1 – About the 2nd Renaissance

by Hans-Jürgen & Stefan

This topic is our personal “hobby horse”. We are at a time of great changes in line with Thomas Kuhn‘s notion of revolution in the sciences. Yes, we feel the sciences is where changes have started, from quantum mechanics and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle to biology and neurosciences. New insights challenge the very foundation of today’s thinking about technology, industry, society. We feel a new humanity is appearing on the horizon – the digital humanity is within our grasp. We have been discussing this since 2005 and believe that the Internet of Things & Services can be a key technology driver for this social movement — a change from control paradigm to communities of purpose. We are technologists, but the opportunities that exist now cannot be realized by technology alone. The creative energy of people from all walks of life must be combined. The result must not just be monuments of technological achievement, but the move of humanity to a higher level of consciousnesses. That is why we are examining history for periods and regions where such creativity changed society.

Welcome to the 2nd Renaissance.

A note on terminology: we wold have preferred the term Internet of Things & Services for this new technological development because this emphasizes the shift to service away from products. The usual term, however, is Internet of Things, or IoT (see glossary), glossing over the fine difference.