This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This volume discusses the prospects and
evolution of informatics (or computer science) which has become the operating system of our
world and is today seen as the science of the information society. Its artifacts change the
world and its methods have an impact on how we think about and perceive the world. Classical
computer science is built on the notion of an abstract machine which can be instantiated by
software to any concrete problem-solving machine changing its behavior in response to external
and internal states allowing for self-reflective and intelligent behavior. However current
phenomena such as the Web cyber physical systems or the Internet of Things show us that we
might already have gone beyond this idea exemplifying a metamorphosis from a stand-alone
calculator to the global operating system of our society. Thus computer scientists will need to
reconsider the foundations of their discipline to realize the full potential of our field.
Taking often contradictory developments into consideration researchers will not be able to
tackle specific technological or methodological problems in the future without also a broader
reflection on their field. The papers in this book take a first step forward and reflect on
these issues from different perspectives. The broad spectrum of topics includes Informatics: a
discipline with a (short) history and a high impact Interdisciplinarity: how to do research
Ethics: what is our responsibility Diversity: why are there so few women in informatics
Combining informatics history and art: a special contribution. This book is intended for all
informatics researchers in academia as well as in industry. It is our responsibility - not
only as scientists but also as citizens - to make the public aware of the dichotomies and
dialectic relationships of computer science.
