The human-technology symbiosis has brought us prosperity and adversity, and through the massive scaling that has arisen, we now face global problems (environment, climate, technological totalitarianism / technological iatrogenesis, lack of meaning) that we can’t solve with our nearly 300,000 year old psycho-biological “hardware”.
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Populists deny the problems we face ecologically and pass them on to the next generations. In this article I discuss 4 populist statements 1. The Netherlands for the Dutch, 2. The “ordinary” Dutch person is entitled to his/her prosperity, 3. The Netherlands is full, no more asylum seekers and 4. Our national level of education is superior - I will contradict it here, light of the numbers. I conclude that the figures and statistics show that these claims cannot hold up at all with the available evidence.
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The basic theme of the book is what causes nations to fail where others succeed. The authors argue that the political institutions have a determining impact on the establishment of economic institutions.
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There's a growing recognition that the mainstream economic system contributes to environmental degradation and climate change. This jeopardizes human prosperity and poses existential risks for all life forms. Not waiting for global politics to solve the problems, Regenerative Placemakers show that we can organize ourselves differently. They engage with realigning human systems to work within planetary boundaries as a well-being economy. However, they face challenges, such as incorporating non-human voices and embracing the complexity of co-creation. Our transdisciplinary, exploratory research project aims to incorporate a lifecentric worldview in the collective transformation process when investigating: What tools, methods, and approaches the Stewards of Place could use to embody the ecosystems thinking and be able to integrate the needs and perspectives of nature in a process of decision-making, such that it is understandable and fitting for different types of contexts? Our research focuses on fostering a post-anthropocentric outlook, where human identity merges with broader ecosystems. Through the development of methodologies, we seek pathways to coexist harmoniously within diverse natural habitats, prioritizing ecosystem health. This perspective fundamentally shifts worldviews, placing ecosystem well-being at the forefront. Our goal is to cultivate an integrated approach to living that acknowledges and respects the interconnectedness of all life forms. Consortium Partners: Practice Partners are Regenerative Placemakers, referred to as Stewards of Place: Impact033's, IMPACT024's, and Oosterhout SDG's Local. Together with WEAllNL, they are optimizing conditions for innovative, regenerative leadership in the "Plekathon” pilot project, which will serve as a Living Lab for this participatory research. Changemaker: Stichting Wellbeing Economy Alliance Nederland (WEAllNL)- Bas Poppel leading development of a learning community of practice. Knowledge Partners: Avans’ Economy in Common Research Group: Lector Dr. Godelieve Spaas and researcher Ewelina Schraven, Miranda van Gendt (Plekmakers_), Luea Ritter (World Ethic Forum), and Nature as an Advisor, Inspiration, and Stakeholder.
Client: ERA-NET Cofund Smart Cities and Communities, JPI Urban EuropeUrban tourism generates income for cities and create opportunities for its businesses and employment for its residents. However, it can also lead to overcrowding, pollution, noise and numerous other problems, thus reducing quality of life for residents and other local stakeholders and potentially leading to public discontent. This project introduces SCITHOS as a concept that consists of guidelines and tools to help cities find solutions to make the transition towards environmentally and socially responsible urban tourism that simultaneously contributes to long-term prosperity.Within SCTHOS this is done by combining hospitality principles, simulation tools, apps and serious gaming techniques to support policymakers and other stakeholders in generating collaborative deep reflections about barriers to sustainable urban tourism and the need for transition or adaptation strategies. The project supports the assessment of intervention strategies based on an interactive simulation-supported multi-stakeholder approach that triggers social learning and behavior change, while stimulating shared governance and smart citizenship.Guidelines/ tools and the full concept are developed through a series of living labs and field experiments in participating cities. What is more, a Smart City Hospitality network is set up to ensure accessibility to this concept, including all tools and experiences with using them. The final results of the projects are presented 10 and 11 September 2019 in Vienna, as a pre-session to the popular annual Tourism conference (TOURMIS).
The project proposal focuses on Virtual Humans (VHs) emerging as a Key Enabling Technology (KET) for societal prosperity. VHs (or embodied, digital, intelligent agents) are highly realistic and highly interactive digital representations of humans in entertainment of serious applications. Most known examples – beyond video games and virtual media productions – are virtual influencers, virtual instructors, virtual news readers, and virtual doctors/patients in health care or therapy. It is increasingly difficult for academic and applied researchers, let alone for users and policymakers, to keep up with the technological developments, societal uses, and risks of VHs. Due to its expertise in game technology, immersive media, and applied AI, BUas is one of the leading partners of the regional Virtual Human Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) agenda. MindLabs coordinates this agenda with BUas, Fontys Uas, and Tilburg University as principal partners. The multidisciplinary RDI agenda integrates design and engineering research, use case applications and evaluation as well as ethics and critical societal reflection. This regional Virtual Humans agenda, however, is not (yet) linked to the EU RDI agenda. Collaboration on Virtual Humans RDI is not yet well established in EU institutions and networks. The aim of this project is to 1) strengthen (our) European-knowledge position on VHs by joining and building networks to find out what the research and innovation agenda on VHs looks like; 2) Conduct one or more experimental studies on empathic interaction between real- and virtual humans to develop a multidisciplinary R&D agenda (pilot title: 'Virtual Humans – Real Emotions'); 3) Develop the ideas, content and partnerships for strong EU-funded RDI proposals In the VESPER project, we partner up with researchers and knowledge institutes the Humbolt University and the University of Bremen in Germany and Howest in Belgium.
