Science, Reason, Responsibility
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TUM.University Press TUM Forum Sustainability Science, Reason & Responsibility Forward Thinking for the Post-Corona Era TUM Senior Excellence Faculty TUM Institute for Advanced Study 2 3 TUM.University Press TUM Forum Sustainability Science, Reason & Responsibility Forward Thinking for the Post-Corona Era Published by Michael Molls Jörg Eberspächer Hermann Auernhammer Georg Färber Birgit Herbst-Gaebel Udo Lindemann Klaus Mainzer Winfried Petry Ralf Reichwald Jrgen Scheurle J. Leo van Hemmen TUM Senior Excellence Faculty Peter Wilderer TUM Institute for Advanced Study Preface 4 5 are “only” nature. Moving into the future, we will need experts As TUM’s President, I am filled with pride committed to human-centered, responsible and socially viable and faith in the future knowing we have such technological innovations, products and services across all far-sighted, competent, critical and depend- technology sectors: energy & climate · resources & environ- ment · mobility & infrastructure · health & food · information & able colleagues, friends and supporters in data security. “Trusted Human-Centered Engineering” requires the ranks of our university community. Allow not only natural science, technology and medicine but, more me to express my deepest gratitude for your than ever, their thorough integration with sociology, political commitment and your intellectual inspiration, science, philosophy and ethics as the key to a new European embodied in this publication. It bears witness culture of innovation, in which entrepreneurial action, social and ethical responsibility and environmentally conscious technolog- to the added value of our intergenerational ical innovation go hand in hand. university community in times of crisis Professor Dr. Thomas F. Hofmann and illustrates new perspectives for posterity, President of the Technical University of Munich The accelerated pace of global transformation in the face of the for whose safe, healthy and sustainable pandemic and our now proven capacity for remote work using development we are responsible today – digital networks pose important questions about the working world of the future. How will global labor markets change? What demands will the education of the future have to meet to stay apace with such rapid transformation that the competencies all of us, together. and technological expertise acquired at universities today will already be obsolete tomorrow? What are the consequences of anticipated technological leaps for continuing professional education, if careers are to last longer in the future? More than ever before, universities are called upon to question traditional Never Waste a Crisis teaching methods, to reimagine effectual teaching formats and concepts for remote and in-person instruction, and to impart to students not only in-depth, specialist knowledge but to teach The idea behind these variously rendered words of the Barack promises groundbreaking innovations, such as those in indus- them to think interdisciplinarily, to become competent and Obama presidency is something we should be taking to heart trial biotechnology, where efficient and sustainable processes confident in international circles, to act responsibly and with a right now. As the COVID-19 pandemic confronts the global valorize atmospheric carbon dioxide and bio-residuals, con- sense of values, and to never stop learning, even into old age. community with challenges of historic proportion across bor- verting them into specialized chemicals, active ingredients, ders real and imagined, the null point is being recalibrated and polymers and food ingredients to make these resources the The post-COVID-19 era gives us the chance to (re)integrate the future composed anew. While this universal caesura has drive belt of a circular bioeconomy. The healing potential of “the old” with all their experiences and networks more exposed the weaknesses of our world, it has also revealed personalized biomedicine, too, just as the biological and bio- intensely into our accelerating society. Longer life expectancy potential for the transformative development of society and compatible structural scaffolds for artificial blood vessels and presents entirely unique opportunities in old age – for individ- unprecedented opportunities to fortify Germany as a leading organs, or the functional organoids that will make animal uals and for society as a whole. The society of the future calls site of science and industry. To recognize and act on these experimentation a thing of the past – all need to bear the label for a new kind of solidarity across the generations. On a small opportunities will require our utmost—the unyielding courage “Made in Germany”. We must build viable bridges to the scale, the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has shown of politics to pursue change, the transformative capacity and future with technologies, like “miniaturization” in electronics how this works. Since 2006, we have been awarding the hon- creative power of higher education, the real-world practice and that enables higher integration density in industrial assemblies, orary title “TUM Emeriti of Excellence” to outstanding, ded- agility of industry, and a society whose shared sense of respon- or nanotechnologies that maximize performance, and tap the icated retired scientists and scholars and involving them as sibility provides the foundation for a concept of innovation in potential of emerging quantum technologies. To play a forma- competent, independent advisors on strategically important community that is not limited by professional, institutional or tive role in shaping economic added value in a globalized world, university matters. TUM thus recognizes their years of expe- intellectual boundaries. Germany must, at last, pave an entrepreneurial pathway for its rience in science and innovation and their solid international universities to promote the efficient development of pioneering networks in business, politics and society as an invaluable Germany can no longer afford to lag behind paradigm-shifting ideas from its laboratories and workshops into transformative resource as part of a vital culture of diversity for the benefit of innovations in the global race for technologies of the future. technologies and globally scalable business models. a cross-generational university community, without compro- Indeed, we are called upon now to exert our greatest efforts mising opportunities for younger scientists. Under the lead- to finally address the shortfalls in “digitalization” laid bare by Value creation in a post-COVID-19 economy will be increas- ership of their spokesperson Professor Dr. Michael Molls, our COVID-19. We must invest in the potential of secure digital ingly oriented on a social paradigm shift. The pandemic has TUM Emeriti of Excellence, ever young in spirit, have pooled connectivity with encrypted network traffic and in the promise forced the planet to stop and take a breath. It has intensified their expertise to create this unique brochure encompassing of artificial intelligence as key factors in the development of our society’s increasing skepticism of blind trust in technology. a multitude of concise, thought-provoking ideas for the time economy and health care system in the post-COVID era. Pre- Instead, there is a growing sensibility for the common good, after the historic COVID-19 crisis. These perspectives from cisely there, where digital progress and the principles of living a sense of shared responsibility for the world and an emerging the most diverse disciplines, backgrounds and points of view nature converge, we will see epochal transformation in the neo-ecological consciousness regarding our treatment of the bring together the entire spectrum of competence at TUM – economic and health sectors. Technological “biologization” environment – we have finally gotten the message that we, too, “universitas” in the truest sense of the word. Preface 6 7 Dr. Wolfgang Schäuble President of the German Bundestag of its institutions. The self-healing powers of the market alone For more than a decade cannot fix things. Reconstruction must go hand-in-hand with The European Response reform. now, we have witnessed In 2014, sociologist Ulrich Beck declared, “Europe must regain to the Post-Corona Era crisis after crisis: the power to dream,” and there is no time like the present. Yet, to seize this opportunity will require compromise. Europe can “It All Comes Down to Politics” the upheavals of global financial markets, the threat of Euro- only set upon its new course and gather pace again with united zone collapse, fierce disputes over refugees and migration, the strengths – and that will require decisiveness and leadership. incipient turn in many places toward populism and nationalism. Europe is learning first-hand that democracy cannot be taken for granted, that cohesion can fade – with the Brexit refer- Everything leads to politics. endum representing a lamentable low point. Science provides valuable The disintegrative tendencies of the European project have been overshadowed by the Corona pandemic. To ignore them, orientation aids: however, would be a mistake. For we need Europe. No one nation-state alone can provide the answers to the most urgent wellfounded analyses, questions of our time. The task at hand is to correct the course of a form of globalisation that has lost all sense of proportion. concrete advice, innovative Ours is a difficult task, but not an impossible one. We must thought-provoking combine economic recovery with social