mei 2016

Rapid technological advances, shifting political movements, changing economic dynamics and accelerating societal change are seldom far from the news headlines and many of us struggle to understand their implications on day-to-day life. Such are the challenges that it seems clear that the major issues facing our planet are of such a magnitude that no single institution or organization can truly understand their impact alone. As change accelerates in an increasingly connected world, we must get a better understanding of emerging opportunities and challenges.

The general trend during the more than 3.5 billion years that life has been evolving on Earth, has been toward ever greater complexity and diversity, with more new species evolving into existence than there were species going extinct.  Extinction is common, but normally it is balanced by speciation. The balance wavers such that at several times in life’s history extinction rates appear somewhat elevated, but only five times qualify for ‘mass extinction’ status. Different causes are thought to have precipitated these extinctions and they all stand out in having extinction rates spiking higher than in any other geological interval. These…

We tend to think of technology as objects, usually tools or instruments. People believe the neutrality claim about technology because objects themselves don’t act. The neutrality claim is a truism that comes from thinking of technology as objects that are used by humans; hence, only humans are morally responsible for what happens. The objects cannot be blamed; hence, technology cannot be blamed. As the philosopher Martin Heidegger (“The Question Concerning Technology”) suggests, this line of thinking leaves us only with the question of when (and how) we will bring technology under moral control. It is important to note, technology is…

Volatile markets and global and inter-industrial networks are creating a radically more dynamic market environment which calls for considerably greater on-demand flexibility in resource deployment. Today’s businesses have to respond to evolving trends. As well as increasing flexibility, this also means taking action in two further areas, namely increasing transformability and responding to demographic change. Furthermore the global change towards a fully networked society is in progress, more or less all over the world. The domain of industrial systems is increasingly changing from both, structural but also functional point of view, as it adopts emerging internet based concepts, technologies, engineering-tools…