What do you like to do on holiday?
I travel a lot on business, so I don't see my wife and children that much. For me, holidays therefore mean time for the family. I usually take three to four times a year off, so we can all drive away together: During the autumn holidays we like to take a hiking holiday in my home in the Allgäu, in the Easter holidays we ski, and in the summer we spend two weeks at the campsite in Southern france. In addition, of course, there are the Christmas holidays and holidays; Then we often visit the parents-in-law or my sister and her family.
Can you tell us about a holiday you remember particularly well, and also tell us what exactly made the holiday so memorable?
When our children were with their grandma for a couple of days during the Whitsun holidays, my wife and I took the opportunity to finally visit our old study friend Karen at her home on the Baltic Sea. When we arrived at Karen's home on Friday nights, there was a heartfelt reunion and Karen's distinctive vegetable lasagne. While eating, Karen also mentioned a certain Axel who "comes home late today." We were delighted to hear that Karen apparently had a new boyfriend, and were eager to meet him the next day. The big surprise then came at breakfast on Saturday when Axel walked in to the kitchen door and my wife and I immediately recognised him again: Axel, my wife's longtime childhood friend. Because of me, she had put an end to Axel. You can imagine this breakfast with Karen and Axel didn't exactly start relaxed. But perhaps the biggest surprise for me personally was that I met a really nice person in Axel this weekend: Interested and good-natured. Of course, it wasn't exactly immaterial for me to see that obviously there was nothing left between him and my wife, who looked like "more than friendship." With the discovery that we both fish hobbyically flies, Axel and I were eventually able to break the ice. In the end, we even arranged for Axel and Karen to join us in the countryside in September. Axel and I then want to go fishing together.
What is your view of the increasing importance of technology in our everyday lives?
On the whole, I am positive about technological progress, but I think we need a more productive debate on democratic, socially beneficial uses of new technologies. One particularly pressing issue I see here is that of data security. Anyone who uses the Internet today reveals more data than you or he often knows: After all, it is not only the data that we knowingly leave behind when we buy something on the Internet, for example, stored. But also search histories, camera or microphone recordings and even unpublished data – texts, for example, which we entered into Facebook Messenger but have revised again – are collected on the servers of the Internet giants. In conjunction, for example, with our bank details and private emails, these companies can, if they wish, effortlessly create detailed personality profiles from which the surveillance services of those illiberal regimes from which we have all learned in school teaching , could only dream.
Many people respond to this issue with a typical and very meaningful gesture: They shrug their shoulders and stress that they personally have "nothing to hide." From history, however, we should have learned that times can change quickly, and that it is only a matter of definition what someone has to hide and what not, so what is "allowed," "condoned" and "forbidden" or even dangerous. In my opinion, therefore, more information and more easily usable tools are needed, with which individuals do not have to extradite themselves as defencelessly as most of us at the moment. Do are forced. Only if we have empowered internet citizens can we ensure that we have mastered this new technology – and not the technology us.