Symposium I
Symposium II
Exhibition / 52-Hour-Lab
Thomas Macho
“faire l'âme monstrueuse”
Produktionsstrategien der Angst
in der künstlerischen Avantgarde

Jean-Baptiste Joly
The Artist’s Fear of Her-/Himself

Nikolaus A. Adams
Space Transportation and Dual Use
of Aerospace Technology

Dennis Farber
Fear is Just Another Word
for Someone Left to Please

Christofer Hierold
Carbon Nanotube Sensors

Petros Koumoutsakos
Computing: An Indispensable
Friend or Foe?

Maren Rieger
Dealing with Fear—
Keep Your Distance


Photo Gallery

Petros Koumoutsakos
Computing: An Indispensable Friend or Foe?


Computing has become ubiquitous in our every day life and work. Computers consume electricity and contribute to environmental pollution not only when they are used for scientific investigations or data storage in banks but also when we use our favorite word processing program, upload our photos, or search for any kind of information at the internet. Their impact on the environment currently competes with the impact of airline traffic and this trend is alarming as we will soon need power plants solely for cooling and powering computers.

So how can we balance the advantages offered by computers with their adverse environmental and energetic impact? Do we really need to make that search? Or is that computation really meaningful? What about wrong computations? And how about that last photo we edited and uploaded? Email surely does not need paper but it sure needs energy to fly.

In this presentation, the focus lies mostly on the scientific advances offered by computers and considers at the same time their ever-increasing impact on our society and, in particular, to our environment.

 



[download pdf, 3,8 mb]