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Certainty
A society on the move, both localising and globalising, where companies are looking for new economic models and where individuals aren’t sure whether what they learned in 2012 is still true in 2013. Politics coerced by the illusions of the day into serving the illusions of the day, media joining in happily. It all makes…
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Column: From Enlightment to Aggravation
There are more of us here now than ever before. We are tearing down national borders and language barriers; information, knowledge and ideas are now stored forever. We live to be older, maybe even wiser, and thanks to social media, we can be part of it from a very young age on: nobody needs to…
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‘I want to discover the world. I’ll learn to let go of my fear of sleeping on the streets.’
They’re the three young musketeers. Their eloquent and often contrarian views have made them into national celebrities. Sywert van Lienden (21), who wants to demolish the Dutch political establishment. Gadget guru Alexander Klöpping (25), who also makes many a lady’s heart overclock. And possibly the most versatile of the three, Danny Mekić (25). Internet entrepreneur,…
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Solidarity
Last week, Dutch politicians Pechtold and Krol proposed a motion to make the job market a nicer place for people over 50. Nicer at whose expense, though? A brief look in the Oxford English Dictionary will tell you that solidarity is a two-way street, but this word is increasingly being used to refer to a…
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Own your own data
Two years ago, Mark Zuckerberg made a bold statement. Privacy is a thing of the past, the founder of Facebook declared. A “social norm” that “has evolved over time.” Could that be true? written by Reinier Kist, NRC Handelsblad Barely a day passes without the media reporting on a database leaking large amounts of personal…
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Stop censorship for students and scientists in Groningen
The University of Groningen blocks Bittorrent, a file exchange protocol. This is a violation of academic freedom, Danny Mekic’ states. In 1158, the University of Bologna, the oldest university in Europe, accepted the Constitutio Habita, a manifesto written by Frederick I of Hohenstaufen, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. This manifesto described students’ and scholars’…