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. Michael Bünker, Bishop of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Austria.

Bishop Michael Bünker (photo: Uschmann) 

As already announced, the discussion will take place on the opening day at 18:00. The venue is: Plus-Energie-Bürohochhaus, Getreidemarkt 9, 1040 Wien. The admission to that particular event is free of charge.

Click here to see the details in the programme.

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, cultural divides, visions of a humane world and hope for communal life.

If you plan to attend our Summit and if you are open to enjoy cultural sites and events, don’t forget to visit our respective web site: Other Places Worth Visiting (a subpage of the Venue page) on which you can find personal recommendations of Wolfgang Hofkirchner. You should consider booking tickets now and reserve accommodation accordingly.

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: what are the codes of conduct in the social information space that enable the subjects of world society to live together peacefully? Without that a global sustainable information society is unthinkable.

The oldest satire journal in German language, the Swiss “Nebelspalter”, refrains from publishing Muhammad cartoons too because they say satire now seems counterproductive to facilitating the discourse (see here).

Two new Tracks were added in the new year. So we have got 25 calls for papers. All of them are open until 27 February 2015. Only abstracts need to be submitted.

Click here to browse all calls. They are categorised as 3 Streams and 22 Tracks, the latter alphabetically as belonging to the subcategories “fundamentals in information processes” or “problems of social information processes (in general, cultural, political, economic, ecological, technological)”.

Read Submission to understand the submission process and submit.

Register asap to pay your Early-Bird fee (you are allowed to cancel without giving reasons until one month before the Summit).

Look for accommodation.

And then relax…

2015 started with a new strand of discussion in the FIS discussion list. Terry Deacon, keynote speaker on the first day, opened the discussion with excerpts of an essay on “Steps to a Theory of Reference & Significance in Information”.

If you like to follow that discussion, click here. (If you want to join the discussions, you need to subscribe to the list.)

26 calls for papers (calls are open until 27 February 2015) and other programme items are by now online:

• 3 independent conference series joined the hitherto existing Foundations of Information Science conferences to form the Summit of the International Society for Information Studies (another organisation might follow in January);
• 20 tracks by different organisations and individuals cover topics in all thematic lines (fundamentals of information processes and problems of social information processes) and sub-lines (see programme);
• 3 other events (a panel discussion with 3 keynotes, a round table, and another panel) have already been fixed (they form the spearhead of others to follow).

Besides the 3 organisers that are in charge of the conference streams, 17 organisations are co-organisers. 7 sponsors and 3 partners provide the Summit with financial and non-material support.

22 Speakers are confirmed so far. A long list of International Programme Committee members gives evidence of the backing by the scientific community. 11 journals will be open for the review of full papers after the Summit.

– That’s an intermediate result just before festivities start at the end of the year 2014. Let’s hope that 2015 will bring progress in the direction of a peaceful and just future in harmony with nature. Our Summit will certainly help towards a shift in that very direction.

The programme will be updated on an ongoing basis.

Let’s take care of the future (that photo shows a section of a painting by Austrian artists Helmut Kurz-Goldenstein and Magdalena Steiner on global challenges, a work commissioned by Wolfgang Hofkirchner in 1989)!

The plus-energy office building of the TU Wien on the Getreidemarkt campus (photo: TU Wien)

The Summit programme has been almost fixed for the first day. The content will build a bridge from the natural history of human information (Terry Deacon) to human technology and its assessment (a talk given by Armin Grunwald who is the Head of the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag) to responsible research and engineering in information technology (a panel discussion moderated by Chris Frauenberger from the TU Institute of Design and Assessment of Technology)  – the “dual use” of which indicates its degree of militarisation – to the issue of just war (an experts’ panel organised by the Evangelische Akademie Wien) raised currently when Western states support Kurdish militia with weapons against the Islamic State militia.

Chris Frauenberger

In order to place that bridge we needed to reschedule the start of the Summit and prepone it by 2 hours (12:00) (see schedule) and to change to another location. The new location corresponds to the values discussed at our Summit: It’s a green building with a new standard in energy efficiency: It produces electric power to such an extent that the portion it feeds into the grid is higher than what is needed for operation and use of the house – It’s the Plus-Energie-Bürohochhaus der TU Wien (see venue). The campus Getreidemarkt where it is situated is close to the Freihaus (a 6 min walk only).

(photo: TU Wien)

A grand view of Vienna from the event location – a grand view of information society on the first day (photo: Matthias Heisler)

We are happy to announce that usage of our platform for submission and registration gains momentum.

We received the first submissions 5 days ago. By now, we have got 6 abstracts, notwithstanding the fact that by far not all calls for papers have been launched yet.

However, the deadline for abstracts is 27 February 2015, and you still have time enough to submit an abstract.

Also we are pleased to welcome the first 4 registered Summit participants, starting with registrations 4 days ago.

If you register, don’t forget to check the boxes under the label “Extras” for the free reception and free social dinner in case you want to attend. We need these figures for making reservations with true numbers.

And don’t forget to book your room.

Colleagues from China announce a Track on information studies in their country.

This Track will be a window for the international public into China and a window for Chinese scholars into the other world as well!

By doing so that Track serves the goal of the Summit, which is the natural mission of science: to exchange with scientists from different backgrounds, irrespective of the political situation in the world (something that seems to become more difficult now, given the tensions between the U.S., the European Union, and Ukraine, on the one side, and Russia on the other).

The Track is organised by Xueshan Yan from Peking University and Yi-Xin Zhong from the University of Posts and Telecommunications in Beijing. Both are active members of the FIS list and are part of the preparation committee for a China Chapter of the International Society for Information Studies.

Note that this track has a different focus than the ICPI Stream.

The call says:

“The Global Brain can be defined as the self-organizing network formed by all people on this planet together with the information and communication technologies that connect and support them. As the Internet becomes faster, smarter, and more encompassing, it increasingly links its users into a single information processing system, which functions like a nervous system for the planet Earth. The intelligence of this system is collective and distributed: it is not localized in any particular individual, organization or computer system. It rather emerges from the interactions between all its components – a property characteristic of a complex adaptive system. Such a distributed intelligence may be able to tackle current and emerging global problems that have eluded more traditional approaches. Yet, at the same time it will create technological and social challenges that are still difficult to imagine, transforming our society in all aspects.”

Besides Francis Heylighen, the director of the Global Brain Institute, and his group of co-workers at his Vrije Universiteit Brussel Institute, other international experts form the scientific committee that they have established to review the submissions. Among them are:

From above left: Helbing, Bollen, Joslyn, Gershenson, Rodriguez, Kyriazis, Beigi, Lenartowicz, Stewart (photo of Gershenson: courtesy of Audi Urban Future Initiative)

Dirk Helbing from ETH Zürich, Johan Bollen from Indiana University Bloomington, Cliff Joslyn from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA, Carlos Gershenson from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Marko A. Rodriguez from Aurelius LLC, USA, Marios Kyriazis from the British Longevity Society, Shima Beigi from Bristol University, Marta Lenartowicz from Jagiellonian University Kraków, and John Stewart from the ECCO Group at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. It’s great to welcome them at our Summit.

For the whole list look at their call for papers.

If you want to contact them, write to David Weinbaum (Weaver) – GlobalBrainConference@gmail.com. 

If you want to know more about them, click on the banner above.