Sponsors




DI Kurt Martinek
President
Datakom Austria GmbH

”Knowledge and the lack of it affect all economic decisions. Fast and accurate information has a bearing on each and every human being. Only those who assume an active role have a chance to hold their own in the global ‘Infowar.’ Congratulations to the Ars Electronica Festival for having chosen a theme of such timeliness and relevance to contemporary art.”

”For me, Infowar means first and foremost a race with time
– to obtain information faster than anyone else, and
– to be able to rapidly select information based on its importance.
Almost everyone in our society has equal access to the opportunities offered by information and communication technology. The decisive factor is coordination – that is, proper and, above all, fast processing of information. The faster one wins.”

”Without information, you lose touch with the leading edge and demise sets in; with too much information, you become confused and lose sight of the essentials. Therefore, the point is to manage information properly, and that means organization and discipline on the part of each individual.”

”The brave new electronic world entices us with undreamed-of commercial opportunities, but it also conceals inherent dangers. Therefore, issues like security in the Internet, the digital signature, and uniform rules applicable throughout the EU are the chief concerns of our time. Hewlett-Packard is intensively dealing with these issues in order to ensure our customers’ business success in the electronic world.”

”Information is of extraordinary importance in contemporary society, and this importance will continue to rise. Managing and evaluating the vast quantities of information with which we are confronted today has become impossible in a classical sense. Oracle has accepted this challenge, and has dedicated itself to the goal of providing businesses, institutions and individuals with ideal solutions to achieve the optimal use of information.”

”The saying ‘knowledge is power’ has never been more valid than it is today in a world in which information can be made universally available in fractions of a second. Success in the struggle for information has become the central element of corporate strategy. Businesses depend on fast access to information about new technologies, markets and customers, information about financial markets, competitors and potential hostile takeovers, as well as the optimal dissemination and processing of information within their own organizations. Siemens Nixdorf offers its international clientele state-of-the-art systems and solutions to meet these needs.”

"Technological development and the convergence of telecommunications and information technology and the media industry are constantly opening up new opportunities in the competition for market share in all business sectors. What was yesterday the utopian dream of access to multimedia communications independent of location and time-of-day is today’s economic reality and tomorrow’s indispensable means to accomplish business goals. This places even greater emphasis on the importance of professionally structured strategies to implement correspondingly efficient telecommunications systems which must also be protected against disruptions and unauthorized access.”

”Information plays a central role in the economy. Its quality and quick availability are decisive for success or failure in the competitive struggle. The very expression competitive struggle indicates that this is not simply a matter of a game. In this sense, the theme of this year’s festival ‘Infowar’ also has considerable economic relevance.”

”History has repeatedly shown that information can be manipulated and can even be deployed as a weapon. ‘Infowar’ is a term that graphically reveals these perils inherent in our ever-more-perfectly functioning Information Society. Therefore, dealing with information in an honest and cautious way in our daily business activities should be the uppermost concern of each and every one of us.”

”My hope is that the ‘Infowar’ theme leads to a constructive debate on the subject of information without resorting to populist scaremongering about new information possibilities. From an economic perspective, of course, employing information in the right way means competitive advantages for firms or national economies. I certainly would not categorize that as ‘war,‘ but rather as ‘competition.‘”

”Information serves two masters: war, through the operation of the machinery of warfare, and peace, through the simultaneous, global transmission of information on war’s dreadful consequences. This applies not only to armed conflicts, but to social and economic conflicts as well. The creation, processing and dissemination of information are not the sources of all evil; rather, these are fundamentally useful activities, and human beings continue to be responsible for deciding how to use them for the benefit or detriment of the entire society.

”As a modern industrial corporation, we know that there are ambivalent attitudes toward information as a strategic weapon. On one hand, in a kompetitive society, information offers those advantages that lead to success; on the other hand, in the international data network, it opens up new spheres of conflict which we are not even capable of imagining today. I hope that “Infowar,” this year’s Ars Electronica theme, will make a contribution to clarifying this ambivalence.”

”For an airline like Lufthansa that operates throughout the world, the use of state-of-the-art computer technologies on a daily basis means an indispensable tool to ensure quality. In the context of increasingly intense competition, fast, direct, and useful information and services provided by means of modern communications platforms like reservation systems or the Internet ensure a highly decisive advantage for our products in the global economy.”

”War comes about as a result of the denial of the truth; information is thus the most important instrument to ensure peace now and in the future. PTA’s mission is to enable the communication of information and to promote understanding among peace-loving people in Austria and throughout the world.”

”INFOWAR – information.macht.krieg – This statement could well become reality if we as citizens and our political representatives permit a new form of human inequality to emerge: the haves – with access to information via new technologies – and the have-nots. I regard this as our essential challenge during the upcoming decades. If it would again come to pass that a small group of men were able to wield the power of information over the majority, then we have learned nothing from history. INFOPEACE – information.democracy.peace?”