My name is Andreas Hepp.
I am professor of media and communications, Head of ZeMKI, Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research, University of Bremen, Germany, and spokesperson of the Research Unit 5656 “Communicative AI: The Automation of Societal Communication”.
My latest book
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Pioneer Communities: How our digital futures emerge in Silicon Valley (2026)
For decades, pioneer communities in Silicon Valley and beyond have been at the forefront of shaping our ideas of digital futures, from social media platforms and self-tracking practices to the idea of viewing the world as a tech lab of the future. Their latest frontier, artificial intelligence, is already pushing the imagined boundaries of human potential. Pioneer Communities is the first book to explore these influential groups and their global impact. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research, the book explores the spread of pioneer communities, from the Whole Earth Network and the Maker and Quantified Self movements, to more recent communities…