From absolute nonsense to the world’s operating system

Informatics, its artefacts and methods, have fundamentally changed our society and world, from the individual personal level up to the current geo-political powerplay between the US, China and Europe. Information Technology serves as the operating system of our society. This change has happened over the last 30 – 40 years, and the result should be compared with our historic views and expectations. At the same time, despite the enormous success of our discipline, it has serious shortcomings. I discuss some of them, especially the issue of online platforms, and describe a positive “answer”: Digital Humanism. This approach does not only describe and analyze the man – machine relationship, but also underlines the importance of humans in this development: we have to interfere – technology is not god given. This fundamental idea is already supported by a growing number of academics and practitioners from different disciplines and fields.