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Dear Sir or Madam,

Which social structures will be challenged
by the growing digitalization of all fields of life? How does the conception
of man change and which skills will be needed in the future, in an increasingly
networked world? Will it be possible to maintain the open, decentralized
character of the Internet or will a top-down controlled Internet take its
place? What are the ideas and innovations behind the planned new address
endings, like .hamburg, .hiv or .sap, who will benefit from them, and what
is awaiting the users in the extended name space of the World Wide Web?

The first day of the ninth specialist
conference Domain pulse, which is held in Hamburg this year, provided interesting
statements, forecasts and answers to these and other highly topical issues.
More than 350 congress visitors listened to the lectures and international-expert
panel discussions that have made the largest annual congress dealing with
current topics and trends in the field of Internet and domains in the German-speaking
territory an established meeting of the industry. The two-day expert congress
“Domain pulse” is staged annually in turns by the registries administering
the country code Top Level domains of Austria (nic.at), of Switzerland
and Liechtenstein (SWITCH), and by DENIC, the registry of the German country
code TLD .de, who is hosting this year's event.

The Internet as the operating system
of society
On 13 February 2012, the conference
started with Prof. Dr. Gunter Dueck's philosophical discourse about "the
Internet as the operating system of society". A mathematician and
Internet pioneer, the keynote speaker and former Chief Technology Officer
of IBM Deutschland known as "Wild Duck" or "wilddueck"
on the Internet, drew an astute picture of the challenges of tomorrow's
working world. Experience, knowledge and competence will increasingly be
provided by automated systems. What remain are imagination, flexibility,
curiosity – and our professional intelligence we use to control continually
changing processes and to solve problems. His conclusion: Our professional
intelligence, for which mere expert knowledge is less important but which
is rather based on soft skills, the ability to act, creativeness, and the
creation of meaning, will be decisive for our future. Dueck said: "Either
we will get professional or we will become part of a semiautomatic workflow
- in a low-paid job. Machines have taken over the part of the good old
IQ."

Quo vadis, Internet?
What the map of the Internet will look
like in the future and which determinants will be decisive was illuminated
by Markus Kummer, former Executive Coordinator of the Secretariat supporting
the United Nation’s Internet Governance Forum, now Vice President Public
Policy of ISOC, on the basis of potential development scenarios. Against
the background of growing protest against multi-state initiatives like
ACTA (Anti-Counterfeitung Trade Agreement) he warned: “Negotiating political
and economic interests of lobbyists behind closed doors, not involving
the Internet community is a blueprint for censorship. Sustainable solutions
in the meaning of good practices can only be developed when the proven
collaborative bottom-up model of the Internet is maintained.”

A plead for free access
Which are the reasons that drove the
unprecedented concentration of large Internet companies into market-dominating
online oligopolies and what we can still do to secure monopoly-free access
to the global digital knowledge was discussed by Dr. Wolfgang Sander-Beuermann,
founder of the German Association for the Promotion of Search Engine Technology
and Free Access to Knowledge, SuMa-eV, and developer of the German meta
search machine metager.de giving some concrete incentives for further consideration:
“Google, Facebook and Co. want to play Internet monopoly until all the
others have gone bankrupt. But already today, there are a lot of tricks
to avoid this … .”

New places of action on the Internet:
hype or hope?
Eagerly awaited finally was the panel
discussion about the new Top Level Domains (TLD), which gave a cross-section
of both the sense of new beginning and the concerns in view of the extended
Internet number space. The background: Between 12 January and 12 April
2012 the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) accepts
applications for the new generic Internet address endings of cities, regions,
commercial and non-profit initiatives. In the midst of the hot application
phase the panel granted the visitors to the congress most interesting insights
in the strategies and activities of various applicants and operators, but
also allowed critics to utter their concerns. The tenor: The success of
a new TLD should not only be measured by the registration numbers. Also
niche TLDs with identity-creating effect that offer the users innovative
services combined with high intangible value can well be profitable.

Day 2
The Domain pulse 2012 will continue
tomorrow, Tuesday, 14 February 2012. On the agenda are outlooks and insights
into topics like Internet governance and access control, retained data
and political approaches to secure copy rights against the background of
topical agreements and legislative initiatives in Europe and in the USA
(ACTA, SOPA, PIPA) and the latest protests they have caused in the web
and on the street. Experts of the Enquete Commission "Internet and
Digital Society" of the German Bundestag and representatives from
the Board of Directors of the Internet Association for Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN) and Internet activists from the political scene will discuss
this topic.

Domain pulse live on the Internet
You will find the complete program of
the specialist congress and all information about the protagonists involved
on DENIC's event website www.domainpulse.de.
Here, you can also follow the congress in real time via a livestream. About
one week after the event, we will also make available live recordings as
a retrospective of the event.


If you have any questions, please contact:
DENIC eG 
Public Relations
Kaiserstraße 75 – 77
D-60329 Frankfurt am Main

GERMANY

E-mail: presse AT denic.de
Fon: +49 69 27235-274 
Fax: +49 69 27235-235
http://www.denic.de

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DENIC eG (Sitz: Frankfurt am Main)
Vorstand: Sabine Dolderer, Helga Krüger, Carsten Schiefner, Dr. Jörg Schweiger
Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: Elmar Knipp
Eingetragen unter Nr. 770 im Genossenschaftsregister, Amtsgericht Frankfurt
am Main

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