December 2008
48 posts
Consumer Confidence Index - Falls to a New... →
For an economy where the consumer is the main driver this is not very good.
Pew Internet: Future of the Internet →
A future of the Internet report written from the “inside” of technology. It doesn’t take into account the changes and challenges on the structural levels. Political reactions to the global situation will undoubtably create a lot of turbulence, a chaos which will probably be met by more restricted freedom of individuals. The Internet is right in the middle of that fight and will...
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Open the Future: Cycles of History →
Jamais Cascio have been digging in to the past and found another financial crisis called the Long Depression between 1870 and 1890.
He refers to a pattern emerging then and that is not unlikely to occur even now:
Aggressive self-interest on the part of states, despite clear potential to damage the overall economic/political structure
Desperate need to find scapegoats
Embrace of religious...
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BBC NEWS | Technology | Severed cable disrupts web... →
Since Internet is becoming a core infrastructure for our society, these interruptions are becoming a real and global problem. Both global terrorist groups as well as governent agencies around the globe could be using the tactics of create systems failure by focusing their attacks on systempunkts in order to undermine the trust in a government’s capability to manage a situation.
If we also...
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Datastrulet över på Karolinska | Stockholmsnyheter... →
Denna typ av händelser är alltför snarlika terroristdåden 11 september. Åtminstone när det gäller hur de påverkar maktförskjutningen. Allt större tryck och mer makt hamnar på IT-avdelningarna eftersom de är de enda (man tror) kan göra något åt problemet.
Och just i detta fall är det säkert helt rätt. Problemet är att IT-avdelningarna förväntas hantera i det närmaste allt där en dator inblandad....
Scientific Journal to Authors: Publish in... →
Really interesting! The first scientific journal that doesn’t see the horisontal publishing model as a threat. All the other academic journals I see are in their way to protect their business models from the changing world and all they are accomplishing are first irrelevance for the many and then extinction.
WatchTED talk 2004 » Stewart Brand on Long Now’s Nevada Clock Site
Talking about a phase in the interesting project of building a 10.000 clock.
Dan Siemon's review of Gwynne Dyer's Climate Wars →
The article I posted about some hour ago is based on the book Climate Wars by Gwynne Dyer. On this link you can find a short review of the book.
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Jamais Cascio coins the concept of Value Ecologies →
It is strange that a concept that have been around for some time don’t have an expression. Jamais popped the word “Value Ecologies” in this recent post.
Kevin Kelly and others have been writing about business and society as systems showing increasingly more biological properties since the mid 1990:s.
Out of Control - Kevin Kelly (1995)
Bionomics - Michael Rothschild
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GE Labs Produces the First Ever OLED Christmas... →
Many argue that OLED is the future of displaying anything as well as lighting up our world. Here you can see it used in the first christmas tree application ever.
The interested can read ScienceDaily article: Flexible, Affordable Light Source Can Printed
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Gwynne Dyer: Four harsh truths about climate... →
As some of you know Gwynne Dyer is one of my favourite writers who often formulates things I have been thinking about. Even if the thinking isn’t new it is really clear here! A must read!
Food will be the key issue as temperatures rise more quickly than expected
Four really, really bad scenarios - Eamon Javers -... →
Interesting that there is a different climate to discuss the bad scenarios. They all seems to follow one singular thought pattern though. Where is the surprising scenarios that make us think in other patterns?
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Han får inte köra till jobbet - Göteborg -... →
Är det inte fantastiskt hur det rigida vägverket kan stoppa utvecklingen av allehanda fordon som skulle kunna ersätta bilar?
Jag frågade för många år sedan om man skulle få åka på en motoriserad spark, något som började bli populärt i LA-området. Svaret var ett icke-svar som bara pekade tillbaka till regelverket där det står att bara det som är godkänt får användas… Suck! Kan man hoppas att...
WatchAnders Sandberg on Global Catatrophic Risks: An Overview, and Caution about Risk Assessments on Vimeo (via Vimeo)
IMF - Finance & Development Magazine December 2008 →
An issue of the IMF online quarterly magazine focusing on the crisis.
