Mercedes Bunz

Mercedes Bunz (born November 16, 1971) is Senior Lecturer in Digital Society at King's College London[1], and a German art historian, philosopher and journalist.

Mercedes Bunz
Bunz in 2019.
Born
Mercedes Bunz

(1971-11-16) November 16, 1971
Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
OccupationArt historian, philosopher, journalist
Known forFounder of De:Bug

Biography

Early career

Bunz studied philosophy and art history at the Freie Universität Berlin, after passing her final exams at the Celtis-Gymnasium secondary school in the German town of Schweinfurt in 1991. Together with Sascha Kösch, Riley Reinhold, and Benjamin Weiss she founded the Berlin music monthly De:Bug in 1997, becoming its co-editor and editor-in-chief from 1999 until 2001.[2]

She was awarded a scholarship by Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, enabling her to graduate at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar[3] writing about the history of the internet between the 1950s and the 1980s. Her dissertation thesis was published as a non-fiction book in 2008. This was also used by Melih Bilgil in his 2009 animation History of the Internet.[4]

Work

Mercedes Bunz's work has been both academic and journalistic. Having worked as a freelance journalist for a period, Bunz became a lecturer at Bielefeld University. In that same year she also began working for Berlin city magazine zitty[5] before running the on-line business of the German daily Tagesspiegel.[6] In 2009, she joined the London newspaper The Guardian as a media and technology reporter. She stayed with The Guardian until the beginning of 2011, most notably following events in on-line journalism and social networking websites.[7][8]

In 2010 Bunz was awarded the Fachjournalisten-Preis by the German association of specialist editors, or Deutscher Fachjournalisten-Verband.[9] In 2011 she held the Impakt Fellowship of the Centre for the Humanities from the Utrecht University. She has written for the German internet magazines Telepolis[10] and Carta.

Her book on the impact of algorithms on society was published by Suhrkamp in 2012.[11] An updated version of Mercedes Bunz: The Silent Revolution: How Digitalization Transforms Knowledge, Work, Journalism and Politics without Making Too Much Noise came out with Palgrave Macmillan in 2014.[12] The Spanish version "La Revolución Silenciosa" has been translated by Cruce and came out in 2017.[13]

She has been a member of the Interdisciplinary Network for the Critical Humanities Terra Critica[14] and is a co-founder of meson press,[15] an open access press that publishes research on digital cultures, technology and networked media, one outcome of the Hybrid Publishing Lab, Leuphana University, which she directed from 2012-2014.[16]

She became Senior Lecturer at the University of Westminster, London in 2014.[17] In 2018, her book written together with Graham Meikle on the internet of things came out with Polity, in which they explore questions regarding networked sensors and Artificial Intelligence as things become media.[18]

On 31 October 2017 Mercedes Bunz gave evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee for Artificial Intelligence and presented her Artificial Intelligence research[19] on the importance of publicly available datasets given the rise of machine learning that has been taken up in the report.[20] In September 2018 she became Senior Lecturer in the Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London.[21] In 2019 her co-written book on digital communication and machine communication was co-published (open access) by University of Minnesota Press and meson press.[22]

Writings
  • Mercedes Bunz: Vom Speicher zum Verteiler – Die Geschichte des Internet. Kulturverlag Kadmos, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86599-025-9.
  • Bunz, Mercedes. "Logik der Technik: Das Denken und die Digitalisierung". FAZ.NET (in German). ISSN 0174-4909. Retrieved 2018-11-29.
  • Mercedes Bunz: Die stille Revolution – Wie Algorithmen Wissen, Arbeit, Öffentlichkeit und Politik verändern, ohne dabei viel Lärm zu machen. Suhrkamp Verlag, edition unseld 43, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3518260432.
    • Mercedes Bunz: The Silent Revolution: How Digitalization Transforms Knowledge, Work, Journalism and Politics without Making Too Much Noise. Palgrave Macmillan, London 2014, ISBN 978-1-137-37350-2.
  • Mercedes Bunz: La revolución silenciosa. Cómo los algoritmos transforman el conocimiento, el trabajo, la opinión pública y la política sin hacer mucho ruido. Cruce Casa Editora, Buenos Aires 2017, ISBN 978-987-45637-7-4.
  • Mercedes Bunz and Graham Meikle: The Internet of Things. Polity Press, London 2018, ISBN 978-1509517466.
  • Paula Bialski, Finn Brunton and Mercedes Bunz: Communication. University of Minnesota Press & meson press, Minneapolis 2019, ISBN 978-1517906474.
gollark: Also, TVs are expensive and I don't like looking at further away things.
gollark: In any case, the existence of the "smart" features means it will probably randomly break in exciting ways.
gollark: Is it... not the other way round, since TVs are further away?
gollark: They're "smart" now and therefore evil.
gollark: I don't like TVs.

References
  1. "King's College London, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Digital Humanities: Staff". Retrieved 17 August 2019.
  2. Weichert, Stephan; Zabel, Christian (2010). "Mercedes Bunz – Das Tornado-Mädchen" (in German). Archived from the original on 2 June 2011. Retrieved 11 June 2011.
  3. "Profil von Mercedes Bunz" (in German). Carta. Archived from the original on 26 July 2011. Retrieved 11 June 2011.
  4. Bilgil, Melih (2009). "History of the Internet". Retrieved 2 January 2012.
  5. Reimann, Anna (30 August 2006). "Zitty'-Chefredakteurin Bunz Die Ausgepennte". Spiegel Online (in German). Retrieved 11 June 2011.
  6. Kösch, Sascha (15 February 2007). "Mercedes geht zu Tagesspiegel-Online. Von einem Chefredakteursposten zum nächsten" (in German). De:Bug. Retrieved 11 June 2011.
  7. "Mercedes Bunz Profile". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 June 2011.
  8. Voß, Jochen (7 August 2009). "Private Gründe Chefredakteurin Bunz verlässt". tagesspiegel.de (in German). DWDL.de. Retrieved 11 June 2011.
  9. "Deutscher Fachjournalisten-Kongress in Berlin: Dr. Mercedes Bunz erhält Fachjournalisten-Preis 2010". Deutscher Fachjournalisten-Verband. 4 November 2010. Archived from the original on 25 March 2012. Retrieved 11 June 2011.
  10. "Artikel von Mercedes Bunz". Telepolis. Archived from the original on 25 April 2011. Retrieved 11 June 2011.
  11. Bunz, Mercedes. "Digitale Wahrheiten". Suhrkamp Verlag. Retrieved 2 January 2012.
  12. "The Silent Revolution: How Digitalization Transforms Knowledge, Work, Journalism and Politics without Making Too Much Noise". Palgrave Macmillan. Retrieved 25 February 2016.
  13. "Mercedes Bunz: La Revolución Silenciosa". Cruce Casa. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  14. "Terra Critica". Retrieved 24 January 2018.
  15. "Meson Press". Retrieved 24 January 2018.
  16. "Hybrid Publishing". Retrieved 24 January 2018.
  17. "University of Westminster: Dr Mercedes Bunz presents AI research to the House of Lord's Select Committee". Retrieved 17 August 2019.
  18. "The Internet of Things". Polity Press. Retrieved 24 January 2018.
  19. "House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence: Corrected oral evidence Tuesday 31 October 2017". Retrieved 17 August 2019.
  20. "House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence: Report of Session 2017–19 'AI in the UK: ready, willing and able?'" (PDF). Retrieved 17 August 2019.
  21. "King's College London, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Digital Humanities: Staff". Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  22. "Communication". University of Minnesota Press & meson press. Retrieved 17 August 2019.
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