Peter Bihr

S06E20 of Connection Problem: Hindsight is 2020

January 23, 2020

Virginia Frances Sterrett - Tanglewood Tales Hi there, This week’s a little delayed and on the short side of things. First the kid got some infection, then I...

S06E19 of Connection Problem: Cookies and Climate

January 15, 2020

Black and white rabbits by Kōno Bairei (1844-1895). × "It’s clear that something strange is happening." — Geophysicist Phil Livermore on Earth's magnetic...

S06E18 of Connection Problem: 10% into the 21st century

January 9, 2020

Pink Flamingo from Birds of America (1827) by John James Audubon (1785 - 1851 ), etched by Robert Havell (1793 - 1878) As we say in German: Frohes Neues...

S06E17 of Connection Problem: Farewell, 20-teens

December 19, 2019

"The end is coming, but in this moment, it has not. In this moment, there is so much time.” — Joshua Rivera ​A metaphorical god jul everyone, This is the...

S06E16 of Connection Problem: Blue Dots and New Silk Roads

December 10, 2019

Pink sky illustration from Bijutsu Sekai (1893-1896) by Watanabe Seitei × Hello from the EuroCity 177 Berlin-Praha. I’m headed to Rotterdam, with a brief...

S06E15 of Connection Problem: Just Enough City

December 5, 2019

Hello & a beautiful, productive Thursday. I’ll move a little off the usual formula this week and include a full blog post I wrote, followed by a few smaller...

S06E14 of Connection Problem: The Tragedy of Future Commons

November 28, 2019

Image: Total eclipse of the sun from the Trouvelot astronomical drawings (1881-1882) by E. L. Trouvelot (1827-1895) Hi and an extra welcome to all the folks...

S06E13 of Connection Problem: 3 generations of smart cities

November 22, 2019

Hey hey, This is going to be a reasonably short one as I’m both in crunch time and have been ill for a few days. But it’s a busy time for all the right...

S06E12 of Connection Problem: Technology is (geo)political

November 13, 2019

Hello and welcome, Especially to the folks who joined in just recently. Please feel free to reach out and say hi — you can just hit reply on this email and...

S06E11 of Connection Problem: Transparency Without Accountability Is Nothing

November 5, 2019

Hullo, This episodes ships a couple of days early. I’ll be in workshops the rest of the week, so today is the only chance to send this all week. I trust it...

S06E10 of Connection Problem: An internet of excellent things

October 30, 2019

Hi, hello, bonjour, I hope this finds you well and you’re having a great week. On my end, the week is all taken up by conferences, workshops, meetings. So it...

S06E09 of Connection Problem: European AI, Artificial Stupidity & Sailing Tech Nomads

October 24, 2019

🤖👋 [“Greetings from your algorithmic overlords,”] 📰 📰 📰 ["Lots of news to discuss.] 🏁👇 [“Let's go.”] × If you'd like to work with me or bounce ideas, let's...

S06E08 of Connection Problem: Vast Asymetries & Very Good Futures

October 17, 2019

Hello and welcome, As we’re headed into conference season and — someone despite myself, but of course also enjoying that bit — I find myself with a bunch of...

S06E07 of Connection Problem: Degrowth, AI deserts, remote planets

October 9, 2019

Hello and welcome, As physicists have just reminded us (and how they’ve driven home that point) we’re on a tiny planet in a remote corner of the universe,...

S06E06 of Connection Problem: Road tripping (Part 2)

September 27, 2019

Hi there, Welcome to the Climate Action edition. It’s been a week of climate! climate! climate! around the world. The UN had a summit (full of bizarre...

S06E05 of Connection Problem: Road Tripping (Part 1)

September 19, 2019

Aloha & hey hey, I’m sending this from the train; specifically, one of many legs of a series of trips. Today, I’m headed to Hamburg to speak at NEXT, which I...

S06E04 of Connection Problem: Procrasto Vendetta

September 12, 2019

Hello friends old & new, It’s home office day, because the kid wheezed at night in a way that convinced us he needed a doc in the morning, which is just the...

S06E03 of Connection Problem: IoT is not bananas / Concepts that I found helpful this week

September 5, 2019

Hello friends, It’s that time of the year where conference and workshop season snuck up on me, and my upcoming travel schedule jumps out from behind the sofa...

S06E02 of Connection Problem: Next-gen resistance<

August 29, 2019

Hello friend, Thanks for all the feedback to last week’s installment — which clocked in at a record-breaking 2,596 words, thank you for indulging me. There’s...

S06E01 of Connection Problem: Welcome to Season 6

August 22, 2019

Welcome to a new season of my weekly newsletter, Connection Problem. If you’re one of the members who joined recently, or if you have simply forgotten why...

>S05E25 of Connection Problem: The Fiction of the Smart City

July 4, 2019

This week is all centered very much around smart cities & governance. A recurring theme in this newsletter recently if ever there was one! The conversation...

S05E24 of Connection Problem: Ambient privacy &amp; participation at the (smart) street level

June 27, 2019

“Sustainability always looks like underutilization when compared to resource extraction” — Deb Chachra, Metafoundry In Berlin, we’re coming off of the tail...

S05E23 of Connection Problem: Policy Week / Facebook’s Power Grab / Nice Miscellanea

June 20, 2019

It was officially Policy Week over here, with 2 out of 3 events of the week focused on policy first and foremost. Which also means I was still on the road a...

S05E22 of Connection Problem: Shifting Alliances

June 13, 2019

Welcome back. I’m writing this during a longer train ride from Berlin to Brussels, hurtling through space at a comfortable 240 Km/h (150 mph), past green...

