“Man needs to be the leader of technology”

October 14, 2016 – This year’s gala of acatech in the concert hall of Berlin stood under the slogan “Man and the machine – the best company?”. German President Joachim Gauck delivered the celebratory speech. He stressed that digitalisation leads to permanent changes in the working world: robots become our colleagues. Nevertheless, the human being has to stay the leader of technology. Robots should not be calling the shots. But who really wins in an upfront duel? Robot or Man? Editor Reto Schneider of NZZ Folio sought to investigate by conducting a self-experiment. He competed against the lifeless counterpart in six disciplines, such as chess, journalism and facial recognition. The duel ended in a tie of 3:3. The jury of the journalistic award PUNKT was so impressed by this refreshing kind of portrayal and by the enchanting narrative tone that they awarded the Swiss journalist with this year’s PUNKT in the category “magazine”. Together with Michael Spehr and Lukas Weber he was honoured at the festive setting of the acatech gala. The two editors of the FAZ were prized with a PUNKT-Award in the category “daily newspaper” for their piece about the entry of digitalisation into our private homes. The jury consisting of journalists and scientists particularly praised the profoundness of their work, which they believe to be a result of high-quality journalistic research. HeadlineAffairs supervised the award winners on site and supported acatech with the project “PUNKT – Award for technology journalism and technology photography” for the twelfth time this year. We are looking forward to our next trip to the German capital in a year’s time, when the best technology photographs and multimedia-formats will be awarded.
(Pictures: acatech/P. Himsel)