief conductor of the Bruckner Orchestra Linz and honorary professor at the University of Bremen, Germany to talk about Weibel’s statement that our society will be pushed and forced hard instantly to adapt to a virtual mode of existence due to the COVID-19 crisis. Although there are little options at the moment in the field of higher education and in the research arena too than going digital, Meinhard Lukas monitors in his university context, what he calls an „Analogue Longing“: an intense longing for an analogue mode of experiencing the world. This desire is growing in the cultural context as well as in the scientific world. Operas in video-on-demand format or virtual visits to museums or listening exclusively to online lectures cannot replace or substitute the quality of the experience of analogue presence and face-to-face interaction.

To see the video of the JKU Corona Update on April 15, 2020, you follow this link.