februari 2024

As Albert Einstein justly noted, the experimental physical world, with its infinite diversity, directly contradicts the idealized simplicity of the mathematical description. How can one explain this, accept it, and include it in the scheme of a mechanistic vision of the world? Worldviews have different origins, stemming from various social, cultural, religious, political, and economical systems that have developed over millennia. These different origins can inform and create similar worldview realities shared by different groups of people and societies. The present and outdated worldview is based on our all-pervasive and sub-conscious habit to interpret and represent the World surrounding us…

Without setting the stage for where we actually are, how can we truly understand where to allocate our energy? By observing the major issues of our time we get to witness what the opportunities are for impactful and useful innovation and design. To start with an apology. Unintentionally this reflection became longer than intended. But halfway through writing I realized that it is a big story we have to tell and came to terms with it. Unveiling the harsh reality of the state we are in it became a sobering story. Based on personal narratives, experience and expert insights, exposing…

A dream of a sane world governed by logic and rationality has been the cry of many philosophers,  scientists for millennia. What is rational is real and what is real is rational; and if one devalues rationality, the world tends to fall apart. And yet here we are, in a world run by post-truth, post-factual and post reality politics and discourses. Anything goes and no one cares – all of us liberated in our own respective and self-serving bubbles of cognitive dissonance. Instances of the severe destabilization or even collapse of societies are not historically unique and often occur for the same…

We find ourselves surrounded by the paradox that society can do so much and yet so little at the same time; it is concurrently so powerful and so fragile. It is capable of deploying unprecedented technological power, yet it cannot guarantee development that is balanced in legal, social or environmental terms. The world is facing a set of risks that feel both wholly new and eerily familiar. We have seen a return of ‘older’ risks – inflation, cost-of-living crises, trade wars, capital outflows from emerging markets, widespread social unrest, geopolitical confrontation and the spectre of nuclear warfare – which few…

Today’s world is consistently described by the dominance of national interests, a low degree of multinational combined efforts as well as a decoupling of the Global South. In a highly individualized world, people are losing trust in politics, administration and public media. At the global level, this is also weakening the role of nation states, so that various interest-driven actors – from companies and lobbyists to civil society groups and numerous regional and local entities – are stepping into this gap. Urban areas in particular are becoming actors in their own right on the world stage, so that overall one…

The grand challenge of our time: to achieve the transition to a -global- economy that supports a just society within ecological boundaries. The transition implies redefining economic and financial logic to preserve, regenerate, and enhance our renewable resources, ecosystems, and their biodiversity and related ecosystem dynamics. It is now increasingly understood that continuing along development pathways based on global, linear, fossil-based and GDP-oriented economic progress is literally unrealistic to expect this model to continue forever. There is also clear evidence that the increase in global GDP over the past few decades has not led to significant economic progress for most:…