DVICE: 9 car technologies that could save Detroit →
I don’t think technologies have anything to do with saving the automotive industry. It is all about management, group psychology, culture and economics… even if technologies might be really important components in reinventing the car.
Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn | Guy Kawasaki →
This is really an area that needs to be digged into deeply. Which are the value creating uses for which LinkedIn, Facebook, Pulse et al??
GP TV: Här avslöjas Renova - Ettan -... →
Och så får alla kritiker till miljöinsatserna vatten på sin kvarn… och förtroendet för de ansvariga får sig ytterligare en knäck. Det civila samhället breder ut sig tack vare att bilden av det goda systemet smulas sönder till ett upplevt såll av lurendrejeri och inkompetens.
Det är extremt tragiskt för de som inte fuskar utan gör sitt jobb, men systemets sammanbrott smittar tyvärr.
Sovmorgon minskar olyckor →
Detta kan bli ytterligare ett test på om och när kunskap och sanning i vetenskaplig mening i någon större utsträckning kan påverka uppsatta regler. De vetenskapliga insikterna om hur man borde arbeta med brottslingar, missbrukare och andra beteendeproblem följer ju ofta fortfarande det traditionellt individuella och rationaliserande ansvarstänkandet - “Men det är ju bara att skärpa...
Paul Saffo on our new terrorism super anti-hero →
Strange logic, but think Saffo is at least somewhat right in his analysis.
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Bilister i Göteborg fotgängarens mardröm -... →
Att det är på detta sätt är uppenbart för mig. Det som snarare är intressant i denna lilla artikel är perspektivet som representanten från Motormännen vittnade om (som f ö stämmer varje gång jag hör någon från Vägverket och Trafikkontoret) är den syn på mänskligt beteende och dess orsaker som verkar ligga i deras förvåning:
- Väldigt märkligt att så många inte stannade. Vid Backaplan passerade...
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Technology Review: Are Social Networks Sinking? →
If everything is affected by the financial crisis and the economic recession, so is also the social networks. To noones surprise the business models and revenues for these isn’t really there yet so there will of course be a shakeout.
But I think many of the social networks have well passed the first part of the hype-curve and have much faster than previous technologies changed the behaviour...
No More School E-Mail for Boston College Freshmen... →
Why should a university provide the students with an e-mail account at the first place? Especially since most students today will forward their mail to their personal mail accounts anyway??
I think this question is starting to be asked in a much broader sense and even including employment relationships as well. As long as we model our workplaces after factories, it is obvious that the employer...
Laurent Haug’s blog » Blog Archive » A bit of... →
Sometimes it is envigorating to get a perspective of things. Here on Laurent’s blog you get some perspective of bailouts in comparison to other investments for the future.
A fresh look at strategy under uncertainty: An... →
Hugh Cortney on uncertainty:
The financial crisis has actually brought greater clarity because it has forced us to recognize that we have a lot more level three and level four situations than we would have admitted a few months ago. They probably were there all along, yet the bias was toward thinking that issues were more at level one and level two.
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Scenarios 2.0 -- Social Technologies Recrafts the... →
Andy Hines and collegues are working on developing scenario planning techniques. This seems to be a first shot of something that I don’t see that much different in process, but maybe in formulation…?
Facebook and the Social Dynamics of Privacy -... →
Could social dynamics be a name for a new area of studies?
The End Of Venture Capital As We Know It? →
It is definitely time we ran entrepreneurial projects the traditional way, i e by selling something to get money and then reinvest it to increase the business. Borrowing and betting on the future requires both excess capital to invest as well as a relatively positive or at least somewhat understandable future to borrow from…
Paul Krugman - The Great Illusion - Op-Ed -... →
An interesting article by Paul Krugman trying to see through some of todays illusions by using historical parallels.
Angell was right to describe the belief that conquest pays as a great illusion. But the belief that economic rationality always prevents war is an equally great illusion. And today’s high degree of global economic interdependence, which can be sustained only if all major governments...
WatchPop!Casts
See Malcolm Gladwell talk at Pop!Tech on how our culture and systems is our worst enemy when it comes to capitalization of talent.
Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights →
Thomas Hammarberg is ringing in the wake-up bell. Really needed, but how many will hear him?
