Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Dirk Helbing from the ETH Zürich – who was the main initiator of FuturICT, a Future Emerging Technologies EU research programme flagship application which, unfortunately, failed in the competition against the Human Brain project and the Graphene…

Keynote Speaker Luciano Floridi’s most recent edited book is downloadable as Springer Open ebook for free and also purchasable in print version. This book “is actually a synthesis of the research done in 2012 and the feedback received in 2013”, Floridi…

Yes, there is. Though findings from what classically was termed ethology and now has differentiated into, and been complemented by, specialised fields like biocognition or social cognition have been revealing an ever increasing number of similarities (e.g., have a look at the “Raven…

German political scientist Jörg Becker characterises our society as “control society”. In doing so, he resumes, among others, the postmodern thread from Foucauldian industrial “disciplinary society” (with the panopticum as metaphor) to Deleuze and Guattari’s version of information society as “control society” in…

Austrian computer scientist Christiane Floyd, appointed honorary professor at the Summit’s host institution (“Honorarprofessorin der TU Wien”) where she teaches Philosophy of Science at the Vienna PhD School of Informatics – famous for her STEPS method for participative design and…

Two decades ago a high level expert group (HLEG) was formed at the EU. Chairman was Luc Soete. Among the members was Manuel Castells (who had to decline the invitation to our Summit). The task was to write a report…

When discussing the future of information society, we will discuss at the same time about society at a more general level. We will refer to shortcomings or malfunctions of current societal developments and to what sociologists call mechanisms that might…

The Evangelische Akademie Wien is in charge of organising an expert discussion on that topic in the framework of our Summit. Experts and representatives of Peace Research, Business, Politics and Military, and the civil society will exchange views with Hon.-Prof. Dr.…

The Wiener Festwochen, established in 1951, is a European art festival held every spring. The programme was released recently. Around our Summit many plays are performed that have a connection to the Summit theme: the information overload, war and struggle for power,…

Summit Speaker Rafael Capurro wrote a comment on the intercultural discourse revolving around Charlie Hebdo. He defends anglo-american newspapers not reprinting the French cartoons against accusations of cowardice made by German journalists. Read here. This comment touches the core of the Summit:…