Wolfgang Hofkirchner

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Wolfgang Hofkirchner (2019)

Wolfgang Hofkirchner (born April 17, 1953 in Vienna ) is an Austrian political scientist and psychologist , professor of the Internet and society . He is one of the pioneers of information science and deals particularly with computer science and society as well as with evolutionary systems theory and emergent systems .

Life

Wolfgang Hofkirchner was born in Vienna . His father Herbert Hofkirchner (1923–2008) was a skilled worker here and most recently worked in construction supervision at the Danube power plants, his mother Margarita Hofkirchner (1920–2013) worked as an office worker in the regional financial directorate. His brother Peter Hofkirchner (1944–1996) was a self-employed trader. In Vienna, Wolfgang Hofkirchner attended an elementary school from 1959 and then the Bundesrealgymnasium Wien 2 in the natural science branch, from which he graduated in 1971 with the Matura .

This was followed by a doctorate in political science and psychology at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Salzburg in Austria with a critical dissertation on Karl Raimund Popper ( doctorate 1981). His habilitation with an "experiment on the self-organization of the information society" took place in 2000, and he thus became a university lecturer for technology assessment at the Vienna University of Technology.

Wolfgang Hofkirchner's place of work at the Vienna University of Technology, Faculty of Computer Science, Favoritenstrasse 9 and 11; Façade with a huge metal label: TU WIEN TECHNIK FOR PEOPLE DEVELOP SCIENTIFIC EXCELLENCE & CONVEY COMPETENCE

From 1980 to 1990 Hofkirchner was a research assistant at the Institute for Socio-Economic Development Research (and Technology Assessment) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. From 1991 he worked as a university assistant and from 2001 as an associate professor at the Institute for Design and Impact Research (today Institute of Visual Computing and Human-Centered Technology) at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna). From 2004 to 2010 he was University Professor for Internet and Society at the Center for Advanced Studies and Research in Information and Communication Technologies and Society and the Institute for Communication Science at the Paris-Lodron University in Salzburg .

Wolfgang Hofkirchner lives in Vienna and has been retired since 2018, but continues his scientific work. His wife Gertrude Hofkirchner (* 1952) is a doctor of psychology and psychotherapist (psychoanalysis). The couple has two daughters: Lisa Schlager (* 1979), graduate engineer, head of the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at the Vienna City Administration , and Johanna Hofkirchner (* 1983), doctorate specialist in child and adolescent psychiatry and psychotherapy in Vienna.

research

In his research work he dealt with the transdisciplinary subject complex self-organization - information - information society , ie complexity thinking (system philosophy), "science of information" and "ICTs and society". He further developed the onto-epistemology from Hans Jörg Sandkühler and Rainer E. Zimmermann to the praxeo-onto-epistemology , a valuation of ways of thinking ( reductionism , projectionism , disjunctionism and integrationism ), contributions to evolutionary systems theory and a multi-stage model and that Triple-C-Model (Cognition – Communication – Cooperation) of information as part of a Unified Theory of Information .

The research group became, among other things because of the "dialectical informatism" ( Rafael Capurro 1999), as the "Viennese school of computer science" ( Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski ) and later, among other things because of the "emergent systemism" in the sense of Mario Bunge and an alternative design to Luhmann's sociology, referred to as the “Salzburg Approach” (Poe Yu-ze Wan 2011). Important companions were and are among others his sponsor Peter Fleissner , his colleague Rainer E. Zimmermann and his student Christian Fuchs .

Hofkirchner continues to work on a critical theory of social systems with the vision of a global sustainable information society . He is acting director of the independent The Institute for a Global Sustainable Information Society (GSIS) in Vienna.

Visiting professor

  • 2002 at the Chair of Communication Theory at the Universidade Federal da Bahía, Salvador , Brazil ,
  • 2009 at the Department of Engineering (Systems Theory) of the Universidad de León, Spain ,
  • 2010 at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (Manuel Castells) of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona , Spain.

