Projects
Climate-friendly living
Livia Regen (lead author), Wolfgang Hofkirchner (review-editor)
Support of the compilation of the Austrian Panel on Climate Change (APCC) Special Report 22 "Structures for a climate-friendly living".
Expected online and printed version date: 2022.
[Image: Climate Change Centre Austria]Read more:
"Heimatland Erde"
Team: Sophie Huber-Lachner (film director), Werner Wintersteiner, Ursula Gamauf-Eberhardt, Wolfgang Hofkirchner
A documentary on promoting planetary awareness for educational use.
In co-operation with the ASPR (Austrian Study Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution).
Past film project. End: 13 November 2021.
Premiere pending.
[Image: Temperature anomalies 2016-2020, NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio]Read more:
Emergent Trans-
formation
Author: Wolfgang Hofkirchner
Starting from the book Emergent Information, emergentism, systemism and informationism are applied to the fields of social theory, the theory of information society and the theory of technology design in the age of global challenges. The new book makes the case for a Critical Social Systems Theory, a Critical Information Society Theory, and a Critical Theory of Techno-Social Systems Design. By doing so, principles are developed that are key for the techno-eco-social transformation towards a global sustainable information society.
Title and subtitle of the book changed: The Logic of the Third. A Paradigm Shift to a Shared Future for Humanity. Read the preface to understand why.
The book is in print.
Book project. Expected publication date: September 2022.
[Image: GAIA 5.0 by Renate C.-Z.-Quehenberger]COVID-19 Epidemic Austria Simulation Model
Co-ordinator: Peter Fleissner
These models simulate the COVID-19 epidemic in Austria.
Eigen project.
The third wave. Start: 6 March 2021.
The second wave. Start: 1 June 2020.
The first wave. Start: 28 March 2020. End: 1 May 2020.
Information Ethics, Responsibility and Sustainability
Co-ordinators: Tomáš Sigmund, Wolfgang Hofkirchner
This project will deal with topics of Information Ethics (e.g., information privacy, information accuracy, information property, digital divide etc.) and related issues.
Follow-up project of Systems Approaches to Information Ethics.
Joint project between Faculty of Informatics and Statistics, University of Economics, Prague, and GSIS.
Duration 2020 – 2022.
Mapping
Conviviality
Co-ordinator: Sophie Huber-Lachner
New cultures of cooperation have been emerging all over Austria, Europe and the world. This research project seeks to map initiatives and projects, companies and politics that experiment with future ways of learning, working and living together.
"Conviviality" - i.e. sociability, joyance, festivity - describes their common ground, their mindset: the term coined by Viennese philosopher Ivan Illich, aims at using technical progress for truly human purposes: "Von der Produktivität zur Konvivialität übergehen heißt, einen ethischen Wert an die Stelle eines technischen Wertes, einen realisierten Wert an die Stelle eines materialisierten Wertes setzen." (1973|1975: "Tools for Conviviality"|"Selbstbegrenzung")
Eigen project. In preparation.
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"Lernen lernen"
Film director: Sophie Huber-Lachner
A case study and feature length documentary about learning.
Corona was slowing down the process and working closely with the protagonists was not possible. Hence, together with senior producer Markus Fischer (Fischerfilm) it was decided to resize the project to a TV documentary (45-60 minutes). Additional shooting days were required. The title was changed to "Das Lernen (wieder) lernen".
Film project. Premiere: March 2022.
Single Integrated
Science of
Information
(SISI)
Co-ordinators: Mark Burgin, Wolfgang Hofkirchner
After Burgin had created his General Theory of Information (e.g., Theory of Information: Fundamentality, Diversity and Unification 2010) and the feasibility and needfulness of a Unified Theory of Information had been demonstrated by Hofkirchner (e.g., Emergent Information 2013), the UTI Research Group had achieved a milestone that opened a new vista: further steps towards a Science of Information in its own right. That is on our agenda now.
