Tim Cole

Tim Cole is an expert on Internet, eBusiness. Social Web and IT Security. Born 1950 in Washington, he has lived in Germany for over 40 years, pursuing a career as a journalist, book author, TV moderator and public speaker. As the former editor of “Net Investor”, a business magazine, as well as a contributor and columnist for a number of leading European newspapers and magazines, he has a proven track record for objectivity and critical evaluation of technology trends and their impact on business processes and markets.

His book “Success Factor Internet” (published 1999 in German by Econ) was the first book in German to describe the impact of digital technology and the Internet on companies and organizations. In “The Customer Cartel” (2004) he correctly predicted the power shift between customers and vendors in an age of total connectivity. His last book, “Enterprise 2020” forecasts even more far-reaching transformation as digital networks, mobility and total communication become everyday facts of private and business life.

In "Digital Enlightenment Now!", he takes readers back to the Enlightenment of the 18th century societies in Europe where oppressive regimes were thrown off, cities freed from the bondage of the medieval estate-based society, and where a new set of basic human rights were defined that helped shape our sense of self to this day.

As citizens of an increasingly digitized and networked world we are now are in a similar situation. We, too, need the muster the confidence and creativity to rethink rules, values and categories that define our society and the courage to dare to think for ourselves, as Immanuel Kant, the father of modern Enlightenment, demanded in his famous dictum “sapere aude!”