Dr. Ulrich Eberl (*1962 in Regensburg) has been one of the most renowned science and technology authors in Germany for more than 30 years. He received his doctorate in 1992 at the Technical University of Munich in a crossover area between physics, biology, chemistry and genetic engineering: research into the first trillionths of a second of photosynthesis.

Since 1988, he has written hundreds of articles as a freelance author for a wide variety of newspapers and magazines – from the Süddeutsche Zeitung to Bild der Wissenschaft – on topics ranging from nanotechnology, evolution and synthetic biology to space research and the excavations in Troy (including the cover story in GEO).

 

He worked for Daimler from 1992 to 1995, after which he headed worldwide communications on research, technology and innovations at Siemens until 2015.

Furthermore, for 15 years, he was also a publisher and editor-in-chief of Pictures of the Future, a magazine for futurology that has won several international awards.

In 2015, he set up his own editorial office for business, science and technology communications. His focus is on future trends through 2050: environment and energy, health and mobility, robotics and artificial intelligence. During his lectures he is often accompanied by his house robot Nao Bluestar.

Ulrich Eberl wrote several books, among others:

• a book on our future in 2050, which was published in German (Zukunft 2050) and English (Life in 2050), altogether in five editions with more than 25,000 copies.It offers a broad and vivid overview of technology trends up to the year 2050.
• the non-fiction book Smarte Maschinen. It describes the technical developments and the economic and social effects of artificial intelligence and robotics. Ulrich Eberl has done extensive research for this book in leading laboratories in the USA, Europe and Asia. Smart Machines has so far reached more than 18,000 readers and listeners in hardcover, Kindle, audiobooks and others. It has also been translated into Turkish, and a Chinese edition is in preparation.
• the paperback 33 Questions – 33 Answers: Artificial Intelligence,which provides clear, compact and precise answers to all the questions which people wanted to know from Ulrich Eberl during his approximately 300 lectures on the subject of artificial intelligence. It will be published in May 2020.

What drives you, Uli?

As an elementary school kid, I was glued to the TV in July 1969 when Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon – “one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” It was the age of technology optimism: If humans can enter foreign celestial bodies, what else will be possible in the future?

I was – and still am – primarily curious: How does the world of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, but also the behavior of people in the economy and society work? How do inventions lead to innovations that change the world? What can we already know about the future today, what ultimately determines how the course is set? Are there – as the Russian scientist Nikolai Kondratieff described it – cycles that describe major upheavals and determine the global economy for 40 to 60 years at a time? And when we are today in the cycle of the information and communication age, what comes after that, i.e. in the years from about 2040 onwards? Will this be (as I am totally convinced) the era of holistic health, with the two pillars of “human health” and “environmental health”?

Such questions drive me crazy and they are what I describe and investigate in my books. Ultimately, my aim is to find out what the world will look like in which my children and their children will live. When they get to be as old as I am now, the 2050s are just about to end…

Learn more about future trends?

Visit Uli Eberl’s website or follow him on LinkedIn.