Franco Berardi Reflects on 1968's Legacy and the Divergence of Technology and Social Consciousness

In a May 2018 ArtReview feature, Franco Berardi examines the legacy of 1968, describing it as a peak in human evolution where techno-scientific knowledge and social consciousness converged. He argues that by 1977, with Apple's founding by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs and the Sex Pistols' declaration, these trends diverged: technological expansion accelerated while social consciousness sharply declined. Fifty years later, Berardi contends that as artificial intelligence emerges, humanity enters an age of dementia, with technology gaining power over social life and society losing self-governance to techno-automaton governance. Reflecting on his own experience at the University of Bologna in 1968, where he participated in occupations, Berardi views such actions as ideal for learning, linking theory, art, and politics. He questions why expectations of social emancipation from that era were false, noting that imagination, once a force for transformation seized by power in 1968, has become hostage to power, with social minds obsessed by economic competition and mythology of belonging leading to aggressiveness and war. Berardi suggests a way out requires a self-creative act akin to Baron Munchausen's, necessitating a return to the energy of 1968 to avoid a suicidal wave of depression from neoliberalism.