For the first time in the history of the earth, information processing and cognition happens

outside of human agents, outside of biological life forms, exciting times. So what does this

mean for our lives, for our society, for the notion we have of ourselves? This idea has

struck me and aroused my curiosity in computer science and cognitive science when I was still

going to school, it's never left me since then. We have to design our society of the

future. Digital is disrupting the structural foundation of our lives and we have to meet

this in a proactive way rather than a reactive way as we did in the past. So if you would

like to better understand what are the ingredients of sovereignty, where are we today, where

do we want to be tomorrow, what does it take, what are the most promising levers? This is

a multi-disciplinary effort. Many scientific disciplines have to contribute and none of

them can solve this challenge from inside of its own horizon. FAU seems to be a fantastic

place for this discourse and dialogue to happen and to start because FAU offers such a wide

range of experts and of disciplines. It has sciences, it has technology and data science

but it also has social science and humanities and the humanities play a very special role

in those times of radical change because they provide us with interpretation of ourselves.

So it's the humanities who have to give the direction for digital transformation. FAU

has almost 300 years of tradition in enlightenment and the humanities had this role in the area

of enlightenment shaping the direction of the societies which we live in today and so

the question could be can we link this tradition with the transformation for the future.