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Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.

Not so far in the past, there were no cars. Coaches had to squeeze through the narrow streets of our cities. But also the overland streets were nothing but narrow paths. The elegant people sat in the coach, the coachman on the box. Common people went places on foot along the same streets. Sometimes the streets were really narrow, often jammed with people and animals.

The noble ladies and gentlemen were in a hurry. They felt they could not wait until the plebs went out of the way. That is why the coachmen on the box had a long whip. Its main purpose was not to motivate the horses. Rather, the brutal coachmen used their whips for getting the masses out of the way and making passage for the coach easier. Consequently, humans and animals that had been in the way often found themselves “ornamented” by welts and thinking: “Why blow one’s top?” and not blowing their tops.

According to the will of the lord of the manor, the general motto was “lead through the whip“. And the whips happily sounded like: “We clear the way for you”.

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Whenever I use the “Bahn AG” for going places, I make “Discoveries”. Even on the short way from Munich Central Station to Nuremberg Central Station, as last Friday, August, 6th, in the morning.

Shortly before Ingolstadt, I discovered the “Ohrakel”. It looks particularly oracle-like when seen through a curtain of constant rain.    
 INCLUDEPICTURE “http://if-blog.de/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif” \* MERGEFORMATINET Besides, it apparently had some objections to a picture of it being taken. The window of the train, the rain, bad light and the speed of the train all contributed to make life hard for me.

The riddle is easily solved. A pub or bar between Munich and Nuremberg, shortly before Ingolstadt, chose this original spelling, which is immediately noticed by someone like me who is in a partnership with Oracle.
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In my last presentation, standing in front of quite an audience, I again asked the question: Who in this room uses Wikipedia? Every finger went up in the air – there was not a single person in the room who does not use it! Wikipedia has grown to be a very important factor. The world can no longer be imagined without Wikipedia.

In Wikipedia, so you would believe, you will find everything. After all, the number of words available in Wikipedia is several times higher than that found in any other encyclopaedia.  Of course, even Wikipedia cannot contain everything. Once in a while, you discover relevant cultural assets that cannot be found in Wikipedia. Basically, it would be our duty as citizens to support the creation of the missing articles.

Wikipedia changes the world. Techniques and terms you cannot find or will only find poorly described will get less and less important. If some innovative concept has not been described in Wikipedia, it will hardly stand a chance of developing into something significant.

Thanks to the democratic structure of Wikipedia, this phenomenon is mostly self-regulative. There is a functioning democratic control mechanism. And, of course, the representatives of all areas of expertise know that their knowledge had better get into Wikipedia if they want to remain relevant. Because technologies and cultures described in Wikipedia, as well as persons and social systems, gain new meaning.

But Wikipedia faces a massive threat!

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In this series, I will comment on the written feedback I received after my presentation. Also, I will answer the online questions asked by students I had no time to amply reply to during said presentation.

Lehren für Unternehmensführer – das Leben, das Wissen, die Informatik und die Ethik

„Innovative Entrepreneurs“/ Summer Semester 2010
Leadership in growth-oriented enterprises

Today: Responsibility for Employees

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Here is another story as an aside …

I am just leaving my house in Riemerling, Waldparkstrasse on this Wednesday morning. As it happens, I notice an old red “Model-Three BMW” going rather fast through Waldparkstrasse. It is the same model as the one I used to drive around 13 years ago. And then the car stops in front of my house.

A not-particularly-happy-and-trustworthy-looking person of female sex and an age group you would not call particularly young gets out of the car, messes around at my letter box, jumps back into the car and drives away at a speed I would call a little high, considering that this is a 30-kmph zone…

I get suspicious and turn around. The letter box lid I left closed is now open. I close it and open the letter box. What I discover is a rather unimportant letter from a mobile phone company. It has been delivered by Südpost.

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Again, this is not the end!

This magazine accompanied the presentation by Frau Fischer in our IF forum on July, 21st, 2010. The “brand eins” editing company kindly supplied us with a rather huge amount of the red brochures with the green button on the front page.

Incidentally, much happened in the world between November 2008 and August 2010. So what we have here is an old business magazine. It is almost two years old. You can almost call it press vintage.

In your dreams.

The magazine is surprisingly up-to-date. You would probably have no problem publishing it without major corrections this coming November. Perhaps that is what they should do.

I also find it interesting that the brochure was basically finished before the Lehmann Brother bankruptcy.

Incidentally, you can also read the magazine online: in the archive of brand eins. And if you prefer to have it on paper: as far as I know, you can still buy it from the editor.

It is worth the effort!

RMD
(Translated by EG)

In this series, I will comment on the written feedback I received after my presentation. Also, I will answer the online questions asked by students I had no time to amply reply to during said presentation

Lehren für Unternehmensführer – das Leben, das Wissen, die Informatik und die Ethik

(Lessons For Managing Directors – Life, Knowledge, Computer Science and Ethics)

„Innovative Entrepreneurs“/ Summer Semester 2010
Leadership in growth-oriented enterprises

Here is another item of feedback I consider very important

“I, however, do not agree with the speaker when he gives the prognosis that not much will happen in the future as far as the “object“ is concerned.”

This is absolutely correct. I am afraid I failed to make it clear in my presentation that I meant this prognosis to refer to the traditional goals “further, faster, higher” in the “physical” (old) technologies. As I see it, the “further, faster, higher” is probably at the end if its rope. What I see as a future scenario is for the classical engineering disciplines to be about “more economical, lighter, easier”.

In this context, I like to refer to the term “Cheap Design” as introduced and made public by Rolf Pfeifer in his interview. Rolf Pfeifer is the founder and director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Department of Informatics/University of Zurich. He gained a reputation through, for example, his cheap robots. Using totally innovative approaches, these robots show new ways in robotics and Artificial Intelligence. I recommend that you read his book: “How the Body Shapes the Way We Think: A New View of Intelligence” (Bradford Books).

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