Nextconf and the end of the world as we know it

I have worked on the NEXT Conference in Hamburg for many years, putting together sessions and inviting speakers. Over the last 10 years, we had quite a few memorable editions - with topics like the rise of social media, the love of data and more. This year's edition was different somehow.

The program we pulled together for this edition felt unlike any other program I have worked on before - and that has to do with the time we are in, more than anything else. The world is changing. Here are 4 strands we tried to cover.

War in Europe. David van Weel , NATO's Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges, came out to speak about the 1 billion Euro the alliance is putting into new tech - to be used in our civilian world as well as the world of the military. Sir Richard Barrons, former Command of the UK forces shared his thoughts on the changing nature of war. And Jessica Berlin convinced us all of the immense importance of the moment we are in. This is where we are in history.

- AI & creativity. The billions of data points we have been putting into the digital sphere over the last three decades - texts, images, videos, interactions - can now be analyzed and used to make new creations. It started with GPT-3 for natural language and Dall-e for image creation. We were delighted to get Ph.D. student ?????????? ?????????????? on stage - he developed the AI model for Stable Diffusion, the open source speech-to-image engine that has been making waves in the last 30 days.

We also invited people that are playing around with this new tech - product developers, artists, entrepreneurs... Denis Shiryaev of neural.love, Michael Musandu of Lalaland, Sylwana Zybura & Tomas C. Toth of CrossLucid, Ankit Desai of Snafu Records, Rebecca Leger of the AI Song Contest, and player of prompts Fabian Harmik Stelzer . (The cutting edge of tech and creativity is filled by the nicest people, I have to say. Curious, playful, and aware of the immenseness of what is happening). What was clear above all is that this is a systems technology that will change many industries and professions.

- Web3. Nextconf happened a week after the Ethereum merge, (which reduced this Blockchain's energy consumption by ~99.95%). Even if you do not care for the tech, the fact that a global network of self-educated super specialists can cooperate to build a differently organized infrastructure for the web is something I am in awe of. Web3 luminaries like Jürgen Alker ,? Ana Andjelic and Trevor McFedries joined us to discuss the implications of a decentralized proof of ownership world. Trevor talked about DAOs - Decentralised Autonomous Organisations - as the new place where media brands will start and grow. A decentralized run Lil Miquela as the Micky Mouse of the future.

- Nature. Ok, one more - on what we are and what we are part of. Loretta TIOIELA ???? showed how TechBio (not BioTech) is changing the game through the convergence of life science and computing technologies. Software eats the world, software eats biology. ?????????? ???????????? talked of the ways of being- our brains aren't computers and other intelligent systems might be critical to our futures. Francesca Bria talked about reworking our urban systems if we are to survive the climate crisis.?And Kate Stone predicted a future where tech will be invisible again, part of the world around us in different ways.

There was a lot more, from opening keynote speaker David Mattin who thinks modernity is done - the new tension is between those who think we can transcend human nature - and those who think society will collapse. And Benedict Evans , who closed the event, suggested that we are in the last big digital shift: the last 50 years were about figuring out what a computer is, and the next 50 years will be figuring out what that does to all our lives.

Over the next few weeks, videos and more reporting will become available on the Nextconf website thanks to Adam Tinworth and the video crew. But that is not why I am writing this - I just wanted to mark this moment.

And above all, I want to thank Matthias "Mattes" Schrader , Martin Recke , and Ina Feistritzer - for their ongoing trust in my program choices and above all for creating the platform that Nextconf is. A place to think about what is happening.