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In Energy and Environment, FreedomLab Insights, Media, Sport

Hegemonic shift makes the European Super League inevitable

Written by Sjoerd Bakker
May 12, 2021

The European Super League was supposed to result in multiple blockbuster matches every week. Yet, the plan was met with lots of anger by European football (soccer) fans and officials. Within two days, most of the founders withdrew their support.

European fans felt that more than a century of football history and culture was about to be swept aside in favor of mere commercial interests. However, as part of the ongoing hegemonic shift of global (economic) power from the West to the East, non-European viewers will come to dominate global football viewership. Hence, their preferences are bound to determine the future of European club football. While European viewers may still be interested in their local team and national leagues, international (e.g. Asian and American) viewers seem to only be interested in games between the biggest clubs and the very best players. As such, it is hard to imagine how European football will be able to withstand these tectonic forces in the future.

Burning questions:

  • Regardless of the commercial rationale behind these plans, could a well-designed pan-European football league perhaps contribute to a sense of European unity?
FreedomLab
In Economy, FreedomLab Insights, Media, Technology and Innovation

Elon Musk – What does his popularity tell us about 21st century leadership?

Written by Pim Korsten
May 12, 2021

In his opening monologue on Saturday Night Live, Elon Musk revealed he has Asperger’s syndrome. Most likely, this revelation will be used to explain his provocative appearances, mysterious tweets and memestocks and possibly even his crypto allegiances or idiosyncratic products. Yet, instead of framing him as an anomaly, we may also consider Musk a model of typical 21st century leadership.

It could be argued that our metamodern age and the complex, wicked problems of the 21st century demand new types of leadership. Also, 21st century leaders are expected to use the tools offered by the information age. They can use these (e.g. memes) to inspire and unite people in the pursuit of a utopian vision or idea to make and build a better future, to grasp the attention of large but heterogeneous groups of listeners and users in a captivating way. Leaders of countries, organizations, and communities that embody (some of) these qualities could likely become the new “metamodern heroes” of our time. In this spirit, we have already identified Trumpism as a political force that is therefore here to stay, as Trump and his paradigm hold many of these qualities. Musk could be another example, with more to come.

Burning questions:

  • Does leadership actually make a meaningful impact in, for example, business, politics and sport clubs, or are change and success largely determined by systemic, anonymous structures?
  • What are the metamodern leadership qualities that are becoming important in our time?
  • What is the relationship between technology and leadership?
FreedomLab
In China, Corona, Economy, FreedomLab Insights, Health, Society and Culture

Building national character based on trauma

Written by Alexander van Wijnen
April 22, 2021

Since the beginning of the coronacrisis, there has been a lively debate on the successful handling of the pandemic in East Asia. In March 2020, we argued that we have to look beyond the idea of “strong governments” to explain why East Asia has coped well. Commentators, however, still point to the political leadership, social trust and state capacity of these countries to explain their success. Yet Western countries that share those characteristics have performed much worse. The key factor that seems to determine success in handling the pandemic is the historical lesson learned by East Asia in 2002/3 with SARS, another coronavirus. Interestingly, one of the most important lessons China learned with SARS is to overcome “impediments to the flow of information through the governmental hierarchy”.

Two years later, China launched its mass surveillance system to boost the flow of information for governments. Fifteen years later, China has been much better prepared for COVID-19 as rapid tracking and testing prevented the virus from spreading like in the Western world. Overall, we can explain the success of East Asia in terms of national character. However, instead of traditions of leadership, trust and capacity, national character also seems to be shaped by far more recent historical experiences.

Burning questions:

  • How will COVID-19 change the national characters of Western countries?
  • To what extent is the outperformance of East Asian governments part of a bigger competitive edge of these countries – and what does that mean for the future?
FreedomLab
In Corona, Economy, FreedomLab Insights

The not-so-bright future after the pandemic

Written by Sjoerd Bakker
April 22, 2021

In the West, we may be able to end the coronavirus pandemic this year, but a combination of problems could come to haunt us in the years to come. First of all, the virus will probably never really go away and may even force us into new lockdowns periodically. Especially as long as the virus is able to mutate and spread from other, developing countries. Second, governments are building up huge amounts of debt. In Europe alone, this amounts to more than €5 trillion and if and when interest rates start to rise again, this could pose serious problems for several countries. Third, groups in society fiercely disagree on strategies and priorities in battling the pandemic; the polarization, mutual distrust and violence will leave societies divided and scarred.

