Climate crisis, demographic change, consequences of war - our society will be characterized even more by care work in the future. How can we think about care work and digitalization together, make them useful for society and at the same time not lose sight of the protection of sensitive data? These and other questions were the focus of this year's re:publica, the festival for the digital society. From May 27 to 29, 2024, scientists, politicians, activists and civil society came together to discuss the society of tomorrow under the motto "Who cares?". ECDF experts also addressed the interface between care work and digitalization in various sessions:

In his presentation "Solar geoengineering - Why we need to dim the sun before we enter the post-fossil age", Associate Scientist Thomas Ramge introduced solar geoengineering and made the case for dimming the sun: "It is high time to give the climate policy debate a new twist that explores geoengineering as an interim solution to buy time for the transition to a post-fossil age". He concluded with the sobering statement that it is difficult for humanity to overcome its "carbon addiction" and that short-term action is essential.

This year, special attention was also paid to various facets of the digital hospital, including more digital care. In their respective sessions, ECDF Professor Felix Biessmann and Julia Bringmann discussed the complex challenges of integrating AI into care with various colleagues (Watch Felix Biessmanns session //here). Both presentations emphasized that the implementation of AI in nursing practice must be done carefully to ensure that it does not lead to more workload, but to less. Nursing practice, nursing research and AI development must be considered together. "Often, when we think about digitalization and AI, it's about the threat of unemployment. The danger does not lie in the threat of unemployment, but in digitalization and AI that bypasses employees and thus unnecessarily burns money or actually leads to more work instead of less work. And this is what quantitative studies show and what we have also encountered in some pioneering clinics of digitalization," says Bringmann, explaining her research on the topic. Rahel Gruber's presentation "Sharing Health Data - Healthy Insights into the Digital" pickedup on this topic and focused on the secure and public welfare-oriented use of health data. She showed how new digital infrastructures are being set up to collect and share health data and that the secure handling of health data is crucial for the future of the healthcare system.

Mareike Lisker, Claire Zschische and Edna Hopp addressed the fundamental problems faced by women in computer science in their presentation "From the life of a computer scientist: Why "more women" won't solve the problem". In addition to subtle discouragements and existing gender-specific socialization, the three computer scientists also formulated suggestions for improvement, including equal pay, flexible working hours and co-leadership.

The panel discussion on the integration of quantum principles into the artistic process, moderated by ECDF speaker Gesche Joost, also showed how many areas the digital society connects. Panelists Joost shed light on how these technologies can enable new creative processes and revolutionize artistic practice. "Generative images of quantum computing are currently still very stereotypical, the visual representation is very limited," said Joost on the panel. The combination of quantum physics and art could change this in the future.