About

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Welcome!

In this post, I want to clarify my motivation for setting up this blog and the topics I am interested in writing about.

Who is this?

Using reason the organism refered to as "Benedikt" (refered to as "I") found the concepts of utilitarism, consequentialism, transhumanism and monism as concepts which it assigns some value.

Why is this article written in English or German?

I was born and raised in Germany. German is my native language. I want to reach many people around the world. Therefore I am using the language most people can speak and to improve my English skills.

Why this blog?

Previously I have been using the blogging platform Medium. I chose Medium because it is easy to maintain but I disliked the recent developments of the site. As I wanted more control over the platform where I am hosting my content I am now using a custom solution. You know those good-old-days when the Internet was the „wild west“ where surfing on the internet meant exploring the web? I remember a time when the internet was not full of advertisement and websites by companies. People wrote their own websites and even own browser games. I still remember one specific site which is an archetype of this type. In school, I was tasked to write about China and do some internet research on that topic. I discovered a site of one guy who was an expert on China. He set up his own website and shared his expertise. It was fascinating. Nowadays you rarely find pages like that. Sometimes I see some decade old pares explaining some math. I want to bring this experience back to you. If you like my posts please link them on your blog or website. I am happy to answer feedback e-mails and answer your questions.

I still follow some blogs using RSS/Atom technology. RSS and Atom are protocols which can be used by some applications called feed reader, which check websites. You then get a feed like on facebook but you have the control of the sources and there is no company involved. Sounds great? You can try it out by yourself. Just use the URL of this site in any RSS reader. I am using NetNewsWire 4.

When you look at the state of society, you will see that social media has changed us a lot. I believe that lots of changes are not healthy changes. Although I grew up with technology and still believe that technology gives us useful improvements I stopped using Facebook, Instagram and avoid Whatsapp. People often cite that these are tools they need to stay connected with friends and family, but they miss two things. Every minute you spend on using these tools you could do something different. For example, instead of browsing Facebook for half an hour, you could call a friend - an experience which connects you deeper than Facebook could. This absence of some activities because you chose to pursue other activities is called opportunity costs. I want people to get updates on my life, and share my ideas. Maintaining a blog keeps me writing and finishing my projects and work on ideas. In order to further decrease my Facebook usage, I need people to get updates on my life and thoughts, which I would previously post on facebook, from a different source. Hence this blog.

Topics

I believe that AI has and will have an enourmous impact on live on earth. Digital transformation, start-ups, and computer technology in general are also my interests.

Technical things

This blog is hosted on uberspace. The software for the blog is grav, which is a flat-file content management system. I am using the hpstr theme. I customized it to make it GDPR (Germans know the GDPR as „DSGVO“) compliant by removing externally loaded resources.