‘Bismarck 4.0’: A Cross-Disciplinary Thought Experiment on Cyber Pacifism

Abstract

This essay summarizes the claims on IT security that have been presented and discussed during the workshop “YuMi in Action! Ethics and Engineering as Transdisciplinary Robotics Performance”. As a sort of “Ems Telegram” in the era of digital transformation, this essay aims to be a cross-disciplinary thought provocation on IT security and what Bismarck, Prussian’s 19th-century militarism and industrial quality ‘Made in Germany’ may teach us in this respect, such as values of technical functionality like accuracy, precision, standardization, resilience, accessibility, simplicity, autarchy, and reliability. What we definitely not want to take over are ideologies which have contributed to the horrible 20th-century world wars, war crime, antisemitism or racism in any fashion. Joining the perspectives of a philosopher of technology, a computer scientist and a robotics researcher, our goal is to work towards a (maybe utopian) world where IT security as a problem disappears. To this end, we propose the concept of ‘Bismarck 4.0’ as an alternative draft in times of cyber warfare and social robots that overrun our firewalls like herds of next generation Trojan horses. Basic elements of this approach include strategic de-networkification as well as a clear emphasis on strengthening IT autarchy and resilience. The resulting position of newly gained strength will allow to increase network- and user-centric quality (including security) as well as, eventually, to go for a sustainable openness and neutrality by design. In this away, we arguably introduce some historical experimental evidence into a current debate that, ironically, refers to almost identical problem settings.

Publication
Envisioning Robots in Society – Power, Politics, and Public Space, Proceedings of the Robophilosophy 2018 / TRANSOR 2018