The digital thinker
Manouchehr Shamsrizi deals with the social impact of technology
He is not easy to pin down. Not to one field of expertise. Not to one place. Manouchehr Shamsrizi lives with his wife and young daughter in Hamburg-Wellingsbüttel, where he was born into a Persian immigrant family in 1988 and grew up. In Prenzlauer Berg, a hip district in Berlin, he rents a room in a shared apartment. He has a desk at the Innovation and Start-up Centre (IGZ) on Rudower Chaussee in Adlershof: “But I also often sit in one the cafés.”
Since the autumn of last year, Shamsrizi has been the co-director of an innovation programme for quantum technologies called “Leap Berlin”, which was launched on the top floor of IGZ. He was invited to do so by Markus Krutzik, a quantum physicist at Ferdinand Braun Institute, who is the scientific advisor for “Leap”. Shamsrizi knew the Technology Park from a quick visit as one of the speakers at the 2017 Falling Walls Lab event: “I have been fascinated by Adlershof ever since.”
“Bringing the world to Adlershof” is his mission at “Leap”. The aim should be, Shamsrizi says, to continue to enhance the profile of the site as an ecosystem, one in which founders and start-ups thrive.
Shamsrizi studied political science and international relations at Lake Constance and in Berlin. He was enrolled in business law at the University of Lüneburg but then preferred to sit in on the seminars of Daniel Libeskind—the architect was a visiting professor at the time—to learn about the future of universities. He calls Libeskind one of the “formative people” in his life. A stint as a “Global Justice Fellow” at Yale in 2010 was no less impactful. Indeed, global justice, political philosophy, and the history of ideas in the widest possible sense form one side of his life.
Digital technologies are the other. Shamsrizi remembers an episode from his primary school days when his class was invited to visit the editorial office of “Hamburger Morgenpost”, a newspaper. When the children were asked what they found most fascinating, seven-year-old Manouchehr gave a rapid-fire response: “Everything that computers are now making possible!” Now professionally referred to as gaming, video games became his lifelong passion. “Man is only fully human when he plays” is a proverb that he can identify with.
In doing so, his attention has gradually shifted towards the role of the increasingly sophisticated games as “technology drivers”. Many things that have now become part of everyday digital life—virtual reality, artificial intelligence, virtual currencies—were tested in this field many years ago: “Gaming is future research in action.” In 2013, Shamsrizi founded “gamelab.berlin”, an interdisciplinary working group investigating these kinds of topics, with two friends at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
How can opportunities be used while minimising risk? How does technology affect society? What is the effect on international relations if authoritarian regimes try to inject their messages into computer games? In 2018, Shamsrizi drew up a report on this for the Federal Foreign Office. He was also involved with a start-up that developed therapeutic computer games for senior citizens. They are now being used in 500 retirement homes.
Start-up founder, policy advisor, quantum tech networker in Adlershof—anything we’ve forgotten? Shamsrizi loves heavy metal. The organisers of the legendary metal festival in Wacken, Holstein, are among his friends. In his spare time, he is partial to pen-and-paper and tabletop role-playing games. Completely non-digital.
Dr Winfried Dolderer for Adlershof Journal