Preface
Rethinking technology – before it becomes invisible.
When new technologies appear, wonder comes first. Then comes hope.
And eventually: disillusionment.
The digital world has already taught us that.
Social media started as a tool for freedom. People connected across borders, across servers, across platforms, often against resistance, against censorship.
But closeness turned into manipulation. Dialogue into click-logic. Data into control.
It wasn’t the technology that failed us – but our faith in it. A faith that was too big, and too little questioned.
But that pattern isn’t new.
Even the printing press, now almost sanctified as a lever of Enlightenment, was never just a tool of emancipation. Without it, works like the Malleus Maleficarum would never have sent waves across Europe and into North America.
A book that stirred mistrust, triggered persecution, and legitimized violence – printed, distributed, believed.
And yet: we moved forward.
Despite the setbacks.
Perhaps even because of them.
Because people learned not just to read, but to judge.
Today, we’re at that kind of point again.
Artificial Intelligence isn’t a fad. It’s here. And it’s not going away.
Not just in data centers – but in everyday life, in schools, in administrations, in our minds.
This series is an attempt to open the space before it closes.
Not just through a technical lens – and not only through a societal one. But from the in-between position where many people now find themselves: People who shape systems and at the same time feel what those systems are doing to us.
I write as someone who helps shape digital processes – with a technical background, but with a focus on people.
And when it comes to artificial intelligence, we must not think of the technology in isolation. What is this system doing to us – to our language, our economy, our education, our society? What are we missing if we use AI only to make the existing structures more efficient, instead of daring to imagine something truly new?
Because just as risks go unnoticed when we focus only on the positive, opportunities also disappear when we settle too quickly for the first solution that comes along.
These texts are for those who still have questions.
And for those who feel that it’s time to do more than test tools.
Because intelligence isn’t what gives answers.
It’s what thinks together.
There is a gap.
Between what systems do and what they mean to us.
Between efficiency and understanding.
Between information and judgment.
That gap won’t close on its own.
But it’s there. Waiting for us.
.