Dr. Andreas Wagener, Professor für Digitales Marketing an der Hochschule Hof, prognostiziert, dass zukünftig direkte Transaktionen zwischen "Dingen" möglich werden. Außerdem hält er völlig neue Anwendungen, z.B. im Micropayment für denkbar.

Die digitalen Schlüsseltechnologien „Künstliche Intelligenz“ (KI) und „Blockchain“ sind derzeit in aller Munde. Spannend wird es aber, wenn diese beiden Felder zusammenwachsen. Daraus ergeben sich insbesondere für das Internet der Dinge interessante Perspektiven. Sind wir auf dem Weg zu einer weiteren industriellen Revolution – der Industrie 5.0?

Specialized systems aiming at offering hypertext functionality in users' computing have been discussed since the early days of hypertext. However, with the claim to also support other structure domains than node-link structures, hypertext systems had to overcome some challenges. Researchers came up with component-based approaches and low level structure services.
Due to the raising omnipresence of the Web, research on traditional hypertext systems has been fading out over the past decade. This paper focuses again on hypertext infrastructures and goes beyond ongoing Web discussions. Based on lessons learned from well thought through previous work, we present a novel design for multi-structure supporting, general purpose hypertext systems that can be used in a series of application domains. The system provides intelligence analysis which is needed for sophisticated user support. We argue that this lets us use the hypertext system also as a visual analytics tool. Furthermore, for demonstration purposes we describe the use of the system in combination with a Web-based software engineering platform, which is part of the ongoing project ODIN.

Spatial Hypertext represents associations between chunks of information by spatial or visual attributes (such as proximity, color, shape etc.). This allows expressing information structures implicitly and in an intuitive way. However, automatic recognition of such informal, implicitly encoded structures by a machine (a so-called spatial parser) is still a challenge. One reason is, that conventional (non-adaptive) parsers are conceptually restricted by their underlying source of information (i. e., the spatial hypertext). Due to this limitation there are several types of structures that cannot be recognized properly. This inevitably limits both quality of parser output and parser performance. We claim that considering temporal aspects in addition to spatial and visual properties in spatial parser design will lead to significant increase in parsing accuracy, detection of richer structures and thus higher parser performance.

For the purpose of providing evidence, parsers for recognizing spatial, visual and temporal object relations have been implemented and tested in a series of user surveys. It turned out, that in none of the test cases pure spatial or visual parser could outperform the spatio-temporal parser. Instead, the spatiotemporal parser was able to compensate limitations of conventional parsers. Furthermore, differences in parsing accuracy were successfully tested for statistical significance. The results indicate a non-trivial effect that is recognizable by humans. We have shown that the addition of a temporal parser shifts machine detected structures significantly closer to what knowledge workers intend to express.

Spatial hypertext represents associations between chunks of information by spatial or visual attributes (such as proximity, color, shape, etc.). This supports expressing information structures implicitly and in an intuitive way. However, automatic recognition of such informal, implicitly encoded structures by a machine (a so-called spatial parser) is still a challenge. Conventional parsers are conceptually restricted by their underlying source of information. Due to this limitation there are various possible structures that cannot be recognized properly, as the machine has no means to detect them. This inevitably limits both the quality of parser output and hence parser performance. In this paper we show that considering temporal aspects in spatial parser design will lead to significant increase in parsing accuracy, detection of richer structures and thus higher parser performance. We call machines that consider such spatial and temporal information spatio-temporal parsers.

For the purpose of providing evidence, parsers for recognizing spatial, visual, and temporal object relations have been implemented and tested in a series of user surveys. One aim was to find out how "close" the machine interpretetation of structures get to human interpretation. It turned out that in none of the test cases pure spatial or visual parser could outperform the spatio-temporal parser. Instead, the spatio-temporal parser was able to compensate limitations of conventional parsers. Furthermore, we have statistically tested parsing accuracy. The results indicate a non-trivial effect that is recognizable by humans. This shows that spatio-temporal parsers produce output that is significantly closer to what knowledge workers intend to express compared to traditional spatial parsers.

Sind digitale Währungen wie Bitcoin nur eine „digitale Phase“ oder werden sie in der Zukunft einen beachtenswerten Teil der globalen Finanztransaktionen bestimmen? Welche Anwendungsszenarien der Technologien sind denkbar? Und wie können die bestehenden Hürden überwunden werden um Peer-to-Peer-Systeme im Finanzbereich nachhaltig zu etablieren? Eine aktuelle Studie versucht diese Fragen zu beantworten.

In der Betriebswirtschaft, auch im Bereich des Marketings oder der Medienwirtschaft, scheint die betriebliche Kommunikationspolitik im Marketing-Mix unter den „4 P“ oft immer noch eine Randstellung einzunehmen. Zwar ist der „Vierklang“ des Marketing-Mix in den meisten Standardwerken inzwischen Konsens. In vielen Lehrbüchern wird aber etwa der Bereich der Mediaplanung wie auch der kommunikationspolitische Aspekt der Zielgruppendefinition zu Gunsten einer eher Produkt- und Leistungsportfolio bezogenen Sichtweise – wie noch zu zeigen sein wird – oft vernachlässigt. Auf noch dünnerem Eis bewegt man sich, wenn man diese Themenfelder auf die digitale Welt bezieht. Auch heute noch, fast 25 Jahre nach der ersten breit zugänglichen Publikation im „World Wide Web“, wird Digitale Kommunikation in den meisten klassischen Lehr- und Grundlagenwerken nur als Sparten- oder Randthema behandelt und eher vermeintlich spezifischen Publikationen zum „Online Marketing“ überlassen. Das erscheint verwunderlich, wenn man das alltägliche Phänomen der Digitalisierung und das dadurch ermöglichte Aufkommen von Sozialen Netzwerken oder die flächendeckenden Verbreitung von Smartphones sowie ihre Auswirkung auf den Stellenwert von Informationskonsum und Kommunikation betrachtet.