Zukunft – Page 2 – Schoemann

07/10/202606/10/2026

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.

02/10/202630/09/2026

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.

30/09/202629/09/2026

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).

14/09/202614/09/2026

Culture goes Europe

Culture has always travelled Europe. Not only the very famous artists have travelled themselves or their art has travelled, but students of art have joined masters in other countries to learn or become inspired. There are, of cause, some artists who paint themselves in their home and do not care much about the world around them. This is fine, too. The Berlin Art Week has taken a refreshing pro-European perspective in the talk entitled “Empowering Europe”. Culture can build many sustainable bridges across borders, which often start with language acquisition (Gitte Zschoch). Foundations assist with funding (Stephan Muschick). Curators initiate cooperations and lending across borders to challenge traditional cultures and practices (Anda Rottenberg). And the media ensure a wide distribution of cultural information and organise a society-wide discourse (Elke Buhr) about cultural diversity, heritage and innovation. All this is needed to avoid a self-referential cultural perspective of the MAGA-type in Europe. This is not a nice-to-have, but an essential part of the European power of resilience.

10/09/202609/09/2026

VCs shun SA

Venture Capitalists have an eye on long-term safety of investments. Political upheavals, unrest or instability can deter investments as much as risks to the safety of the workforce. The abbreviation “SA” in Germany has at least 2 meanings. (1) Historically, it refers to the “Sturmabteilung”, which was important in the rise of the Fascist movement and Nazi-terror in the 1920s, 1930s. Foreign investors were right to shun away from investments during the rise of the Fascists in Germany as a total loss of the investment was to be expected. (2) In 2026-8 the abbreviation “SA” in Germany stands also for “Saxony-Anhalt”, one of the Federal States of Eastern Germany, formerly the GDR between 1949-1990.
The “Wallstreet Journal”, which is read by many international investors showed on its title page of WSJ 2026-9-7 a report by Bertrand Benoit on the disastrous election in Saxony-Anhalt giving the extreme right-wing party AfD close to an absolute majority of votes. The abandoned investment by Intel into a chip-production near the capital of SA, Magdeburg, has been in retrospect a rather wise investment decision. The internationality of the employees, who build and operate such plants, might have contributed to them feeling rather unsafe in a hostile environment towards foreign workers.

08/09/202607/09/2026

Notre-Dame Organ

Paris, particularly Notre-Dame de Paris, is a great place to listen to pipe organs. It just needs a little preparation to find out time and place of a concerts. There are actually surprisingly many. At times of official services you might also get an impression of the capacity of organs and organists knowing how to make the pipes sound from soft, melodic to broad, majestic, even overwhelming. In Notre-Dame de Paris the original organ was built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll and accomplished in 1868. An “electric blower” (1924) certainly enhanced and prolonged the sound capacities of the already rich orchestration features. Despite the electric enhancement the mechanics remain the primary features of the sound of pipe organs. Olivier Latry at Notre-Dame manages to the audiences into the 21st century’s sound spectrum based on traditional, but adapted variations of classical compositions. Bringing in new talent, like at the “Konzerthaus“, will guarantee that future generations can still enjoy the many worlds of sound that organs open up for us. Short sound impression Notre-Dame de Paris organ play 2026-8.

04/09/202603/09/2026

Healthy intervention

The shift back from a city which favors mobility on wheels to a city where more people move using on their feet is healthy intervention. Paris has succeeded in many inner city areas to improve the „walkability“. On Sundays joggers pass in groups where previously cars were rushing across the city. Noise levels and pollution have been reduced which attracts even more tourists. Many more than the city could handle with too much space occupied by cars and trucks. Security levels are increased by restrictions to car access to some roads and people feel safe and relaxed even in the city center of a metropolitan city. Besides the effect that more tourists come to enjoy this atmosphere, those living and working in Paris feel less forced to leave the city over weekends due to unhealthy pollution levels. Access from suburbs by public transport runs at high frequencies also on weekends. This brings people into the center for events, shopping and event shopping.

27/08/202626/08/2026

Autonomous drones

The weapon industry is shifting rapidly. Beyond slow moving tanks, modern warfare has adopted and applies autonomous drones in the battlefield. On the title page of the NYT of 2026-8-26 we learn about a Russian autonomous drone with US hardware technology (Nvidia Jetson Orin microPC) to kill 3 civilians without them being really the target. These drones are trained to select their target autonomously without a human in control. It is the pre-trained machine which decides on the target and whether to “take-out” the target. Disguised objects may survive for longer. People disguised as useless objects have a higher probability to escape detection if you do not fit into the drone’s visual identification. Autonomy based on artificial intelligence has its limits too. Military intelligence will continue to rely a lot on human intelligence to protect us from the realities of autonomous drones.

26/08/202625/08/2026

Loss of green

In many instances we learn only if we have lost something. The loss of biodiversity is rather abstract. The loss of a favorite green, allay or park due to a severe drought, however, is fairly visible. The point of departure of the Tour de France more than 100 years ago in Montgeron and the green alley which was built to allow to ride through the Forêt de Sénart to Fontainebleau has suffered from the 2026 repeated heatwaves and droughts. The scientific evidence accumulates to the manmade responsibilities over time. What used to be a fantastic area for leisure and walks after work has turned into a dusty place. Even the recent efforts to improve the greenery further has been surpassed by the unexpected lack of precipitation, although forecasted by some scientists. The costs of climate change, global warming and therefore more difficult water management become pressing policy issues.

15/08/202614/08/2026

La gaya sienza

Nietzsche published his 1st version of “Die fröhliche Wissenschaft“ in1882. Ever since a controversy over the translation and interpretation of the title broke out. The publication in English referred to the title as “Joyful Wisdom”. A major question remains: is the opus a piece about science in the sense of philosophy, or less rigorous in method and therefore more a kind of general contribution to a perspective on wisdom? 12 x 12 years later of the 1st publication the “Motto” on the opening page should be taken more seriously. “Dem Dichter und Weisen sind alle Dinge befreundet und geweiht, alle Erlebnisse nützlich, alle Tage heilig, alle Menschen göttlich.“ Such a radical Version of enlightenment as scientific method announced his attempts to demystify everything from religious beliefs to also science as well. The Motto of the 2nd edition in 1887 goes beyond the original one to include himself into this demystification. “Ich wohne in meinem eigenen Haus, Hab Niemanden nie nichts nachgemacht Und – lachte noch jeden Meister aus, Der nicht sich selbst ausgelacht. In a nutshell, mock yourself as much as you mock about anyone else. Can this science be science, intelligence, artificial intelligence or is this already the precursor of „super intelligence“ of the 21st century AI hype?

Category: Zukunft

Notre-Dame Organ

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