“Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that once it is competently programmed and runs smoothly, it is absolutely honest.”
– Isaac Asimov
When is a robot really social? How do we feel when we talk to Alexa? Do neural networks help us defeat cancer or Parkinson’s disease? How does virtual reality change the way we learn? And how do these technologies work – where are their limits?
Since 2006 I am a technology journalist. My focus is the complex relationship between man and machine. I write about information technology, in particular robotics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and augmented reality, medical technology, video games, cyber security and automation.
My articles appear in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Technology Review, t3n and Psychologie Heute, among others. I am a member of the German Association of Journalists (DJV).
Nominations
At the beginning of 2013 my text “Trust me” (brand eins) on social robotics was nominated for the German Prize for Innovation Journalism. The article “I think, therefore I control” (Süddeutsche Zeitung) on brain-machine interfaces was shortlisted for the PUNKT Prize for Technical Journalism 2014, awarded by acatech – German Academy of Science and Engineering.
Expertise
2018 I wrote the expertise for the permanent robot exhibition in the Swiss National Museum in Zurich. From 2014 to 2017 I was on the Advisory Board of the EU research project BNCI Horizon 2020 – The Future of Brain/Neural Computer Interaction, coordinated by the Graz University of Technology. In November 2018, I gave a presentation at the annual general meeting of the Hartmannbund on “The smart revolution – How Apps & Artificial Intelligence is changing the healthcare system”.
Blog
I ran the technology blog “Robot Laws”. It was initially self-hosted as part of SciLogs, the blogger community of Spektrum der Wissenschaft, and later on. The blog was nominated for the SciLogs Prize in 2013. It was one of the oldest German language blogs about robots and artificial intelligence.
Books
In May 2016 my first book was published “Als wir zum Surfen noch ans Meer gefahren sind” by Kiepenheuer & Witsch. It describes in humorous stories how everyday life has been changed by the internet. The book was a SPIEGEL bestseller. In February 2018 my second book about the technology of the year 1978 was published by Franzis-Verlag.