On September 25, 2015, for example, a Snowden revelation was published about
the “Karma Police” program run by British secret service GCHQ, which judges (the
value of) everyone’s life based on mass surveillance.
33 On the same day, Pope
Francis promoted the Sustainability Development Goals (Agenda 2030) at the
United Nation’s general assembly.
34 I mention this here, because—believe it or not
—I sent him a preprint of “The Automation of Society Is Next: How to Survive the
Digital Revolution” before (it was my only mail to a pope ever). Just ahead of his
speech, on September 24, 2015, and on September 11, 2015, Saudi Arabia suffered
from a twin disaster. It was the biggest tragedy in the history of the Muslim
pilgrimage
35 and felt like part of the apocalypse.
As a follow-up to the UN general assembly, from November 30 to December 16,
2015, the Paris Agreement was worked out, which tried to bring a binding global
contract to fight climate change on the way.
36 However, before the US Congress
signed the agreement, Donald Trump was elected US president, who later quit the
international climate deal.
37
Shortly before the Paris Agreement, I published the Digital Manifesto (“Digital
Democracy Rather than Data Dictatorship”)
38 together with an interdisciplinary
team of scientists. The German online version appeared on November 12, 2015, but
one day later, the world got distracted by the shocking terror attacks in Paris
39
ahead of the climate summit. The publication of the English translation was ready to
be published in Scientific American the week after. However, it got delayed for
more than a year (in fact, until the end of the Obama administration).
33
British ‘Karma Police’ program carries out mass surveillance of the web, The Verge (September
25, 2015) https://www.theverge.com/2015/9/25/9397119/gchq-karma-police-web-surveillance;
Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, The Intercept
(September 25, 2015) https://theintercept.com/2015/09/25/gchq-radio-porn-spies-track-web-usersonline-identities/.
34
Pope Francis Addresses U.N., Calling for Peace and Environmental Justice, The Guardian
(September 25, 2015) https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/26/world/europe/pope-francis-unitednations.html; United Nations Sustainable Development Summit 2015, https://www.unaids.org/
en/resources/presscentre/featurestories/2015/september/20150925_UN_Summit_opening.
35
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Mina_stampede and K. Haase, M. Kasper, M. Koch, and
S. Müller, A Pilgrim Scheduling Approach to Increase Safety During the Hajj, Operations
Research 67(2), 376–406 (2019) https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/opre.2018.1798;
I.Ö. Verbas et al. Integrated Optimization and Simulation Framework for Large-Scale Crowd
Management Application, Transportation Research Record 2560, 57–66 (2016) https://journals.
sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.3141/2560-07.
36
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement.
37
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_the_Paris_Agreement.
38
Das Digital-Manifest: Digitale Demokratie statt Datendiktatur, Spektrum der Wissenschaft
(November 12, 2015) https://www.spektrum.de/thema/das-digital-manifest/1375924; Eine
Strategie für das digitale Zeitalter, https://www.spektrum.de/kolumne/eine-strategie-fuer-dasdigitale-zeitalter/1376083.
39
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2015_Paris_attacks.
Prologue
xiii
the “Karma Police” program run by British secret service GCHQ, which judges (the
value of) everyone’s life based on mass surveillance.
33 On the same day, Pope
Francis promoted the Sustainability Development Goals (Agenda 2030) at the
United Nation’s general assembly.
34 I mention this here, because—believe it or not
—I sent him a preprint of “The Automation of Society Is Next: How to Survive the
Digital Revolution” before (it was my only mail to a pope ever). Just ahead of his
speech, on September 24, 2015, and on September 11, 2015, Saudi Arabia suffered
from a twin disaster. It was the biggest tragedy in the history of the Muslim
pilgrimage
35 and felt like part of the apocalypse.
As a follow-up to the UN general assembly, from November 30 to December 16,
2015, the Paris Agreement was worked out, which tried to bring a binding global
contract to fight climate change on the way.
36 However, before the US Congress
signed the agreement, Donald Trump was elected US president, who later quit the
international climate deal.
37
Shortly before the Paris Agreement, I published the Digital Manifesto (“Digital
Democracy Rather than Data Dictatorship”)
38 together with an interdisciplinary
team of scientists. The German online version appeared on November 12, 2015, but
one day later, the world got distracted by the shocking terror attacks in Paris
39
ahead of the climate summit. The publication of the English translation was ready to
be published in Scientific American the week after. However, it got delayed for
more than a year (in fact, until the end of the Obama administration).
33
British ‘Karma Police’ program carries out mass surveillance of the web, The Verge (September
25, 2015) https://www.theverge.com/2015/9/25/9397119/gchq-karma-police-web-surveillance;
Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities, The Intercept
(September 25, 2015) https://theintercept.com/2015/09/25/gchq-radio-porn-spies-track-web-usersonline-identities/.
34
Pope Francis Addresses U.N., Calling for Peace and Environmental Justice, The Guardian
(September 25, 2015) https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/26/world/europe/pope-francis-unitednations.html; United Nations Sustainable Development Summit 2015, https://www.unaids.org/
en/resources/presscentre/featurestories/2015/september/20150925_UN_Summit_opening.
35
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Mina_stampede and K. Haase, M. Kasper, M. Koch, and
S. Müller, A Pilgrim Scheduling Approach to Increase Safety During the Hajj, Operations
Research 67(2), 376–406 (2019) https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/opre.2018.1798;
I.Ö. Verbas et al. Integrated Optimization and Simulation Framework for Large-Scale Crowd
Management Application, Transportation Research Record 2560, 57–66 (2016) https://journals.
sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.3141/2560-07.
36
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement.
37
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_the_Paris_Agreement.
38
Das Digital-Manifest: Digitale Demokratie statt Datendiktatur, Spektrum der Wissenschaft
(November 12, 2015) https://www.spektrum.de/thema/das-digital-manifest/1375924; Eine
Strategie für das digitale Zeitalter, https://www.spektrum.de/kolumne/eine-strategie-fuer-dasdigitale-zeitalter/1376083.
39
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2015_Paris_attacks.
Prologue
xiii