Eigen project. Start: June 2019.
glossaLAB
Co-ordinators: José María Díaz Nafría, Teresa Guarda
The glossaLAB Project has the purpose of developing an interactive open platform for conceptual elucidation and its application to the interdisciplinary co-creation, learning, dissemination and assessment of the knowledge underpinning interdisciplinary frameworks (in particular, the general study of systems and information). This development comprises:
- at the technical level, the semantically interoperable recompilation of valuable scattered encyclopaedic contents;
- at the theoretical level, the increase of intensional performance (or reduction of conceptual redundancy) and the further elucidation of concept; and
- at the meta-theoretical level, the assessment of knowledge integration based on diversity and conceptual network integration.
The glossaLAB consortium is constituted by:
- Universidad Estatal Península de Santa Elena (Ecuador),
- Madrid Open University (Spain),
- GSIS – The Institute for a Global Sustainable Information Society (former UTI Group) (Austria),
- BITrum – Grupo de investigación (Spain),
- Universidad de León (España),
- Institute for Design Science (Germany),
- International Society for the Study of Information (Austria),
- Yachay University of Technology (Ecuador),
- Universidad Politécnica Salesiana (Ecuador).
Funded project. Start: March 2019. New funds 2021-2022.
Evolution of Information Processing Systems
Co-ordinator: Annette Grathoff
It is possible to come to a positive motivation for conserving (bio)diversity by considering knowledge about how stability develops and is lost in evolution. The main problem is stated on the GSIS main page, namely that science is continued to be split up into ever more specialised disciplines that are siloed against each other. To face this problem, interdisciplinary cooperation and exchange needs to be focused. The Evolution of Information Processing Systems project is a contribution to reaching this goal.
Ongoing.
Historical
Materialism, Critical Media and
Communi-cation Theory
Authors: Sebastian Sevignani, Sevda C. Arslan
This textbook introduces and discusses the most important critical media and communication theorists, who contribute to a better understanding of media's and communication's role in capitalism.
Book project. Publication, originally planned for 2020, has been postponed.
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Edgar Morin: Das Leben des Lebens
Editor: Wolfgang Hofkirchner
Translation: Cecile Malaspina, Rainer E. Zimmermann
German translation of Edgar Morin's second volume La Vie de la Vie of the six volumes of La Méthode. It follows the first volume Die Natur der Natur.
Book project. Publication planned for 2023.
Trans-humanism
Editors: Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Hans-Jörg Kreowski
The proper guide to a posthuman condition or a dangerous idea?
The book contains among others contributions of Emergent Systems Group members Klaus Kornwachs, Tomáš Sigmund, Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Robert K. Logan, Christian Stary.
Book project. Publication: 2020 in the Springer book series Cognitive Technologies.
Origins of Systems Thinking
Co-ordinators: Robert K. Logan, Annette Grathoff, Wolfgang Hofkirchner
The assumption we would like to substantiate is that not only with the science of Ecology, not only with General System Theory and even not only with Aristotle Systems Thinking was born. It might have been born with the birth of homo sapiens (sapiens) and might have to do with conceptual thinking that features the capacity to generalisations and with the dissociation of humans from their social relations that features the capacity to hierarchical thinking.
Eigen project. Start: August 2017.
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Systems Approaches to Information Ethics
Co-ordinators: Tomas Sigmund, Wolfgang Hofkirchner
How does Information Ethics take shape in the perspective of Systems Theory?
Supported by the Department of Systems Analysis, Faculty of Informatics and Statistics, University of Economics, Prague. Duration: 2017-2019.
Continued as Information Ethics, Responsibility and Sustainability.
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Social Net-working Sites in the Sur-veillance Society
Co-ordinator: Christian Fuchs
The overall aim was to study electronic surveillance on social networking sites that are used by Austrian students.
Past project funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF. Duration: 2010-2014.
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Human Strategies in Com-plexity
Co-ordinator: Wolfgang Hofkirchner
The overall aim was to lay foundations for an evolutionary systems theory.
Past project funded by INTAS and the Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Culture. Supported by the UTI Research Group. Duration: 2001-2004.
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Projects
