Category: transparency

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More about books

The Frankfurt book fair opens its books and doors on 2026-10-7. The thousands of authors, publishers, translaters and agents are quite concerned about the amount of infringements that AI has brought to the industry. The market is under increasing pressure to secure intellectual property rights and copyright protections. A flood of AI-produced books shall ruin margins out of which authors are paid as well. The spreading of ideas in form of books across borders is threatened. Sebastian Guggolz from the German book trade association claimed even a double theft, first the books, then the ideas by AI. In order to counteract this, the Frankfurt book fair is continuously expanding is function as a platform of exchange of ideas (Juergen Boos) and face-to-face meetings of all involved in writing, editing, producing, trading, teaching and discussing books in the broadest sense. This discourse about books is the real human added value which AI is lacking so far. In this sense of talking about books, books become a kind of merchandising product of an event or a form of take-home-message to participants. A great and promising forward looking agenda for us rather than the retro-captive approach of AI. 

Frankfurt book fair 2026-10-6 press conference

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Legal illegal business

The world of business has to be quite well defined in order to make the borders between legal and illegal practices clear, transparent and enforceable. You name the business or trade and then check the rules governing it. For pharmaceutical products we have rather strict regulations, but smuggling across borders can be a challenge to national customs if online commerce can easily circumvent national controls. Trading on ebay in small amounts is not defined as a tax registered trade, if it is below certain amounts. However, this might be difficult to control and legal rules are at times tough to enforce. The construction sector has been closely scrutinized for illegal practices and sketchy applications of regulations with regard to health and safety of employees. Regulations can be a pain, but they have contributed to safe lives in many instances. (Image: construction of “Scheune” (barn) in Berlin 2026-9, future center of Kulturforum). 

Kulturforum construction 2026-9

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Leadership art or craft

In an English translation of a book on leadership we read: “Leadership is an art of creating a world that others would love to be part of.” (Pinnow, 2011 p. vii and ch 3). “Kunst” in German translates as “art”, but also in the sense of craft (Kunsthandwerk). We have seen “art” leadership which consisted in change management more like window dressing or just showing off a nicer logo for an organization. The crafted leadership has a whole toolbox at its disposal from which to choose according to necessities. Gardening maybe considered similar to leadership and management. You may create a piece of art that others would love to be part of, but you need craftsmanship, water management skills to nurture nature. 

Gardening skills and water management 2026 Berlin

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Gaps in Mirror

The legendary figure of “Till Eulenspiegel” (name is a composition of “owl” and “mirror”) is still attracting attention, largely because of his way to reach and sometimes expose ordinary anomalies. We have mirrors all around us, as well as explicit historical details, but we tend to overlook or create voluntarily gaps into mirrored images of the past and their reflections into the present. The novel “The Gaps” (Die Lücken) by Shida Bazyar exemplifies, why dealing with history on a local level is of utmost importance for societies to be aware, deal and transmit fundamental human values. Till Eulenspiegel of the 21st century has a migration background and experience of care work, 2 fields at the cutting edge of humanity. Dealing with the gaps in narratives of locals enters visually into the novel as well. We ar caught t “automatic lly” read ov r the g__s before we realize how huge the gaps in narratives and our mirrors of the past can be. The novel is a great reminder to actively deal with our own gaps. Check the mirrors as well, there might be gaps that blur images of the past.

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Agentrification

If you believe that AI-agents are continuously robbing your webpage content, then you will suffer from “Agentrification”. We know about the mental disease of “persecutory delusions” for quite some time. In the realm of webpage analytics a somehow related phenomenon might be the experience, also probably more a delusion, of “agentrification”. Even when you are on holidays, the AI-agents keep working on scraping content of your webpage everyday. If necessary or driven by info requests, this might be several times per day.
There are monitoring tools for this, just like other home security devices. The Plug-In “Known Agents” (extract of image below) does a great job in making such activities more transparent. Humans are reluctant to use AI-provided links to content, but tend to be satisfied with the agent’s fast return. However, checking sources should be a safeguard not to fall into the trap of another kind of agentrification, which is de-skilling due to ample use of AI-returns rather than direct search of information or checking provided links by AI for their trustworthiness.

