What matters happens between people.
Software should make this in-between visible.
Philosophy of technology scholar. Systemic therapist. Developer. I write software that enables people — instead of disabling them.
“The computer is the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”
Why I write software
Technology as medium, not tool
Most developer pages start with a tech stack. This one starts with a question: What does software make possible?
My teacher, Prof. Christoph Hubig at the University of Stuttgart, spent his career on this question. His answer: technology is not just a tool you pick up and put down. It is a medium — like language, like architecture — that structures what can happen. He called these possibility spaces. Every technical system creates one. Every line of code shapes what can be reached, thought, or related to.
This is not abstract. When you choose a data model, you decide what relationships can exist. When you design a notification system, you decide what gets attention and what gets ignored. When you design a feed algorithm, you decide whose voice is heard.
Human reality is relational
I trained for three years as a systemic therapist and consultant. My teacher, Prof. Michael Maertens, learned his craft at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto — where Gregory Bateson and Paul Watzlawick developed the ideas that changed how we understand human communication.
The core insight: human reality is not individual. It is relational. There are no isolated selves, only systems of relationship. The essential — what actually matters — happens in the space between people.
Systemic therapy taught me a specific way of looking: second-order observation. Not just watching what happens, but watching how we watch. Not just observing behavior, but observing the patterns of observation themselves.
Most software operates at first order: it observes the user. Engagement metrics, click tracking, conversion funnels — the system watches you, and you do not notice. The software I write flips this. The user observes themselves — in the context of their relationships. The software becomes a mirror, not a gate.
The synthesis
Combine these two ideas and you get a development philosophy: software as a medium that creates possibility spaces for people to observe their relational patterns — to see the in-between.
This is not "ethical tech." It is not a marketing position. It is a specific claim about what software can be, grounded in a tradition that stretches from Heraclitus through Hegel, Wittgenstein, and Luhmann to the consulting rooms of Palo Alto.
It is no coincidence that Steve Jobs emerged from this same ecosystem. Jobs understood something that most of the industry he created has since forgotten: technology must serve the human mind, not harvest it. He called the computer a bicycle for the mind — a tool that amplifies what people can think, create, and reach.
I take this one step further. The bicycle is not just for the individual mind. It is for the social system — for the relational, the interactional, the space between people. Software should amplify how people understand each other, not how platforms monetize their attention.
The clear, essential voice that held Silicon Valley to this standard for half a century has gone quiet. The premise has inverted: the mind becomes a bicycle for the software — and by extension, for the valuation of the company behind it. Attention wins. Lock-in wins. Humanity loses. This is what I write software against.
Four principles from systemic practice guide every design decision:
Circularity
Zirkularität
Design for feedback loops, not linear flows. Show users how their actions affect the system and how the system affects them.
Multi-partiality
Allparteilichkeit
The system is not neutral. It is allied with all perspectives. Enable perspective-shifting, not single-viewpoint optimization.
Solution-orientation
Lösungsorientierung
Focus on what works and what is wanted, not on tracking problems. Forward-looking interfaces.
Second-order observation
Beobachtung 2. Ordnung
The user should be able to observe their own observing. The software as mirror, not gate.
“Mind is not in the head. Mind is immanent in the larger system — man plus environment.”
What this philosophy produces
Pariva
A couple's financial fairness should not require a spreadsheet, an accountant, or surrendering your data to an ad-supported service. Pariva calculates fair income splitting for married couples in Germany — then gets out of the way.
In development
Respect as a business model. One-time purchase. No subscriptions, no data collection, no dark patterns. You buy it, use it, move on.
Independence by design. Solo developer. No VC pressure. Short feedback loops between me and the people who use my software — no corporate filter in between.
“The tool is the fulfillment of a possibility inherent in the human being.”
Tools and medium
Native platforms
When the medium is someone's phone, respect the medium. Native development because the platform matters.
Web
The open web as the most accessible possibility space.
Backend & Data
Infrastructure that stays invisible so the in-between can be visible.
AI-assisted development
ADHD meant the repetitive, detail-oriented labor of traditional coding was always the barrier — never the interest or the vision. AI removed that barrier. This is not a confession. It is a fact about how the best tools meet people where they are.
“Systems do not exist — they happen.”
About
I am a philosophy of technology scholar, systemic therapist, and software developer based in Germany.
Born in 1982 in Stuttgart, I grew up in a small village in the Stuttgart metropolitan area — the center of the German auto industry and the heart of the innovative Swabian engineering community. Today it is often called the Silicon Valley of Germany. Born into a family of medical doctors with a humanistic, artistic mindset, I attended a private Rudolf Steiner school. I experienced a great lack of natural sciences and technology in an environment that was against television, computers, and later mobile phones. Luckily, my parents were extremely innovative, and my mother digitalized the medical practice of my father in the early 90s with personal computers. Eventually, at the age of nine, I got a personal computer that had been replaced by a newer one. There it was: an IBM 486 with 4 MHz, 2 MB of RAM, and a 20 MB hard drive. Operating system: DOS. I fell in love with it immediately — a love that has been going on ever since.
I studied philosophy at the University of Stuttgart under Prof. Christoph Hubig, graduating in the top 5%. I trained for three years as a systemic consultant and therapist under Prof. Michael Maertens, whose own training traces back to the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto — where systemic thinking was born. Before I wrote production code, I spent over a decade in MarTech, web development, and technical social media. I understand the attention economy from the inside. That understanding is precisely why I develop differently now.
I was diagnosed with ADHD in 2024. The repetitive, detail-oriented nature of traditional programming was always the barrier between me and the software I wanted to create. AI tools removed that barrier. Software development is not the beginning of my story or the end of it. It is the middle — the medium I arrived at after philosophy gave me the questions and systemic thinking gave me the framework.
Intellectual tradition
Heraclitus — Aristotle — Hegel — Wittgenstein — Honneth — Luhmann — Bateson — Satir — Maturana & Varela
Nine years old. A beige box with 4 MHz and 2 MB RAM. I typed DOS commands and knew — with the certainty only a child has — this will change the world. I did not become a nerd that day. I recognized I had always been one.
Philosophy of technology under Prof. Hubig, University of Stuttgart. Specialization in philosophy of mathematics. A nerd in code, now also a nerd in philosophy.
Master’s degree, top 5%. Tuition waiver for academic excellence.
Systemic therapy training under Prof. Maertens (MRI Palo Alto lineage). Philosophy gave me the questions — cybernetic thinking made them applicable to human beings and their relationships.
Own practice: systemic therapy and couples counseling. I learn not just why systems struggle, but how to enable them to function differently.
ChatGPT launches. For the first time since 1991, the same feeling: watching something unfold by the laws of probability — like a Polaroid developing — and knowing, again, that the world will never be the same.
ADHD diagnosis. I understand my neurodiversity — how it enabled me to see patterns others miss, and how it disabled me in the repetitive, disciplined work of traditional coding. I had started at least a dozen times over thirty years. I had always failed. Until now.
Three years of AI-enabled development. The first projects emerge as an independent developer. Pariva (iOS), Steve.ai (Web), Family Time (iOS), Job Joy (Web) — all in development.
“Self-realization succeeds only in relationships that allow the individual to experience themselves as valuable.”