Keynote Speakers

Abstract

Digital Transformation is happening globally on a technical, service and regulation level in high speed. But it has a history. Like electricity in the beginning of last century IT has become a general-purpose technology. The innovations often prove to be disruptive, when they hit business and economies with reduced productivity. Mobile communication has been replaced by smart phones. UBER or AirBnB may become disruptive in future, since they offer cheaper and better service based upon results from Data Science using Big Data. The digital transformation is presented in five steps where todays status is characterized by data-driven transactions, where intermediaries collect Big Data to predict human behavior. The next – sixth step – is most likely characterized by artificial intelligence and machine learning with the objective to control, observe and eventually replace humans for many tasks.

This direction challenges the still dominant believe in a better world by a crisis of trust, where fake news, manipulation, echo chambers, amplifications, and the loss of a common understanding of verified truth increases public anxiety. Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal are not handled as cases for data protection. There is no regulation to protect humans from cognitive manipulation, yet. The GDPR is backwards oriented, and will be seen as a barrier, when e.g. Android Auto is reorganizing car industry or DeepMind abolishes the health care as we know today.

 

Biography

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Günter Müller is a professor (em)  of computer science at the University of Freiburg. In 2017 he became at his home University a senior advisor. He got his PhD in Data Base Systems and worked as a post-doc with IBM in Almaden in the famous System R project. His habilitation contained the design and implementation a graphical language to interact with computers. In 1985, he was nominated by IBM Corporation as Director for Telecommunication systems, Europe. For his work in digital networks and security he got an honorable Doctor from Technical University of Darmstadt, the medal of honor from Economics University of Vienna, the Ehrenkreuz from the Austrian president and was nominated a friend of the Faculty of Organization and Informatics of Varaždin. His key contribution at his time in University is multi-lateral security, accepted as DIN and ISO Standard. He was heavily involved in contributing and setting up programs in German, European and industrial development and research in Security. In this area he is still a regular consultant in EU, Germany, and Japan.

He is a visiting professor to Economics University Vienna and the NII Tokyo, as well as to Fraunhofer SIT in Darmstadt, Germany. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 publications, and his book about “Preparations to control digital transformation” will appear in 2019 by Springer.