Freedom has been compromised in the fight against terrorism after 11 September. Government decisions have undermined human rights principles with flawed arguments about improved security
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Leading through uncertainty - The McKinsey... →
A whole issue of McKinsey Quarterly about crisis management and of course scenario planning.
Who Protects The Internet? →
This is a also one of the major global issues which we have to solve in order to become a truly global society.
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From the New York Landmarks Plot to the Mumbai... →
According to Stratfor the tactics in Mumbai wasn’t new. In 1993 another group with clear connections to al Qaeda planned to execute very similar attack on New York - now known as the “Landmarks” plot.
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Att återskapa Göteborg « Ekonomistas →
Intressant och viktigt att diskutera Göteborgs återfödelse som en icke-bilstad. Enligt mitt sätt att se på det hela finns dock flera faktorer som bidrar till att denna transformation idag är svårare än vad den var på 1970-talet och under förra seklets tidigare år då industristaden göteborg växte fram:
När varvskrisen gallrade bort Göteborg fanns redan bilindustrin som en kronprins, en kronprins...
Global Guerrillas: URBAN TAKEDOWNS: TO WHAT END →
Three possible goals that can be achieved by an urban takedown, an interesting injection of thought when thinking about the recent events in Mumbai, what they really were aiming for and who other will learn from that event.
Create a nation-state over reaction
Cause economic slowdown/failure
By coercion be able to continue undisturbed
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Imagining the Google Future - January 01, 2006 →
Vahid V Motlagh reminded me of these four scenarios Business 2.0 wrote on the future of Google. I wrote about it somewhere then but don’t remember if it was online or not.
Education 2.0: Never Memorize Again? -... →
An article slightly questioning the role of memorization in education. Don Tapscott, one of the people who have been involved in the discussion, is quoted:
“Children are going to have to reinvent their knowledge base multiple times. […]So for them memorizing facts and figures is a waste of time.”
The End of Online Anonymity - ReadWriteWeb →
Well written about our online future - arguing that it is not anonymous at all.
The terrifying vision of our future that Orwell imagined in his masterpiece, 1984, has been surpassed by miles. Big Brother staring at us through TV screens is nothing - instead, we’ve managed to create a world where we blindly, willingly, hand over our data and personal identities to a publicly traded company...
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Prophesy of economic collapse 'coming true' -... →
Yup, continuous growth is not sustainable. That is exactly what the Club of Rome said in Limits of Growth and now we see that they of course were right.
The problem with making prophecies are that so very few people are able to think at the necessary high levels and actually challenge what is said rather than misunderstand everything based on the own beliefs at the moment. That is not to say at...
I’m So Totally, Digitally Close to You - Clive... →
Interesting article about the social world of Facebook, Twitter and more…
A short summarizing post here
5 Ways Social Media Will Change Recorded History →
Even if this list doesn’t go deep enough it is an interesting list about future consequences of social media.
Everyone will have the ability to know what you did and who you were with on a daily
Historical trend analysis will leap to a new level of precision
We will not use history to learn from our mistakes, but to prevent them before they happen
There is little room for hiding...
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“In this business climate, scenario planning may be the closest thing to a GPS...”
– Future Tense - CFO.com
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Future Tense - CFO Magazine - December 2008 Issue... →
The uncertainties after the financial crisis are increasing the use of scenario planning, even if it should have been done before:
But abandoning the prediction game is not an option. Companies are now redoubling their forecasting efforts, even though (and perhaps because) the horizon is brimming with unknowns. In a recent CFO Research survey, 41 percent of senior finance executives said they have...
Terrorists turn technology into weapon of war in... →
BlackBerry: Mumbai Terrorists Watch World React... →
Not surprising at all that the terrorists use the same technology as anybody else. But probably a bit more scary since this is just another signal that makes it harder for us to envision these people as different from ourselves…
Bör vi bli oroliga för Handels i Göteborg? «... →
Det är klart att man blir lokalpatriotisk en stad som i stort sett kommer att krascha om Volvo PV försvinner från kartan… frågan är väl bara om denna artikel inte bara underblåser den kritik som redan finns både internt och externt om utmaningen att få oberoende forskning om det finns lokala särintressen som faktiskt finansierar forskning.
