The World Government: How Silicon Valley controls our future

[Commentary] I posted a brief piece about the continuing Europtechnopanic in Germany and the effort of publishers there to blame their every trouble on Google -- even the so-called sin of free content and the price of metaphoric wurst. Now Germany one-ups even itself with the most amazing specimen of Europtechnopanic I have yet seen.

The cover of Der Spiegel, the country’s most important news outlet, makes the titans of Silicon Valley look dark and wicked. As I’ve often said, the publishers -- led by Mathias Döpfner of Axel Springer and Paul-Bernhard Kallen of Burda -- are smart. I admire them both. They know what they’re doing, using the power of their presses and thus their political clout to box in even big, powerful Google. It’s a game to them. It’s negotiation. It’s just business. I don’t agree with or much like their message or the tactic. But I get it. Then comes this Scheißebombe from Der Spiegel. It goes far beyond the publishers’ game. It is nothing less than prewar propaganda, trying to stir up a populace against a boogeyman enemy in hopes of goading politicians to action to stop these people. If anyone would know better, you’d think they would. Schade.

[Jeff Jarvis is a professor and Director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism]