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Niklaus Wirth 1934-2024

Niklaus Wirth: An Obituary and Tribute

“To hell with AI”. Niklaus Wirth’s answer to a journalist’s question about his views on AI reminds me of the famous words by Albert Einstein „Gott würfelt nicht“ – ”God does not play dice”, when expressing his skepticism about quantum

Swiss E-ID Illustration

Self-Sovereign Identities: Challenges and Chances

Self-sovereign identity (SSI) is a new concept for identity management that shall be used in the Swiss E-ID which is currently under development. The main advantage of SSI is that it better protects the users’ privacy than classical identity solutions

Danilo Biella talking at SI Evening Event of 2023-04-27 in Geneva

Agile: From Piracy to Slavery – A Retrospective

As part of our SI Evening Talk series, a series of events where we facilitate discussion of various IT topics, SI invited Danilo Biella to Geneva to share his perspectives on the current state of Agile.  SI Evening Talk by

SI Evening talk of 2022-11-29: Data for the benefit of the patient

Data for the benefit of the patient – A retrospective

In the series of SI evening talks, the talk of November 29, 2022 featured a hot topic: How can medical data be collected and used for the benefit of the patients and in a way that preserves the patients’ privacy.

Illustrative Code Snippet

The Curious Case of Software Documentation

Many programmers share the viewpoint “code is documentation enough” and do not invest time and effort into documenting their code. However, absent software documentation often is a sign of cognitive biases and poor management practices, rather than source code clarity.

A stage for women in IT

A Stage for Women in IT

  In the scope of the initiative www.it-feuer.ch the Swiss Informatics Society (SI) publishes portraits of women in IT from June to December 2021. SI has been looking for female role models and found many women who have made their

Readers Column Key Image

How to Deploy Big Data and AI in Business

Quick wins, substantial wins, and big wins in big data and AI deployment follow different patterns of identification and implementation. Knowing these patterns makes it easier to perform a proper expectation management. Quick wins Quick wins with big data and/or

Abstracting Digital Documents to Think about Cultural Preservation

The textual scholar and literary critic Jerome McGann begins his most recent book with the following: “Here is surely a truth now universally acknowledged: that the whole of our cultural inheritance has to be recurated and reedited in digital forms

Biber Informatik Image

Record participation in the Swiss IT Biber Competition

Launched in Lithuania in 2003 by Prof. Valentina Dagienė of Vilnius University, the BEBRAS competition aims to get children and young people excited about computer science and promote computational thinking. Worldwide, nearly 3 million students from 54 countries participated in

Fresh successes at the First Lego League

The two Chur teams “i-Girls” and “Fluffy” qualify for the final of the best teams from Germany, Austria and Switzerland at the regional championship of the First Lego League. The “i-Girls” and “Fluffy”, both teams sponsored by a cooperation of

GongPong.SAT: Developing Realtime Android Apps

The application underlying this case study is at the core of an award-winning concept of a distributed multi-player performance called Music for Gongs and Satellites. In short, the vision aims at turning commercially available mobile phones into devices for coordinating a

Art & IT Herbst Image

NEUROGRAPHY

Somehow you recognize faces. And somehow old masters. But somehow it’s also a bit scary. The images are part of Mario Klingemann’s video work 79530 Selfportraits, in which the artist trained a neural network exclusively with portraits of old masters.

David Lachenauer Avatar 150*150

Cloud Software als Innovationstreiber in ICK-Unternehmen

The information and communications technology (ICT) sector is one of the largest industries in Switzerland. The driving force behind this sustained growth is the digital transformation. It is constantly creating new trends that can be used to further optimize and

Homo Informaticus or Informatics as Integral to Human Culture Since Ever

Why to teach computer science (informatics) as a mandatory subject in schools? Why is it not sufficient to limit computer science education to specialists developing the information technology? The short answers are: The computer scientist way of thinking is a

WebConferencing: Einfach loslegen bis systemisch angehen

1 Einleitung «Einen Artikel über WebConferencing? Braucht es das? Einloggen, Mikrofon und Kamera freischalten und loslegen! Völlig einfach. Da braucht es doch keine Anleitung und schon gar keinen eigenen Artikel in einem Fachmagazin.» Stimmt, wenn man einfach mal loslegen will,

DriesDepoorter.key

Influencer*in – ein Traumberuf für viele Teenies. Dazu gehören Followers sammeln, was einem Wert seiner selbst quantifizieren gleichkommt; Objekte bewerben und kontinuierlich beispielsweise auf dem Instagram Profil nachsehen, wie viele Menschen die eigenen Stories bereits betrachtet haben; Interaktionen beobachten, die

The Mystery

Lateral thinking is a powerful tool for solving seemingly unsolvable problems or mysteries. The kernel idea behind is consciously letting loose of any unconscious prejudice and bias, and considering all logically possible scenarios and options when analyzing the problem, notably

Was Tulpen und Kryptowährungen gemeinsam ist

Erst kürzlich erreichte der Wert des Bitcoins einmal mehr ein kurzfristiges Hoch. Die junge Geschichte des Bitcoins ist gezeichnet von heftigen Fluktuationen. Nennenswert ist, dass die Kryptowährung seit ihrer Gründung vor etwa zehn Jahren trotz der Fluktuationen eine beeindruckende Wertsteigerung

The Nonstop Datafication of Self-Design

The Daily Design of the Quantified Self

[ TRAINING ] ♦ Personal training is an activity usually associated with fitness where a teacher is in charge of educating their clients by setting up an exercise program with specific goals. Teachers motivate them by creating a desire for

What Are You Worth?

Geld und Technologie gehen Hand in Hand. Viele der heutzutage wichtigen Unternehmen sind Technologiefirmen, seien sie in der Hardware, Software oder im Onlinehandel verankert. Als Individuum scheinen wir davon nur profitieren zu können. Wir erhalten gratis Services, für die wir

Die gegenseitige Bereicherung von Soft-und Hardware

Anhand der Arbeit Olympia diskutieren wir Eigenart und Potenzial von Soft- und Hardware im weiteren Sinne. In der Geschichte lassen sich eine Vielzahl von Konzepten, Plänen und Visionen (Software) finden, aus denen ganze Städte und einzelne Gebäude (Hardware) entstanden sind.

PeopleKeeper Image

PeopleKeeper: Von Maschinen und Menschen

Als Maschinen entstanden sind, brauchte es den Menschen, um diese zu Steuern. Heute ist die ganze Technologie derart immersiv, dass es in diesem Bereich eine Verschiebung gab: Maschinen werden zu einem zentralen Steuerelement und die Menschen lassen sich von deren

kaffeehaus.com

A Global Platform for Short Form Writing

To support the creation of cultural assets it is necessary to provide spaces of dialogue and exchange. This is equally important for science and arts. An example of this is the post world war one era known as Viennese Modernity

Warum gibt es keine Schweizer IT-Industrie?

Die Informatik in der Schweiz begann 1948 mit der Gründung des Instituts für angewandte Mathematik an der ETH Zürich. 1950 hatte die ETH als zweite Universität auf dem europäischen Festland einen funktionstüchtigen programmgesteuerten Digitalrechner, die Zuse Z4. 1956 wurde die

Einsichten Portrait

Neue Einsichten in der Ausbildung im Bereich Multimedia

Wie die Ausbildung im Bereich Multimedia Production an  der HTW Chur bei den Studierenden ankommt, zeigen beispielhaft vier nachfolgende Statements von ehemaligen Studierenden nach deren Eintritt ins Berufsleben. Florence Gross, Marc Fehr, Benjamin Hanimann und Simon Pedross berichten ueber ihre

15 Square Game

Computational Thinking ≠ Programming

Introduction Computational Thinking is argued to be tomorrow’s reality as a crucial skill for the 21st Century workforce. What process one follows to formulate and resolve a problem, and how the abilities of human thinking can be combined with the

Digital Single Market – Fiction or Vision?

ABSTRACT: The European Union heads for the establishment of a digital single market among its members. This article discusses whether Switzerland should ignore this or look for possibilities that will allow Swiss companies and Swiss citizens to participate in this

The Digital Art Weeks : A Decade of Accomplishment

INTRODUCTION Zurich and Basel Switzerland, Xian, Shanghai and Bejing China, Vancouver Island, Canada, Singapore, Singapore and Seoul, South Korea are the places in which the Digital Art Weeks Internaional have take place over the past nine years. Each of these

Niklaus Wirth 1934-2024

Niklaus Wirth: An Obituary and Tribute

“To hell with AI”. Niklaus Wirth’s answer to a journalist’s question about his views on AI reminds me of the famous words by Albert Einstein „Gott würfelt nicht“ – ”God does not play dice”, when expressing his skepticism about quantum

Swiss E-ID Illustration

Self-Sovereign Identities: Challenges and Chances

Self-sovereign identity (SSI) is a new concept for identity management that shall be used in the Swiss E-ID which is currently under development. The main advantage of SSI is that it better protects the users’ privacy than classical identity solutions

Danilo Biella talking at SI Evening Event of 2023-04-27 in Geneva

Agile: From Piracy to Slavery – A Retrospective

As part of our SI Evening Talk series, a series of events where we facilitate discussion of various IT topics, SI invited Danilo Biella to Geneva to share his perspectives on the current state of Agile.  SI Evening Talk by

SI Evening talk of 2022-11-29: Data for the benefit of the patient

Data for the benefit of the patient – A retrospective

In the series of SI evening talks, the talk of November 29, 2022 featured a hot topic: How can medical data be collected and used for the benefit of the patients and in a way that preserves the patients’ privacy.

Illustrative Code Snippet

The Curious Case of Software Documentation

Many programmers share the viewpoint “code is documentation enough” and do not invest time and effort into documenting their code. However, absent software documentation often is a sign of cognitive biases and poor management practices, rather than source code clarity.

A stage for women in IT

A Stage for Women in IT

  In the scope of the initiative www.it-feuer.ch the Swiss Informatics Society (SI) publishes portraits of women in IT from June to December 2021. SI has been looking for female role models and found many women who have made their

Readers Column Key Image

How to Deploy Big Data and AI in Business

Quick wins, substantial wins, and big wins in big data and AI deployment follow different patterns of identification and implementation. Knowing these patterns makes it easier to perform a proper expectation management. Quick wins Quick wins with big data and/or

Abstracting Digital Documents to Think about Cultural Preservation

The textual scholar and literary critic Jerome McGann begins his most recent book with the following: “Here is surely a truth now universally acknowledged: that the whole of our cultural inheritance has to be recurated and reedited in digital forms

Biber Informatik Image

Record participation in the Swiss IT Biber Competition

Launched in Lithuania in 2003 by Prof. Valentina Dagienė of Vilnius University, the BEBRAS competition aims to get children and young people excited about computer science and promote computational thinking. Worldwide, nearly 3 million students from 54 countries participated in

Fresh successes at the First Lego League

The two Chur teams “i-Girls” and “Fluffy” qualify for the final of the best teams from Germany, Austria and Switzerland at the regional championship of the First Lego League. The “i-Girls” and “Fluffy”, both teams sponsored by a cooperation of

GongPong.SAT: Developing Realtime Android Apps

The application underlying this case study is at the core of an award-winning concept of a distributed multi-player performance called Music for Gongs and Satellites. In short, the vision aims at turning commercially available mobile phones into devices for coordinating a

Art & IT Herbst Image

NEUROGRAPHY

Somehow you recognize faces. And somehow old masters. But somehow it’s also a bit scary. The images are part of Mario Klingemann’s video work 79530 Selfportraits, in which the artist trained a neural network exclusively with portraits of old masters.

David Lachenauer Avatar 150*150

Cloud Software als Innovationstreiber in ICK-Unternehmen

The information and communications technology (ICT) sector is one of the largest industries in Switzerland. The driving force behind this sustained growth is the digital transformation. It is constantly creating new trends that can be used to further optimize and

Homo Informaticus or Informatics as Integral to Human Culture Since Ever

Why to teach computer science (informatics) as a mandatory subject in schools? Why is it not sufficient to limit computer science education to specialists developing the information technology? The short answers are: The computer scientist way of thinking is a

WebConferencing: Einfach loslegen bis systemisch angehen

1 Einleitung «Einen Artikel über WebConferencing? Braucht es das? Einloggen, Mikrofon und Kamera freischalten und loslegen! Völlig einfach. Da braucht es doch keine Anleitung und schon gar keinen eigenen Artikel in einem Fachmagazin.» Stimmt, wenn man einfach mal loslegen will,

DriesDepoorter.key

Influencer*in – ein Traumberuf für viele Teenies. Dazu gehören Followers sammeln, was einem Wert seiner selbst quantifizieren gleichkommt; Objekte bewerben und kontinuierlich beispielsweise auf dem Instagram Profil nachsehen, wie viele Menschen die eigenen Stories bereits betrachtet haben; Interaktionen beobachten, die

