How COVID-19 is activating the digital society  COVID-19 is teaching us how rapidly things can change. All of a sudden, we are living in a new stay-at-home culture. This entails new norms and cultural practices that show what else the internet could be. An article about the digital society in the time of corona. Even…

An Interview with Paula Grünwald by Claudia Haas In 2018, an interdisciplinary expert commission comprising nine professors started working on the Third Engagement Report, titled The Future of Civic Society: Young Engagement in the Digital Age. The expert commission was chaired by Jeanette Hofmann, director of the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society…

Artificial intelligence has become a huge part of our daily lives – and its relevance will continue to grow and pose new questions to our societies. In this light, the HIIG founded the AI & Society Lab. This post is a digital introduction answering five questions about the Lab – since actual drinks to the launch…

Chinas Social Scoring System ist in aller Munde, wenn es um totale Überwachung geht. Die „westliche Welt“ distanziert sich. Zu Recht? Ohne Frage. Allerdings wäre eine ausführliche Reflexion über hiesige Entwicklungen durchaus angebracht. Ein Perspektivwechsel von Inken Ammon. Die Regierung Chinas plant bis 2020 die Implementierung eines landesweiten Sozialkreditsystems. Die Empörung in westlichen Medien ist…

Ein Interview mit dem China-Bildungsexperten Jürgen Henze The social credit system in China: What looks like a dystopia in Germany, in contrast, is treated as an utopia in China. In the Chinese context, the word “credit” is associated above all with the term “trust”, which is why many speak of a “system of social trustworthiness”….

Which solutions offers AI “Made in Germany”? What role do startups play as drivers of innovative ideas and business models? Jessica Schmeiss and Nicolas Friederici answer these questions in the white paper “Demystifying AI: Was steckt hinter KI-Unternehmen in Deutschland?“. We want to use some of the key learnings to shed more light on the…

Organizations pursuing social and or environmental goals are different from corporations. Rather than maximizing on profits, they pursue multiple social, environmental, and economic goals simultaneously. They marshal local, underused resources and create public goods for society rather than focus on generating private gains. Because of this, we propose, they face specific challenges and opportunities when…

How do notions of ‘right’ language change in the context of digital communication? Britta Schneider examines changing notions and practices of ‘correct’ language, with an ambivalent role for digital communication – norms become more fluid and more fixed at the same time. Who is a native speaker in digital society? In Western cultures the idea…

Is the following information relevant to you?: Tech companies collect and sell your data to business consumers, in some cases since the early 2000s. Strategies developed from analysis “nudge” your feelings and behaviour, without you being aware of it. During the Making Sense of the Digital Society event, Shoshana Zuboff – scholar, activist and professor…

The Internet has changed our world. But has it also irritated hierarchical power structures and given a meaningful voice to all? Are offline differentials in terms of access to individual and societal progress, and their narrations, challenged by the Internet – or replicated and technologically perpetuated? Internet governance, as broad and multistakeholder-driven as it has…