About the Guest: Dirk Baecker is professor for cultural theory and management at the university Witten/Herdecke. He studied sociology in Cologne and Paris and obtained his Ph.D. and Habilitation at the University of Bielefeld under Niklas Luhmann. He has been visiting scholar at Stanford University, the London School of Economics and Johns Hopkins University and Professor at the Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen. Dirk Baecker has authored over 30 books on social and cultural theory. In 2018 he published the book “4.0 oder Die Lücke die der Rechner lässt“ (4.0 Or the Gap the Computer Leaves) and his new book “Intelligenz, künstlich und Komplex” (Intelligence, Artificial and Complex) is out now. For his episode of the Digitallaut Reading the Digital Podcast Dirk Baecker choose to introduce the chapter “Electronic Media” from the first volume of Niklas Luhmanns two volume book “Theory of Society” (Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft). Published in 1997 a year before his death Luhmann’s book offers a comprehensive theory of society. The chapter on electronic media was written under the impression of the emergence of the world wide web. Dirk Baecker shows the surprisingly lucid and apt observations Luhmann offers on the problems electronic media pose to society and its theory. The Theory of Society is published with Stanford University Press: https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=1234 The German edition appeared with Suhrkamp Verlag: https://www.suhrkamp.de/buecher/die_gesellschaft_der_gesellschaft-niklas_luhmann_28960.html Dirk Baeckers homepage is found here: https://www.uni-wh.de/kultur/lehrstuehle-und-professuren/kulturtheorie-und-management/ Dirk Baecker tweets under: @ImTunnel

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