The Mystery

Lateral thinking is a powerful tool for solving seemingly unsolvable problems or mysteries. The kernel idea behind is consciously letting loose of any unconscious prejudice and bias, and considering all logically possible scenarios and options when analyzing the problem, notably

Was Tulpen und Kryptowährungen gemeinsam ist

Erst kürzlich erreichte der Wert des Bitcoins einmal mehr ein kurzfristiges Hoch. Die junge Geschichte des Bitcoins ist gezeichnet von heftigen Fluktuationen. Nennenswert ist, dass die Kryptowährung seit ihrer Gründung vor etwa zehn Jahren trotz der Fluktuationen eine beeindruckende Wertsteigerung

The Nonstop Datafication of Self-Design

The Daily Design of the Quantified Self

[ TRAINING ] ♦ Personal training is an activity usually associated with fitness where a teacher is in charge of educating their clients by setting up an exercise program with specific goals. Teachers motivate them by creating a desire for

What Are You Worth?

Geld und Technologie gehen Hand in Hand. Viele der heutzutage wichtigen Unternehmen sind Technologiefirmen, seien sie in der Hardware, Software oder im Onlinehandel verankert. Als Individuum scheinen wir davon nur profitieren zu können. Wir erhalten gratis Services, für die wir

Die gegenseitige Bereicherung von Soft-und Hardware

Anhand der Arbeit Olympia diskutieren wir Eigenart und Potenzial von Soft- und Hardware im weiteren Sinne. In der Geschichte lassen sich eine Vielzahl von Konzepten, Plänen und Visionen (Software) finden, aus denen ganze Städte und einzelne Gebäude (Hardware) entstanden sind.

PeopleKeeper Image

PeopleKeeper: Von Maschinen und Menschen

Als Maschinen entstanden sind, brauchte es den Menschen, um diese zu Steuern. Heute ist die ganze Technologie derart immersiv, dass es in diesem Bereich eine Verschiebung gab: Maschinen werden zu einem zentralen Steuerelement und die Menschen lassen sich von deren

kaffeehaus.com

A Global Platform for Short Form Writing

To support the creation of cultural assets it is necessary to provide spaces of dialogue and exchange. This is equally important for science and arts. An example of this is the post world war one era known as Viennese Modernity

Warum gibt es keine Schweizer IT-Industrie?

Die Informatik in der Schweiz begann 1948 mit der Gründung des Instituts für angewandte Mathematik an der ETH Zürich. 1950 hatte die ETH als zweite Universität auf dem europäischen Festland einen funktionstüchtigen programmgesteuerten Digitalrechner, die Zuse Z4. 1956 wurde die

Einsichten Portrait

Neue Einsichten in der Ausbildung im Bereich Multimedia

Wie die Ausbildung im Bereich Multimedia Production an  der HTW Chur bei den Studierenden ankommt, zeigen beispielhaft vier nachfolgende Statements von ehemaligen Studierenden nach deren Eintritt ins Berufsleben. Florence Gross, Marc Fehr, Benjamin Hanimann und Simon Pedross berichten ueber ihre

15 Square Game

Computational Thinking ≠ Programming

Introduction Computational Thinking is argued to be tomorrow’s reality as a crucial skill for the 21st Century workforce. What process one follows to formulate and resolve a problem, and how the abilities of human thinking can be combined with the

Digital Single Market – Fiction or Vision?

ABSTRACT: The European Union heads for the establishment of a digital single market among its members. This article discusses whether Switzerland should ignore this or look for possibilities that will allow Swiss companies and Swiss citizens to participate in this

The Digital Art Weeks : A Decade of Accomplishment

INTRODUCTION Zurich and Basel Switzerland, Xian, Shanghai and Bejing China, Vancouver Island, Canada, Singapore, Singapore and Seoul, South Korea are the places in which the Digital Art Weeks Internaional have take place over the past nine years. Each of these

SI Logo

The Swiss Informatics Society SI is the association of Informatics professionals in Switzerland.

Die Schweizer Informatik Gesellschaft SI ist der Verband der Informatikfachleute in der Schweiz.

La Société Suisse d’Informatique SI est l’association des professionnels de l’informatique en Suisse.

La Società Svizzera di Informatica SI è l’associazione dei professionisti dell’informatica in Svizzera.