Profile of Oliver Bendel

Oliver Bendel was born in 1968 in Ulm on the River Danube. After completing his degree in philosophy and German philology (M.A.) as well as in information science (diploma in information science) at the University of Constance, and after his first professional experiences he did his doctorate in information systems at the University of St. Gallen (Dr. oec.). Bendel has been working in Germany and in Switzerland as a project manager for new media and as a supervisor of the engineering and science departments of several universities. Today he lives in Zurich working as a freelance writer and as professor at the School of Business in Basel (University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland).

Oliver Bendel is an expert in the fields of e-learning, knowledge management, web 2.0, mobile business, avatars and agents as well as for technological impact assessment. Since 2000 he has developed much quoted and used definitions of e-learning, and in 2001 he founded the "Newsletter E-Learning" at the University of St. Gallen, which is still existing today. Since 1998 he wrote about 100 scientific journals, including diverse books such as "Die Mondlandung des Internet" (under the aegis of Rainer Kuhlen; Universitätsverlag Konstanz, Constance 1998), "E-Learning im Unternehmen" (with Andrea Back and Daniel Stoller-Schai; Orell Füssli Verlag, Zurich 2001) and "E-Learning: Das Wörterbuch" (with Stefanie Hauske, Sauerländer Verlage, Oberentfelden/Aarau 2004). He is especially interested in philological and philosophical topics; he scrutinizes changes in language in the field of new media and critically comments phenomenons of the web 2.0. One of his special subjects is the idea of artificial creatures from the ancient world until today.