Blog Archives

Upload your accepted abstract as word file only!

Many abstracts have already been accepted, some are still under review. The deadline for notification is approaching – one more week. If your abstract is accepted, you can proceed to the second step of submission. Download the template and bring your

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Austrian Vice Chancellor Patron of the Summit

Dr. Reinhold Mitterlehner has committed his patronage for the Summit. Mitterlehner is not only Federal Minister for Science, Research and Economy, but also Vice Chancellor of Austria. In the middle Dr. Mitterlehner visiting the Intertool 2014 (photo: Christian Husar) A representative of

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Overwhelming response to calls for papers, reviews underway

Apart from the currently 36 invited speeches (a number that will yet increase), 232 submissions by a total of 306 authors have been received by the deadline for open calls. 94 from 232 have already been accepted, the remaining submissions are still under review. The

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A citizens web for our planet

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

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Being Human in a Hyperconnected Era: The book around the Onlife Manifesto

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

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Is there a difference between animal and human communication and cognition?

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

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About Control Society

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

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Last minute calls

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

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Information Society: from knowledge to wisdom

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

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Conviviality – a principle easy to comprehend but hard to implement!

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

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