Newsletter

Week 12/2025

Danach im Büro kurz Staub gesaugt

Nikolaus Forgó

14 Mar 2025 — 6 min read

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NSFW (Nikolaus’ Song For the Week)

This week’s song, is - as announced last week (Weekly 11/2025) - from Sigrid Horn and Anna Mabo. “Instandhaltungsphase”.

YouTube (Audio only)

The song is from Paradies which is a truly nice concept album on the nuclear power plant Zwentendorf. It’s interesing how interested she is in this, being so young (born 1990). For me (and probably many of my generation), the 1978-referendum whether Zwentendorf should be opened or not was a (very) early event of politicization. I still remember Bruno Kreisky announcing that he would resign if the power plant would not be opened - and my parents and grandparents discussing this.

Haus der Geschichte has a short overview about the debate, Österreichische Mediathek a longer text about the coverage in ORF-radio programs and here’s a brochure on the referendum’s political impact. A few years later (early eighties, therefore, presumably shortly before Hainburg), my secondary school organised an excursion to Zwentendorf and I still remember me standing with 200 other kids in front of the control room that looked somehow abandoned.

Anna Mabo’s songs are accompanying me for quite some time now as well, “Am Werden” for example.

I listened to it a lot when bikeriding through northern Itally two years ago, in brutal summerheat. It was the song right after this haunting and unbelievably beatiful song from Felix Kramer in my playlist then.

Kramer is a universe on its own, I will come back to this.

Retrospect

International Data Transfer

Prof. Dr. Christopher Kuner delivered a brilliant, yet depressing speech, based on this blogpost:

One of the topics I was personally concerned about in particular is the complete lack of any action taken by the Commission to - at least - rediscuss the Commission implementing Decision of 10 July 2023 pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2016/679 on the adequate level of protection of personal data under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework due to the fact that Trump sacked all non-republican members of the oversight board so that literally no decision can be taken there. The Commission’s silence in this matter despite some (few) articles raising concern (such as this or this one) is just - exhausting after all these endless statements of Europe as a leader and standard setter and Brussels effect and so on. The audience agreed very much that the EU’s position in this ongoing digital sovereignty powergame is getting weaker and weaker with noone clearly speaking about it.

Uni management Launch Night

I attended an event called Launch Night 2025 organised by Uni Management Club on - surprise, surprise, AI - as Elias from the team was, somehow, involved in this. As the atmosphere there was rather, how should I call it politely, enthousiastic, I poured a little water into the wine by mentioning global warming, algorithm biases and mental health as challenges coming with all the AI hype.

My panel-cospeaker Anika Linder has a friendly event summary on LinkedIn.

Federal Competition Authority

Dr. Natalie Harsdorf, head of Austria’s federal competition authority, was in #arsboni. The talk was, in my view, a very nice mixture of personal insights and learnings and professional reflection on the role and challenges of such European (and Austrian) authorities in the light of digital markets and rising tensions with platform owners.

Privacy Ring

Privacy ring organised a very nice conference on AI and data protection at Hochschule Luzern.

Some of the Swiss clichés (rich, expensive, well organised, lots of cheese) are still in place - such as the ridiculously high roaming charges for EU-citizens (15.000 € for one Gigabyte!)

so that one is thrown back in the 90ies, searching for WiFi at the next Starbucks or train stations, downloading streetmaps and still getting lost.

I met Hans Erni there for the very first time

and enjoyed the very kind hospitality of Prof. Ursula Sury and privacy ring’s founders Judith Leschanz and Iris Phan. I appreciated again, how diligently the Swiss legal system monitors what is happening in the EU without directly copying everything. Their AI legislation is clearly less noisy and hectic than the EU-european. Their way of regulation reminds me somehow of Japanese approaches - which is also true for other things here. The moment I am writing this, I am sitting in a Swiss train and the experience is the closest to a Shinkansen ever seen in Europe (apart from the internet that doesn’t work here either).

Five years since first Lockdown

It’s almost five years now that Austria went into its first Covid-lockdown. It’s therefore also five years that these people started the first “Surviving Online Teaching” unit with me.

Es wurde kein Alt-Text für dieses Bild angegeben.

Quite a lot has happened since then, but I am still very grateful to Doruntina, Johanna, Paul, Felix, for all the spirit and dedication in these first days. I wrote some more on this on LinkedIn in 2022 and everything said there is still true. Reddit collects memories on March 13 2020 in Vienna.

Prospect

Annual Europe Digital Communications and Media Forum 2025

Brussels again, on Tuesday, march 18th. I will join a panel on “AI Act: Implementation & enforcement progress report”. This is part of the Annual Europe Digital Communications and Media Forum 2025 and another opportunity to see Ceyhun and Peggy again in our booklaunch series. Ceyhun kindly announced this on Linkedin. This is the provisional lineup.

Registration is closed and there is no stream (Chatham House Rule), unfortunately, but I will (likely) report here next week, at least.

Projects, Projects, Projects

Several of our projects will keep me rather busy next week. SmartFox hosts an online learning Club on Monday from 15.00-17.00.

Participation is free, registration required.

Procancer-I has a consortium meeting on Crete, eBRAINhealth a (remote) review meeting and Better4U a consortium meeting in Vienna.

Inaugural Lectures

Wednesday, March 19thth, at 15.00 CET, will bring three inaugural lectures in UNIVIE’s big hall.

Registration is required.

Look and Feel

Pilnacek

I don’t have the (time) resources to put all this into context and to make up my mind (see also Weekly 06/2025) on whether this is fiction, conspiracy theory, good marketing or true, but still want to share with you that “Die Dunkelkammer” has so many, many really strange details on Christian Pilnacek’s death that are hard to believe.

In particular, the interview with Karin Wurm, is worth being heard