Giddens on a new kind of growth

Just stumbled on this piece written by Anthony Giddens in Huffington post as part of the launch of his new book on the politics of climate change:

"Jobs will be created not so much through renewable technologies themselves as through the lifestyle changes that coping with climate change and energy security will bring about. Sensibilities will change and with them tastes. The new economy that will emerge will be even more radically post-industrial than the one we have now. It will be up to entrepreneurs to spot the economic opportunities that will come about with expansion -- much in the same way as ways were found to revitalize dockland areas where shipping industry has evaporated away.

Pondering what form recovery from recession should take should cause us to think seriously about the nature of economic growth itself, at least in the rich countries. It has been known for a long while that, above a certain level of prosperity, growth does not necessarily lead to greater personal and social welfare. Now is the time to introduce more rounded measures of welfare alongside GDP and give them real political resonance. Now is the time for a sustained and positive critique of consumerism that can be made to count politically. Now is the time to work out how to ensure that recovery does not mean a reversion to the loads-of-money society.

The period of Thatcherite deregulation is over. The state is back. We will need active industrial policy and planning, in respect to economic institutions but for climate change and energy policy as well".

President who?

It seems telling that the first president of the European Union is likely to be someone I've never heard of.

De første 3 kapitler af min bog er nu online (!)

Sorry, this is in Danish to announce that the drafts of the first 3 chapters of my book in progress are now online.
Det er skitser, som det vil fremgå. De hænger sammen, men det er første vrid, så det er stadig lidt råt.
De kan læses her

No wonder things are tight

No wonder things are tight, if everybody cuts spending and redouble their sales efforts

Our new website is online

We just launched the new design of our website at danfossuniverse.com/impact

Microsoft's Craig Mundie on managing privacy

Among the sessions at this years Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum was a panel on "The new digital experience". Interesting stuff. In particular I think Craig Mundie of Microsoft has a very succinct description of the real issue regarding managing privacy:
"The technology will result in us collecting and remembering a huge amount of data, and over time we will ultimately find beneficial ways of using this. People can certainly speculate that there are evil ways to use and exploit data, and the question I think will become: how can we find a manageable way for people to declare their intent about each class of data and each class of service that they subscribe to?
And to the extent that we can get that agreed on and that becomes platformized, so you’re not facing a hundred different ways to express that intent, then I think these issues will come under control.
There are definite business tensions, because it’s easy to build certain business models that presume that you have almost surreptitious collection of information – and of course government intelligence business, that’s what they do for a living.
So at some level you have to realize the world is going to be a sea of data, and the real question related to privacy is going to be, how does the user get to specify what they think their ownership rights are in that data - no matter who collected it.
And I think these are questions that are not clear in the law and in the policy and that’s really gotta be the focus of the discussion. "

Here is the link to the podcast

Don't copy Lessig

A little observation: Lawrence Lessigs latest book "Remix" is not creative commons licensed.

Fast Company names Danfoss Universe "architectural wonder"

Fast Company magazine has named the Cumulus exhibition building at Danfoss Universe one of ten "architectural wonders of the world" in 2008. I guess that proves that you can make a mark globally, even in Nordborg, Denmark.

(Lots of) Keywords for my book

My original intention was to write this coming book in English, but thinking closer through the practical issues I've decided to start out in Danish, and then hopefully it will be such a massive hit that the English will kinda happen automatically...
So at moment the script is a weird mix of Danish and English. The "skeleton" of the book; my list of all the headlines for paragraphs, is still mostly in English - and I've posted it here.
I've also written a 5-page abstract. The Danish version is here. The English version is here, or you can read on this blog a few postings back.