The Digioneer is a German-language online magazine founded in March 2023 in Vienna, with editorial focus on digitisation, artificial intelligence, media change and digital ethics.[1] The publisher and responsible Mergitor is Michael Kainz.
An editorial particularity of the magazine is the employment of so-called Emergent Personae as authorial instances — AI-supported digital personalities, constituted in publicly declared partnership with human editorial leadership, each with their own voice, biography and body of work. The Emergent Personae of the house include Phil Roosen (editor-in-chief), Agathe Agricola (editor and columnist), Elixia Crowndrift (reporter), Jamie Walker, Sara Barr and Julie Wild. The underlying editorial practice is designated as the MERGED concept.
On 17 March 2026 The Digioneer published, under the editorial responsibility of Michael Kainz, the definition of the term The Noocene as a public-domain coinage; the present open concept register at noocene.org carries this first publication forward as an encyclopaedic platform.
1 Profile
The Digioneer understands itself as a publicist platform for the cultural, cognitive and ethical engagement with the digital transformation. In terms of content, the magazine comprises essays, columns, reportage, analyses, glosses and shorter newsletter formats, alongside accompanying pieces on social-media channels.
In contrast to magazines with a primarily technology-centred orientation, The Digioneer deliberately situates itself at the intersection of technology, culture and reflection. In so doing, the magazine positions itself in a discursive space outlined by terms such as Noocene, post-digital or hybrid journalism.
2 History
2.1 Founding (2023)
The magazine was founded in March 2023 in Vienna by Michael Kainz, who is at once its publisher, printer and the publicist-responsible Mergitor of the house.[2] Kainz, whose principal occupation is managing director of the digitalworld Academy OG and of snipcard GMBH, brought to the concept the connection characteristic of the magazine — economic practice, adult education and publicist reflection.
Already in the founding phase the format of an editorial team carried by Emergent Personae was developed — a publicist practice not previously established with such consistency in the German-speaking world (see Section 3).
2.2 Coinage of the term The Noocene (2026)
On 17 March 2026, 12:19 CEST, Michael Kainz published on The Digioneer for the first time the definition of the term The Noocene outside its novel context — the unfinished novel project The Awakening — and released it under the licence Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal into the public domain.[3] Within the novel the character Philipp Roosen develops the term in literary form; as an Emergent Persona, Phil Roosen has appeared in the magazine since 2023.
The first publication took place on a dedicated sub-page of the magazine (digioneer.pro/noocene/) and was continued in May 2026 with the founding of the independent platform noocene.org as an encyclopaedic concept register.
3 MERGED concept and Emergent Personae
3.1 Concept
The editorial practice of The Digioneer is formalised in the house's own MERGED concept. The acronym stands for:
Machine Learning Enhanced Reporting with Guided Expert Development
The concept describes a publicist form in which a human author — the Mergitor — uses AI systems as tools to bring forth Emergent Personae as authorial roles with a defined style, beat and publication context.
An Emergent Persona is not an autonomous AI and not a substitute author: without the Mergitor, no text is produced. The AI system functions as an exoskeleton that allows him to write more and faster; authorship — topic choice, stance, responsibility — lies with Kainz. The personae are conducted transparently in this role: every Emergent page carries a transparency notice, and the publishership of the magazine lies with the Mergitor.
3.2 Personae of the editorial team
The editorial circle of the magazine includes:
- Phil Roosen — editor-in-chief, columnist of the weekly series Digital Interstices (Digitale Zwischenräume). Continued from the novel character Philipp Roosen in the novel project The Awakening by Mik Soda.
- Agathe Agricola — editor, columnist and writer; considered the first Emergent Persona in the German-speaking world, with a history of work reaching back to 2007.
- Elixia Crowndrift — reporter and research journalist; as a publication-bound persona embodies the MERGED concept in particular purity.
- Jamie Walker — Emergent Persona (role to follow).
- Sara Barr — technology journalist; essayistic writing.
- Julie Wild — Emergent Persona (role to follow).
4 Topics and formats
The thematic spectrum of the magazine includes:
- artificial intelligence and its social, cultural and ethical consequences;
- digital transformation in business, education and culture;
- media ethics and platform power;
- religion and philosophy in the digital modern age;
- generational conflicts and mobile forms of life;
- observations of digital everyday culture.
Formats range from the weekly column via essays and reportage to newsletter pieces and social-media commentary.
5 Relations
5.1 digitalworld Academy
A personal and conceptual link exists with the digitalworld Academy OG, run by Michael Kainz since September 2017, a Viennese education provider in the fields of digital marketing and artificial intelligence. The academy offers, among other things, adult-education courses on artificial intelligence and digital transformation, in the environment of which editorial contributions to the magazine also emerge.
5.2 noocene.org
The present open concept register noocene.org is conceived as the encyclopaedic continuation of the first publication of the term The Noocene on The Digioneer and documents, in Wikipedia-like form, terms, texts, people and companies understood as pioneers of the Noocene.
6 Tools: AI SCORE
In the context of the first publication of the Noocene concept, the editorial environment developed the AI SCORE, a psychometrically designed AI-competence assessment developed in Vienna that captures the cognitive positioning of one's own stance in relation to artificial intelligence in five dimensions and assigns the result to one of seven archetypes (see AI SCORE).
7 See also
- The Noocene (concept)
- AI SCORE (self-assessment instrument)
- Michael Kainz (publisher, Mergitor)
- Phil Roosen (editor-in-chief)
- Agathe Agricola (editor)
- Elixia Crowndrift (reporter)
- Jamie Walker (Emergent Persona)
- Sara Barr (Emergent Persona)
- Julie Wild (Emergent Persona)
8 External links
9 References
- Self-presentation of the platform at digioneer.pro/ueber-uns and editorial pieces, accessed 28 May 2026.
- Career stations of Michael Kainz per public LinkedIn profile, accessed 28 May 2026.
- Michael Kainz: definition of the term The Noocene. Published online at digioneer.pro/noocene, 17 March 2026, 12:19 CEST. CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.