Out of every car sold, 50% is not going to private users but to lease-companies. Lease-drivers don’t pay for fuel so there is no incentive to start driving a hybrid car. As a private users, you are taxed on the vehicle retail-price, not its usage. So indeed you get a little bonus on purchasing a less-bad-for-environment car but why don’t we tax the consumption of the car. Wetter you drive an expensive car or a cheap car seems to me less relevant than the fuel its using and the polution its creating. Interestingly enough there are many many initiatives for hybrid cars out there… just not with the Big car manufacturers…

Business has innovated the traditional light bulb. Much of the old bulb’s consumed energy was being wasted on producing heat in stead of light (aprox. 95%). So business innovated and came up with these energy saving lamps (”spaarlampen”). Great. Even our Dutch minister Jacqueline Cramer is fuly promoting their use. Supposingly being good for the environment. Oke, they cost a bit more, their light color is still under much improvement and most existing lamps in which these new bulbs are placed aren’t quite fit to handle the size of the new lightbulb, resulting in something that the lamp’s designer obviously didn’t intended to do, BUT there are good for the environment…

Yesterday I had a conversation with Grant McCracken. Grant is an anthropologist deeply interested in the impact new technologies and the digital era are having on our culture. Plus he’s the author of several books on the matter including his latest: ‘Transformations: identity construction in contemporary culture’. Grant beautifully describes all the transformations of the individual from traditional societies to the post-modern era. In my opinion that has led to what I would call hyper-individualism…

At this moment we are very occupied with what a network is. Everyone has a sense of what a network is but most are unable to give a definition. An interesting angle Arjan recognized was to see it as a paradigm and look from the perspective of a development model. First we saw everything as a machine, that changed to system and now we are starting to shift to a network way of regarding the world. It doesn’t mean a system is obsolete. Some systems might be networks, but some networks are definatelly past the system-point in their development. HIV/AIDS show how these ways of thinking change how the disease can be treated.

I don’t mean Internet in the sense of a global network which can connect every person, but a market completely based on open standards and supported by open source software, of which no entity has complete control. Every company will be able to compete in such a market and the users would not be locked into any certain companies technology.

I wanted to share this short piece of audio of an interview with Ewald Vanvugt. He is coming weeks going to give three lectures on the history of our culture, especially on our role in colonial times, something that is under-represented in our view on history. Just listen for 5 minutes how he draws a straight line from Europeans crossing the ocean for the Lord, to bring Christianity, later civilization, than trade, now democracy? Always with the excuse that a ‘tiran’ need to be removed from the devil to the tribal chief, to current dictators? - If you are interested, he just wrote a book ‘Zwartboek van Nederland overzee’.

‘Wie zijn verleden niet kent, kan zijn heden niet begrijpen en zijn toekomst niet vormgeven‘ - Historian Johan Huizenga

“Online social networks form around social objects and if those social objects are absent, the social network will be in trouble and most likely cease to exist.” Such was the premise of Jyri Engeströms presentation at the opening day of the Dutch new media conference Picnic08. People don’t meet randomly according to sociologist Engeström, they form around shared objects of interest, such as photo’s on Flickr, video’s on YouTube and status updates on Twitter. It’s an interesting line of thought to see what will happen if those social objects are taken away: would the network really collapse, and if so: is it really a network?

After yet another restless attempt to watch something decent on television, and flipping dozens of channels, I turned to the Internet for some satisfacting. After browsing ten’s of online video portal and peer-to-peer on demand video channels, and becomming increasingly restless I just wondered: what would a television-navigator look like? What is the brandname that filters the millions of pieces of content to my personal satisfaction, and is there such a thing even possible?

We are all still a bit in shock what is happening in the financial worlds. A dutch newspaper opened today with the announcement that capitalism has just got a serious injection of socialism. Two companies that did not get the full socialist treatment were Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. Both these companies were sold at a bargain. And it is save to assume that this price is only for the bricks&mortar. It is somewhat ironic that the data centers are a significant portion of what is left. For it is the datacenter that has enabled the creation of the complex financial products instrumental to the difficulties the financial market is in today.