Digital threats. The FD (Financieel Dagblad) of 10 February 2021 contains an important article on the digital threats posed by China and Russia. The article argues for more cooperation on a national level between governments, companies and universities to exchange information. It claims that the crown jewels of the Dutch economy are in danger due […]

A Hyperconnected World. According to the WEF (World Economic Forum), we should speak of a Hyper-connected World now that everything is increasingly connected to everything else. Not only people and organizations are connected, also more and more devices (the Internet of Things) are linked to the ever-expanding internet. But technically connected does not mean being […]

The price of digital communication. Step by step, the world is changing toward a hyper-connected, digital world. Everyone and everything is connected, through a system of thousands of systems, running on the Internet. A poor smartphone owner in Mozambique can receive free online education, improving his hopeless situation. An entrepreneur in France trades effortlessly with […]

Trump offline. The Big Tech firms in the US have denied President Trump access to their platforms. And immediately, of course, there were all kinds of reactions. Are these firms allowed to deny private individuals, and perhaps especially a President, access to their platforms? Answer: yes they may, at least in the US. They are […]

reflections on digitalization and society Free book preview The fluid society is a name for the digital society that humanity will grow towards in the coming years. Over the last ten years I have written many columns about the digital transformation of society, comparing the old situation with ice cubes – the nation-states – melting […]

Prolonged low inflation. Recently, economists have questioned why inflation remains low for a long time, while it is expected that when the economy picks up, inflation will also rise due to higher wages, higher energy costs and resource use. At the moment the economy is apparently behaving differently than “normal”. The question is asked whether […]

Disinformation. The world is flooded with ever-increasing amounts of disinformation. According to the American technology researcher Aviv Ovadya, this could eventually cause the world to go under. He coined the term infocalyps for this purpose. The huge amount of disinformation is intended to put us on the wrong track when it comes to information. The […]

Physically living here, but mentally being somewhere else. In the digitalizing world, it is becoming ever easier to live in one place and work – digitally – in another. It is also becoming ever easier to live in a random place and stay connected to your homeland and culture. At one time it used to […]

Technology has no political attention in Europe. It is not only busy political agendas that are blocking the recognition of the importance of global digitization and the will to steer it. There are simply interests for both large and small countries to give something relatively new such as “technology” or “digitization” no place in the […]

There are too many people. Many of us are working hard on the big problems the world is struggling with: climate problems, sustainability, biodiversity, migration problems. However, the dominant cause of all these problems is the – too often forgotten – fact that there are far too many human beings in this world. And we […]