Memberships and honors (selection)

  • 2003 founding member of the Unified Theory of Information Research Group (since 2019 The Institute for a Global Sustainable Information Society GSIS ) in Vienna
  • 2004 founding member of the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science in Vienna
  • 2006 elected member of the learned society Leibniz Society of Sciences in Berlin
  • 2010 member of the International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences , Brussels
  • 2011 founding member of the International Society for Information Studies (since 2017 International Society for the Study of Information ) in Vienna
  • Member of the boards and boards of a number of other scientific organizations
  • Awarded Distinguished Researcher by the International Center for Philosophy of Information at Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China.

Publications (selection)

Hofkirchner has submitted over 230 publications, including 10 monographs (half with co-authors), 30 edited volumes or special issues of journals (half with co-editors) and over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles (half with co-authors).

  • The misery of critical rationalism - the positivist way of thinking using the example of Karl Raimund Popper . Globus-Verlag, Vienna 1986, ISBN 978-3-85364-177-4 .
  • as publisher: Weltbild, Weltordnung - Perspectives for a fragile and finite earth. Agenda-Verlag, Münster 1994, ISBN 978-3-929440-15-7 .
  • Peter Fleissner , Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Harald Müller, Margit Pol, Christian Stary : People do not live on the bit alone - information in technology and society. Peter Lang European Science Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main; Berlin; Bern; New York; Paris; Vienna 1996, ISBN 978-3-631-49811-8 ; 2nd edition 1997, ISBN 978-3-631-31702-0 .
  • Vladimir Ivanovič Vernadskij (author), Wolfgang Hofkirchner (ed.): Man in the biosphere - on the natural history of reason. Lang Verlag, Frankfurt am Main; Berlin; Bern; New York; Paris; Vienna 1997, ISBN 978-3-631-49084-6 .
  • One world project - cognition - communication - cooperation, experiment on the self-organization of the information society. Lit Verlag, Münster; Hamburg; London 2002, ISBN 978-3-8258-6025-7 .
  • Christiane Floyd , Christian Fuchs, Wolfgang Hofkirchner (Hrsg.): Steps to the information society. Festschrift for Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski's 65th birthday . Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt a. M .; Berlin; Bern; Bruxelles; New York; Oxford; Vienna 2002, ISBN 978-3-631-37642-3 .
  • Christian Fuchs, Wolfgang Hofkirchner: Study book computer science and society. Books on demand Verlag, Norderstedt 2003, ISBN 978-3-8330-0252-6 .
  • Emergent Information - A Unified Theory of Information Framework. World Scientific Series in Information Studies, Volume 3. World Scientific Publishing Company, 2013, ISBN 978-9-8143-1348-3 .
  • Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Hans-Jörg Kreowski (Eds.): Transhumanism - The proper guide to a posthuman condition or a dangerous idea? Series Cognitive Technologies, Springer 2019.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wolfgang Hofkirchner: Emergent Information. A Unified Theory of Information Framework. Singapore, 2013.
  2. ^ Rafael Capurro , Peter Fleissner , and Wolfgang Hofkirchner: Is a Unified Theory of Information Fesible? A trialogue. In: Wolfgang Hofkirchner (Ed.): The Quest for a Unified Theory of Information. Amsterdam, 1999, p. 9.
  3. ↑ Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski : Computer science and society from my point of view - political and ethical thinking in computer science to guarantee human rights. In: Frank Fuchs-Kittowski ; Werner Kriesel (Ed.): Computer science and society. Festschrift for the 80th birthday of Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski. Peter Lang International Science Publishers, PL Academic Research, Frankfurt a. M .; Bern; Bruxelles; New York; Oxford; Warszawa; Vienna 2016, p. 452, ISBN 978-3-631-66719-4 .
  4. ^ Poe Yu-ze Wan: Reframing the Social. Emergentist Systemism and Social Theory. Farnham, 2011.
  5. ↑ Peter Fleissner , Homepage [1]
personal data
SURNAME Hofkirchner, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian information scientist and university lecturer for the Internet and society
DATE OF BIRTH April 17, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna