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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

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

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

Today: Studies and Continued Education

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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

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

„Innovative Entrepreneurs“/ Summer Semester 2010

Leadership in growth-oriented enterprises

Today: Location

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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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One of the written questions asked about my TUM presentation was:

“Your enterprise developed from a product enterprise to an IT Liberation Organisation … How do your personal duties, challenges and approaches change with this development?”

(From Questions&Answers zu InterFace)

I presume that the student meant IT Counselling Organisation, rather than IT Liberation Organisation. It was probably just a Freudian Slip?

Yet the idea is all but stupid!

If only we could manage to achieve this:

IT counsellors as liberators from IT!

It is a concept that could conquer the entire world. And the head of the movement would certainly get quite rich in the process. I already see myself resembling one of those Russian multi-millionaires, sitting in the reclining chair of my 60-metres yacht, below me the oceans of this world, in my left hand a glass of champagne and my right hand on the knee of my young playmate.

But I am afraid it is not going to happen. I cannot believe I would be able to build up a world-wide IT liberation organisation. Consequently, the thing to do this morning is to go to my InterFace office as usual.

What a pity. I could certainly have made many people happy with this new concept.

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

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

Isabelle Kurth, who organized the lecture series, sent me the feedback she received after my lecture. Since most of it was positive, I was, first and foremost, truly delighted.

Let me reply to some of the important comments right away:

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The latest New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/) carries an article about injecting SO2 into the stratosphere. Observations of giant volcano eruptions have shown that this could reduce world temperature by 1 or 2 degrees for a year or two.

This was “seriously” proposed in USA a dozen years ago as the cheapest solution to the global warming problem. Groups which have been denying that there is a problem are now supporting this idea. Now the Russians are planning a large-scale test. New Scientist sadly predicts that it will happen.

Many countries are capable of doing it, and also large companies. There is no international agreement or law that prohibits it. Of course this treatment must then be repeated regularly, until a better solution is found.

I remember, in my school days, it was found that fish and other animals were dying in Scandinavia, because of SO2 being produced by British power stations. The rain was too acid. Since then, SO2 emissions have been greatly reduced. Stratospheric SO2 will come down into the oceans, and add to the acidification due to CO2.

cw