Marion Fuglewicz-Bren |The Semantic Puzzle

Ethics – the new killer-app?

April 28, 2009 by Marion Fuglewicz-Bren, Category: Politics, Privacy & Information Ethics

Sometimes I hate marketing. Most often you can feel it in your heart whether issues are authentic or not. Whatever medium you are consuming these days – the web, the newspapers or your mailbox – anyone seems to discover a new killer-application called ethics. This seems to be everyone´s cure – be it a seminar, a conference or a book: Ethics is hype.

That´s more than annoying for me who´s been trying for years to establish ethical aspects in my work as a journalist, as a pr-person (believe it or not!) – as a human-being. Being sensitive for the special challenges connected with discussing ethical issues in a diverse global economy I´ve always been trying to publish and talk about the philosophical approach to these matters.

Therefore I ´m happy to come across Tim Berners Lee´s request at the current International World Wide Web Conference in Madrid: Clean the web! He – which is not at all surprising – is claiming a clean web. The user has to know which data he can trust and may pass on. Also privacy must be protected he postulates one more time. All these arguments deal authentically with ethics. But not only. They concern the future. The future of us all.

No business is more complex than communications…

February 6, 2009 by Marion Fuglewicz-Bren, Category: Miscellaneous, Semantics & Philosophy

: Image via Wikipedia

As journalist and communications-professional I came acoss an article that I – although in German – have to recommend from the depth of my heart to everybody who is somehow concerned with communication. It´s an article on propaganda in the prestigious brandeins-magazine. Here´s a german commentary on it.

Communications and public relations are at least as complex as the Semantic Web is and it´s not accidental that both of them deal with language. Ludwig Wittgenstein had claimed comprehension by talking about truth tables and anybody who deals with communication should act more explicit in terms of getting more understanding.

The Times They Are A-Changin … yes, we can

January 22, 2009 by Marion Fuglewicz-Bren, Category: Internet & Media, Politics

: Image by William WM via Flickr

One of the many ways that the election of Barack Obama as president has echoed that of John F. Kennedy is his use of a new medium that will forever change politics. For Mr. Kennedy, it was television. For Mr. Obama, it is the Internet. Obama´s Internet Campaign Changed Politics. “Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be president. Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not have been the nominee,” said Arianna Huffington, editor in chief of The Huffington Post.

America´s new president Barack Obama didn’t go out and recruit on facebook, they came to him at first. Did the internet make Obama’s natural “viralness” quicker and more transparent? Obama’s huge victory on Tuesday night was celebrated in Austria and Germany, as it was around the world: German Press on Obama Victory: “The Dream is Alive“. Der Spiegel‘s Gabor Steingart – who for months dismissed the notion that Obama had a real chance for the White House – writes about the Resurrection of the American Dream: “His base note is conciliatory, his overtone is exalted and the harmony is finely balanced. If anyone out there still doubted that the American dream was alive, he called out to his supporters in Chicago, “tonight is your answer.”

However things will happen or not and however the „Change has come to America“: The president´s new official website is online www.whitehouse.gov. And here users are really being involved. We all are involved. Obama means change. Let´s see in what ways this will concern the future of the internet.

Ideas worth spreading: More Entertainment, less Technology

November 12, 2008 by Marion Fuglewicz-Bren, Category: Semantics & Philosophy

The tradition of Barcamps is not very old. The idea of course, is. Some of you might remember the upcoming of TED in 1984. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. „The power of the spreading of ideas“ led this initiative. The talks are inspired by the world’s greatest thinkers and doers and to my mind this is the nicest way to kind of relax during a Semantic-Web-Business-Day.

„Today, TED is therefore best thought of as a global community. It’s a community welcoming people from every discipline and culture who have just two things in common: they seek a deeper understanding of the world, and they hope to turn that understanding into a better future for us all.“ [Source]

Not only is it sine qua non to regularly get one’s inspiration from charismatic people or events in a creative environment like the web’s future – but it’s also very nice for networking. So – don’t forget to let some more entertainment into your everyday-lives instead of concentrating exclusively on the very crucial technological issues. And, certainly: Keep spreading your ideas.

Read (and write) more on TED Blog: mfb

Author: Marion Fugléwicz-Bren

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