at the intersection of technology, business, and society
Trust is the essential currency in human interaction, it is the indispensible basis for the many unwritten contracts we enter every single day. Trust is the glue that keeps social groups together and the grease that lets these groups act, and interact, smoothly. Trust is so foundational to human society that we take it as just that: the eternal fundament of our culture. I’ll argue that digital technologies are gradually eroding that fundament, causing cracks in the foundation of our society.
Looking for weak signals that might foreshadow major changes, a broad diversity of recent developments comes to the surface. These include the rise of cities as actors in global governance, the demise of the labour contract as the mainstay of wealth distribution, the dominance of data-driven platforms across many industries, and the re-localisation of manufacturing and energy supply. That begs the all-important question: Is there a way to integrate all these ideas and observations? To come up with a reasonably coherent image of the trajectory we are on?
Innovation has become a major buzzword of our time, often with almost mystical properties ascribed. This essay is my attempt to demystify that buzz – in 500 words.
Over the last century, Big Business transformed dramatically, several times. What used to be in the hands of heavy industry, of oil and steel, gradually became the domain of the chemical, pharmaceutical, automotive and later on consumer electronics industries. And from the 1990s onwards, it morphed again as the Digital Revolution unfolded. Today, Big Business […]
It’s always useful to look back what happened, to analyse the past and try to learn something from it. But the real fun comes when you unleash your imagination, apply some of the learning and think about what could likely happen in the future. And that is actually my plan for this summer break: to think […]
