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forum:logopädie 28.2014, 1
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forum:logopädie 28.2014, 2
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forum:logopädie 28.2014, 3
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forum:logopädie 28.2014, 4
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forum:logopädie 28.2014, 5
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forum:logopädie 28.2014, 6
(2014)
Portal alumni
(2014)
Die Beliebtheit von Medienberufen ist ungebrochen. Das zeigt sich unter anderem an der Zahl der Studieninteressierten. So haben sich allein in diesem Jahr mehr als 1 500 junge Leute auf einen der 44 Plätze für den Studiengang Medienwissenschaft an der Universität Potsdam beworben. Nach ihrem erfolgreichen Abschluss allerdings konkurrieren die Absolventen am Arbeitsmarkt mit Tausenden Abgängern anderer Hochschulen aus Film-, Medien- und Kommunikationsstudiengängen. Das sind allein in der Region Berlin-Brandenburg jährlich etwa 1 500. Doch nach jahrzehntelangem Boom der Medienbranche hat sich der Arbeitsmarkt im vergangenen Jahrzehnt drastisch verändert. Konjunkturkrise, Kursrückgänge und rückläufige Werbeinvestitionen schwächten die Medien deutlich. Es folgten daraus schlechte Gewinnergebnisse, Einsparungen und Personalreduzierung, insbesondere bei den Printmedien. Die Insolvenz der Frankfurter Rundschau oder die Einstellung der Financial Times Deutschland sind nur zwei eklatante Beispiele. Auf der anderen Seite boomt der dynamische Online-Markt aufgrund des veränderten Nutzerverhaltens insbesondere der jungen Generation, die ihre Informationen zunehmend aus Internet, Apps und sozialen Netzwerken gewinnen. Die Berufsaussichten für all Jene, die „Irgendwas mit Medien“ studieren wollen sind zwar aufgrund des Arbeitsmarktes schwieriger geworden, sie sind aber dennoch vielfältig. Guter Journalismus wird weiterhin benötigt und auch Öffentlichkeitsarbeiter sind gefragt. Darüber hinaus stehen Absolventen der Kommunikationswissenschaften die Türen in die Medienplanung oder in der Markt- und Meinungsforschung offen. Und nicht zuletzt sind Experten in der Online-Branche gefragt. Portal alumni hat sich in diesem Jahr dafür interessiert, welche Karrierewege Absolventen der der Universität Potsdam in Medienberufen bisher gegangen sind. Dabei zeigt sich, dass auch hier die Wege selten linear verlaufen und berufliche Erfolge sich keineswegs leicht einstellten.
Portal Wissen = Time
(2014)
“What then is time?”, Augustine of Hippo sighs melancholically in Book XI of “Confessions” and continues, “If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to a questioner, I don’t know.” Even today, 1584 years after Augustine, time still appears mysterious. Treatises about the essence of time fill whole libraries – and this magazine.
However, questions of essence are alien to modern sciences. Time is – at least in physics – unproblematic: “Time is defined so that motion looks simple”, briefly and prosaically phrased, waves goodbye to Augustine’s riddle and to the Newtonian concept of absolute time, whose mathematical flow can only be approximately recorded with earthly instruments anyway.
In our everyday language and even in science we still speak of the flow of time but time has not been a natural condition for quite a while now. It is rather a conventional order parameter for change and movement. Processes are arranged by using a class of processes as a counting system in order to compare other processes and to organize them with the help of the temporary categories “before”, “during”, and “after”.
During Galileo’s time one’s own pulse was seen as the time standard for the flight of cannon balls. More sophisticated examination methods later made this seem too impractical. The distance-time diagrams of free-flying cannon balls turned out to be rather imprecise, difficult to replicate, and in no way “simple”. Nowadays, we use cesium atoms. A process is said to take one second when a caesium-133 atom completes 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state. A meter is the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in exactly 1/299,792,458 of a second. Fortunately, these data are hard-coded in the Global Positioning System GPS so users do not have to reenter them each time they want to know where they are. In the future, however, they might have to download an app because the time standard has been replaced by sophisticated transitions to ytterbium.
The conventional character of the time concept should not tempt us to believe that everything is somehow relative and, as a result, arbitrary. The relation of one’s own pulse to an atomic clock is absolute and as real as the relation of an hourglass to the path of the sun. The exact sciences are relational sciences. They are not about the thing-initself as Newton and Kant dreamt, but rather about relations as Leibniz and, later, Mach pointed out.
It is not surprising that the physical time standard turned out to be rather impractical for other scientists. The psychology of time perception tells us – and you will all agree – that the perceived age is quite different from the physical age. The older we get the shorter the years seem. If we simply assume that perceived duration is inversely related to physical age and that a 20-year old also perceives a physical year as a psychological one, we come to the surprising discovery that at 90 years we are 90 years old. With an assumed life expectancy of 90 years, 67% (or 82%) of your felt lifetime is behind you at the age of 20 (or 40) physical years.
Before we start to wallow in melancholy in the face of the “relativity of time”, let me again quote Augustine. “But at any rate this much I dare affirm I know: that if nothing passed there would be no past time; if nothing were approaching, there would be no future time; if nothing were, there would be no present time.” Well, – or as Bob Dylan sings “The times they are a-changin”.
I wish you an exciting time reading this issue.
Prof. Martin Wilkens
Professor of Quantum Optics