Emergent Systems, Information and Society
Research Group

Heads

Wolfgang Hofkirchner

Wolfgang Hofkirchner is retired Professor for Technology Assessment at the Faculty of Informatics, Vienna University of Technology, Austria.

Hans-Jörg Kreowski

Hans-Jörg Kreowski is retired Professor for Theoretical Computer Science at the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Bremen, Germany. He studied Mathematics, got his PhD and the venia legendi in Computer Science at the University of Technology Berlin and became professor in Bremen in 1982.

His major fields of interest are formal modeling, graph transformation, logistics as well as computer and society.

He has been appointed an academician of the Leibniz-Sozietät der Wissenschaften zu Berlin in 2013. He was Chair of the Forum Computer Professionals for Peace and Social Responsibility (FIfF), Germany, in the years 2003 to 2009 and is a board member since then.

Rainer E. Zimmermann

Rainer E. Zimmermann is retired Professor for Philosophy at the Department of General and Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Applied Sciences Munich, Germany, and lifetime Professor of Clare Hall, Cambridge, UK. Currently, he is affiliated to the School of Engineering – Technology and Life, University of Applied Sciences, HTW Berlin, Germany.

He is chairman of the Institut für Design Science München, Germany.

He is working in the field of Metaphysics and Philosophy of Nature.

He has been appointed an academician of the Leibniz-Sozietät der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Germany, and of the International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences, Brussels, Belgium. 2019/2020 he was President of the Leibniz-Sozietät der Wissenschaften zu Berlin.

Objectives

The Emergent Systems, Information and Society Research Group was founded in 2015 to honour and continue the lifetime achievement of Prof. Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski, a wanderer between the worlds (see photo on the left). The novum of that group is that – in line with the programme of the UTI Research Group founded more than a decade before (called "Vienna School" by Fuchs-Kittowski) – it is a transdisciplinary group elaborating on systems theoretical approaches towards techno-social systems, in particular, computerised systems, and that it builds upon the expertises of two scientific communities:

Researchers working in the field of Evolutionary Systems taking the General System Theory as its starting point – that is, a field revolving around self-organisation and information, comprising Systems Philosophy, Philosophy of Information and Philosophy of Technology, theories of living systems and theories of social systems;
Academics and practitioners in the field of computer science in the perspective of its social context – that is, a field considering social responsibility of computer engineers, comprising Social Informatics (as it is called in Anglo-Saxon countries), “Informatik und Gesellschaft” (as it is called in German speaking countries), Information Studies, ICTs and Society, and else.

The core issue of the Research Group is to contribute to the assessment of technologies that raise or should raise public concern. The problem analysis looks upon technological systems as parts of social systems. The perspective of techno-social systems is underpinned by insights in systems evolution. Information technology is investigated with regard to its contributions for a Global Sustainable Information Society as a possible and needful step in the evolution of societies on Earth.

The group is a joint international initiative. It is not only a Unit sustained by The Institute for a Global Sustainable Information Society since 2018. It is, at the same time, a Working Group sustained by the Leibniz-Sozietät der Wissenschaften zu Berlin and a Special Interest Group sustained by the International Society for the Study of Information. Until 2018 it was a Research Group sustained by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science. The multiple affiliation of the group facilitates financial support.