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Scroll or stop

In 2026-10 the fundamental question is: to scroll or not to scroll? As we have moved into the individualistic society with omnipresence of the not-so-social media we keep scrolling through online content. Our attention habits are subject to so-called cliffhangers which aim to direct our attention on specific topics, surprising images or just steering us to more-of-the-same content. The social media ban for children fights against the addiction to endless scrolling. In most cases, what is good for children is also beneficial for adults. Hence, the “endless scrolling” (which I increased on this blog at several occasions, currently = 30 max entries) is from now on reduced to 10. After those 10 entries, you are invited to read more on one of those entries or use one-click proposed keywords or categories. The search of topics or names is another more specific entry into a social science perspective. Maybe, the invitation to scroll less, but stop more often and read or follow proposed links is a beginning to detox our online habits. 

Tags on www.schoemann.org 2026-10
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Dream Peace

To dream about peace is as old as humanity. However, the people who work on the development of weapons and train to use them vastly outnumbers those who think or dream up peace. The strategies and advice about warfare ranging from Aurel to Clausewitz have been studied carefully and the short-cut summary “if you want peace, prepare for war” sounds like a plausible solution to many problematic war-like situations (hybrid wars) even today. Let’s give it a try and dream up peace. There exits already an extensive literature on peace-keeping (forces) an the difficult role of the UN in these efforts. How about a challenge to this conventional wisdom. Voting in the UN should be weighted. The weights are inverse-proportional to a country’s amount of production and trade in arms measured over the last 10, 50, 100, 251 or 2501 years. The probability to favour peace in such a reformed voting system of the UN would shift further peace rather than arms trade and use of weapons in conflict. Of course, a crucial point is the definition of what is a weapon. Hybrid war and dual-use technologies could undermine the new balance of power at the UN. If countries with no arms production and arms trade get the upper hand at the UN decision-making, the peace-keeping force could still be mandated and delegated to joint forces. This could work as a disincentive for Trump to try to sell arms and enter into large-scale arms trade between the US and China. (Image: Ikarus-by-Picasso-at-UNESCO-headquarters-2024-Paris).

Ikarus-by-Picasso-at-UNESCO-headquarters-2024-Paris.jpeg

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Presentation of thought

The introduction of the Venice exhibition catalog summarizes the artistic approach by Joseph Kosuth as a form of presentation of thought. The title of the exhibition “The-exchange-value-of-language-has-fallen-to-zero” is a provocative critic of the use of language. The experience of AI’s use of language as data points and machine-human interface in form of chatbots makes any topic related to language even more interesting. The embeddedness of language and the context of content become intelligible through visualization(s). We owe to Kosuth the view that the modus operandi of art is to raise questions and enter into meaningful debates with people. Site-specific installations and the uniqueness of the conceptual idea distinguish his works of art. Language and image enter into a kind of symbiosis embedded into a local context. This is taking Wittgenstein’s philosophy seriously. 

Kosuth inspired Where do you stand? (2026-9)

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News impact democracy

The reporting on news in the media can be highly influential on election outcomes and therefore democracy. Bias in coverage of news arises from mainly 2 sources: (1) topics covered as opposed to the ones neglected, (2) the framing of the news which fit into a broader political narrative. A robust scientific analysis of the topic is difficult as the amount of data (articles, headlines, appearances) can be rather large. The paper by Haider et al. (2026) accomplished a major step forward through the systematic treatment of “selection bias” in news coverage. Related to news coverage, selection bias has both a statistical as well as a substantive meaning. The substantive finding of selection bias refers to the fact that the print media studied tend to prefer “horse race stories to policy issues” in upcoming elections, i. e. the focus on opposing candidates rather than the underlying policy choices. The negativity bias in reporting remains another constant in media research. 

chewing horse in Chantilly box

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Stress in the City

Before the stress in the city makes you sick, try new coping strategies. Of course, you cannot avoid the stress of hotspots like busy crossings or noisy construction sites. And these are only the visible stressors not to mention fine dust particles or mixtures of fragrances. Scientists have started to address these issues under the title of neuro-urbanism. This topic is part of a broader agenda on public mental health which addresses the rise in mental disorders globally. Expanding urbanization is considered a major driver of an often overwhelming cognitive load in cities. Growing into it helps, but many move to cities for professional reasons or simply a job being largely unprepared to the practice of daily commuting for years. Several potential stressors tend to cumulate: High Social density, broad diversity in aesthetics as well as social structure, relationships, social participation or public transport as part of mobility make cities interesting or hard to cope with.