S05E21 of Connection Problem: Wrong/interesting/excellent futures

June 6, 2019

"In my opinion, it’s a task in life to train oneself to speak as clearly as possible. This isn’t achieved by paying special attention to words, but by...

S05E20 of Connection Problem: Getting Smart Cities right

May 23, 2019

It’s been a bit of a crunch week here, with lots of writing and paperwork to sort out, projects ramping up, exciting opportunities opening up. Oh, and heads-...

S05E19 of Connection Problem: The best of times, the worst of times

May 16, 2019

Today’s issue comes to you from Brussels, where I’m writing this in transit. I’m here to discuss digital futures, and so it just seems appropriate that this...

S05E18 of Connection Problem: Points of Leverage

May 9, 2019

Welcome. Republica came and went, and with it a flood of folks from all over who rolled through Berlin. I didn’t have quite as much time to socialize as I’d...

S05E17 of Connection Problem: Privacy not dead anymore / understanding China

May 2, 2019

It’s interesting for me to see how this newsletter has really been taking the spot that used to be filled by my blog, especially the monthnotes +...

S05E16 of Connection Problem: Russian Trolls, Smart Cities, Vectorialism

April 25, 2019

Sit rep: I'm home-officing today so that our gas/heating/water measurements can be taken. Someone has to come in and do the reading semi-manually. This is...

S05E15 of Connection Problem: Indulgences / Teaching Trustable Tech / Lists of Lists for Tech Ethics

April 18, 2019

I’m sending this issue from the train between Frankfurt and Berlin, going some 200km/h or so, tethering via my phone. Welcome to the banal side of the 21st...

S05E14 of Connection Problem: A Smart Home for the Masses

April 11, 2019

We can finally see a black hole (kind of)! 👋 It’s a heads-down week of writing and research and calls and meetings, so just one quick note to kick things...

S05E13 of Connection Problem: Haltung is All We Have

April 4, 2019

Hello friends, This is coming to you from Valencia, where I am for the 5th edition of IFF, the Internet Freedom Festival. It's a slightly different crowd...

S05E12 of Connection Problem: 5 years / a greener web / a pattern language

March 28, 2019

Sitrep: This goes out from West Berlin (the coffee shop, not the former Western part of the divided city) right after a lovely conversation with an old...

S05E11: Tech Supra States

March 21, 2019

Greetings, earthling. This week's installment does not have one clear thread tying it all together. Instead, it's a little more fragmented; more comments and...

S05E10 of Connection Problem: Thursday Edition

March 14, 2019

At reader Peter R's suggestion I'll be trying out a Thursday schedule rather than sending Fridays: Weekends are a busy time, after all, and so we can see if...

S05E09: Your privacy isn't my privacy

March 7, 2019

× Hello & welcome to the influx of new readers this week. I'm curious — where did you stumble upon this newsletter? Why don't you hit reply & say hi! 👋 I'm...

S05E08: 21st Century Appropriate

March 1, 2019

× I'm writing from sunny Lisbon, Portugal, where I was invited to do a couple of presentations at a European IoT Large-Scale Pilot Programmes event. (It's...

S05E07: Data Bill of Rights, the 3 I's, Decarbonization

February 22, 2019

Today we're looking at some fresh thinking around data rights as well as decarbonization, and some pretty unexpected angles of potential surveillance. × ×...

S05E06: Politics/Futures/Trust

February 15, 2019

It's almost spring outside while I'm writing this, a crisp 4C but so sunny it feels much warmer. Nils Frahm's "Encores 2" is streaming over my headphones. A...

S05E05 of Connection Problem: Translation Layers

February 7, 2019

Seasonal Greetings (i.e. hi there!) I was going to write about facial recognition, and about artists and tech, and about the OpenDoTT PhD program selection...

S05E04: The Fight for Deutungshoheit

January 30, 2019

A huge Thank you! to all the support after last week's launch of my little experiment here, the Brain Trust membership. Your kind words and sign-ups mean the...

S05E03: Launching the Brain Trust

January 25, 2019

In today's installment: Launching a membership experiment. Thoughts on surveillance capitalism and a thought experiment for tackling a small slice of it....

S05E02 of Connection Problem: Whatever happened to Open?

January 18, 2019

Sitrep: Sitting at Café 9, the little coffee shop and roastery at Kreuzberg's Markthalle IX. It's a crisp and sunny 1C outside. Mild winter at its best....

S05E01: The New New Normal

January 7, 2019

Welcome to a new year - I hope you've been having a good start of it. You'll notice this installment of Connection Problem is titled S05E01. Season 4 kinda-...

S04E08: Let's launch a Trustmark, shall we?

December 8, 2018

× I'm writing this from my hotel room on Saturday afternoon after two days of event craziness: I co-hosted the annual ThingsCon conference in Rotterdam;...

S04E07: Launch Countdown

November 30, 2018

Daruma Otoshi, or as I now call it, the best game ever invented It's impostor syndrome time: I'm writing this in between making travel bookings as I'm headed...

s04E06: Trust Indicators

November 15, 2018

Berlin at dawn × It's 07:17am on flight SN2592 from Berlin Tegel to Brussels. I'm headed there for a workshop with FEPS, the Foundation of European...

S04E05: A Digital Rights Cities Coalition

November 2, 2018

× Hi there. It's been a month since the last issue; take it as an indication of what my schedule looks like. I'm not saying this to complain, quite the...

S04E04: Square pegs, round holes

October 2, 2018

Sectors of divided Berlin × Hi there. Still working my way back to an Every Friday Schedule. It'll be another few weeks before we get there 😱 — until then,...