Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-F046476-0002, München, CSU-Parteitag, Steinbuch

Karl W. Steinbuch (June 15, 1917 in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt – June 4, 2005 in

Ettlingen Ettlingen (; South Franconian: ''Eddlinge'') is a town in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, about south of the city of Karlsruhe and approximately from the border with Lauterbourg, in France's Bas-Rhin department. Ettlingen is the second largest tow ...

) was a German

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

cyberneticist A cyberneticist or a cybernetician is a person who practices cybernetics. Heinz von Foerster once told Stuart Umpleby that Norbert Wiener preferred the term "cybernetician" rather than "cyberneticist", perhaps because Wiener was a mathematician ...

, and

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

. He was an early and influential researcher of German computer science, and was the developer of the

Lernmatrix Lernmatrix, an associative-memory-like architecture of an artificial neural network Artificial neural networks (ANNs), usually simply called neural networks (NNs) or neural nets, are computing systems inspired by the biological neural networ ...

, an early implementation of

artificial neural network Artificial neural networks (ANNs), usually simply called neural networks (NNs) or neural nets, are computing systems inspired by the biological neural networks that constitute animal brains. An ANN is based on a collection of connected unit ...

s. Steinbuch also wrote about the societal implications of modern media.

Biography

Steinbuch studied at the

University of Stuttgart The University of Stuttgart (german: Universität Stuttgart) is a leading research university located in Stuttgart, Germany. It was founded in 1829 and is organized into 10 faculties. It is one of the oldest technical universities in Germany wit ...

and in 1944 he received his PhD in physics. In 1948 he joined Standard Elektrik Lorenz (SEL, part of the ITT group) in

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

, as a computer design engineer and later as a director of

research and development Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in Europe as research and technological development (RTD), is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products, and improving existi ...

, where he filed more than 70

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

s. There Steinbuch completed the first European fully transistorized computer, the ER 56 marketed by SEL. In 1958 he became professor and director of the institute of technology for information processing
ITIV
of the

University of Karlsruhe The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; german: Karlsruher Institut für Technologie) is a public research university in Karlsruhe, Germany. The institute is a national research center of the Helmholtz Association. KIT was created in 2009 w ...

, where he retired in 1980. In 1967 he began publishing books, in which he tried to influence German education policy. Together with books from colleagues like

Jean Ziegler Jean Ziegler (; born Hans Ziegler, 19 April 1934) is a Swiss former professor of sociology at the University of Geneva and the Sorbonne, Paris, and former vice-president of the Advisory Committee to the United Nations Human Rights Council. He ...

from Switzerland, Eric J. Hobsbawm from UK, and

John Naisbitt John Naisbitt (January 15, 1929 – April 8, 2021) was an American author and public speaker in the area of futures studies. His first book '' Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives'' was published in 1982. It was the result of alm ...

his books predicted what he regarded as the coming education disaster of the emerging civic lobby society. In 1957, together with

Helmut Gröttrup Helmut Gröttrup (12 February 1916 – 4 July 1981) was a German engineer, rocket scientist and inventor of the smart card. During World War II, he worked in the German V-2 rocket program under Wernher von Braun. From 1946 to 1950 he headed a grou ...

, Steinbuch coined the term ''Informatik'', the German word for computer science, which gave ''

informatics Informatics is the study of computational systems, especially those for data storage and retrieval. According to ACM ''Europe and'' ''Informatics Europe'', informatics is synonymous with computer science and computing as a profession, in which ...

'', and the term kybernetische Anthropologie ().

Awards and recognition

*Wilhelm-Boelsche award - medal in Gold *German non-fiction book award *Gold medal award of the XXI. International Congresses on Aerospace Medicine *Konrad Adenauer award of science *Jakob Fugger award medal *Medal of merit of the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg *member,

German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (german: Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina – Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften), short Leopoldina, is the national academy of Germany, and is located in Halle (Saale). Founded ...

*member, International Academy of Science, Munich. *grants from a state government grants program, named "Karl-Steinbuch-Stipendium" * at the

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; german: Karlsruher Institut für Technologie) is a public research university in Karlsruhe, Germany. The institute is a national research center of the Helmholtz Association. KIT was created in 2009 w ...

named after him

Books

Steinbuch wrote several books and articles, including: * 1957 ''Informatik: Automatische Informationsverarbeitung'' ("Informatics: automatic information processing"). * 1963 ''Learning matrices and their applications'' (together with U. A. W. Piske) * 1965 ''A critical comparison of two kinds of adaptive classification networks'' (together with Bernard Widrow) * 1966 (1969): ''Die informierte Gesellschaft. Geschichte und Zukunft der Nachrichtentechnik'' (The informed society. History and Future of telecommunications) * 1989: ''Die desinformierte Gesellschaft'' (The disinformed society) * 1968: ''Falsch programmiert. Über das Versagen unserer Gesellschaft in der Gegenwart und vor der Zukunft und was eigentlich geschehen müßte. (as a bestseller listet in:

Der Spiegel ''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...

)'' (Programmed falsely. About our society's failure in the present and with respect to the future and what should be done.) * 1969: ''Programm 2000. (as a bestseller listet in:

)'' * 1971: ''Automat und Mensch. Auf dem Weg zu einer kybernetischen Anthropologie'' (Machine and Man. On the way to a cybernetic anthropology; 4th revised edition) * 1971: ''Mensch Technik Zukunft. Probleme von Morgen (German non-fiction book award)'' (Man Technology Future. Problems of Tomorrow) * 1973: ''Kurskorrektur'' (Correcting the Course) * 1978: ''Maßlos informiert. Die Enteignung des Denkens'' (Excessively informed. The Deprivation of Thinking) * 1984: ''Unsere manipulierte Demokratie. Müssen wir mit der linken Lüge leben?'' (Our Thought-controlled Democracy. Do we have to live with the leftist lie?)

References

External links

* * http://xputers.informatik.uni-kl.de/papers/publications/karl-steinbuch.html * http://helios.informatik.uni-kl.de/euology.pdf * https://web.archive.org/web/20120618185338/http://www.karl-steinbuch-stipendium.de/karlsteinbuch.html {{DEFAULTSORT:Steinbuch, Karl 1917 births 2005 deaths Cyberneticists German computer scientists German electrical engineers 20th-century German inventors Machine learning researchers Engineers from Stuttgart Recipients of the Order of Merit of Baden-Württemberg