So, while we are all hoping to regain our freedom and restore the economy, the future may look a bit less bright. That is, from a somewhat pessimistic perspective, we’re facing a future in which deeply divided societies will have to figure out whether and how to cut public budgets or invest in new opportunities. Somewhat similar to the 1980s, this situation could easily lead to a prolonged period of economic and societal impasse.

Burning questions:

  • Will lockdown savings, due to travel bans and other brakes on spending, be spent as soon as lockdowns ease? Can such spending prevent a long term economic impasse?
  • Will nations remain divided after the pandemic or are we able to reunite? What kind of grand narrative could help societies overcome current divisions?
FreedomLab
In Economy, FreedomLab Insights, Media, Technology and Innovation

Digital advertising in a post-cookie world

Written by Pim Korsten
April 2, 2021

As Google is slowly phasing out cookies on Chrome and Apple is making the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) opt-in, the online advertising landscape is slowly moving to a post-cookie world. Overall, this will be an improvement for consumers. The cookie era has created an opaque system of programmatic advertising between advertisers and consumers. The incomprehensible mire of players and mechanisms has led to two decades of hardly effective marketing and a strong invasion of the privacy of uninformed or ignorant consumers.

So, what will be next? The industry is already on its way to finding alternatives that bundle data across sites and apps, such as Unified ID 2.0. Furthermore, as first-party data and alternative identifiers such as email and phone number become more relevant, the dominant ad networks of Google and Facebook are likely to benefit and strengthen their duopoly. Third, Google, Apple and others are claiming that they will bring privacy-friendly advertising and metric measurement tools to the market, using cohorts instead of individuals to target audiences and decentralizing the storage of data. Fourth, we might see a partial return to the roots of advertising, with contextual data and situation taking precedence over personal data.

Burning questions:

  • How will small publishers, websites and app developers, who strongly rely on third party trackers and cookies to function or grow, survive in this world? Is an alternative subscription-based business model a viable option for these smaller players of the internet?
  • Which problems will be solved and which new problems will arise when companies such as Google and Apple use cohorts instead of individuals to target audiences?
  • Will the world be better or worse off in terms of privacy if the duopoly of Facebook and Google benefits from this shift to a post-cookie world?
FreedomLab
In Economy, FreedomLab Insights, Geopolitics, Politics, Society and Culture

The European Deep Transition Strategy

Written by Sebastiaan Crul
April 2, 2021

A lot has been written about the unfolding European Digital Strategy to reclaim the digital sphere from private interests and make it more equitable and fair. However, the EU is also becoming a regulatory superpower in the non-digital realm. This month, for example, the European Parliament paved the way for new European legislation that stresses corporate accountability and due diligence for human rights within value chains.

Furthermore, the ECB aspires to become a pioneer in fighting climate change, by slashing bond purchases by heavy carbon emitters and advancing “green bonds” and integrating climate risk in its stress tests for the banking sector. And last year, the EU adopted new “eco-design measures” that should make it easier to repair – rather than replace – old household appliances, such as washing machines, dishwashers and refrigerators. All these measures are meant to create more equitable and sustainable consumer practices, production processes, and value chains in the real economy. As such, the EU is leveraging the “Brussels Effect” to begin to establish the meta-rules of the Second Deep Transition.

Burning questions:

  • Will other countries follow Europe’s example or will this legislation cause more geopolitical friction?
  • Does the EU have the coherence and unity to push and enforce all legislation?
  • What is the goal or set of meta-rules that the EU has in mind?
FreedomLab
In Economy, Filtering the Future, FreedomLab Insights, Technology and Innovation

Harvest now, decrypt later

Written by Sjoerd Bakker
March 17, 2021

In the coming decade, quantum computers will likely break current modes of encryption. This is not necessarily a problem for future communication and data storage, as cryptography can be made (practically) quantum-proof, but it will retroactively expose data we store and send today. That is, intelligence agencies and hackers are harvesting encrypted data, in the hope that quantum computing will help them to uncover valuable information from it in the future.

Given the fact that quantum computers will be available to institutional users first, governmental agencies will be among the first to decrypt previously harvested data. They will be looking for sensitive or strategic data that could hurt or weaken adversaries. In the long run, as technology becomes available to a broader group of users, non-state actors may take an interest in decrypting data that they can use to blackmail their victims.

While this probably won’t affect the common man so much, as most of us are not of particular interest, high-value targets may have to start worrying about the consequences of having their data exposed.

Burning questions:

  • How much information is truly sensitive after being stored for many years?
  • To what extent does the responsibility to prevent such malign uses lie with developers of quantum computers (and algorithms) and future providers of quantum cloud computing?
  • What will society look like if all of our online data were decrypted and for everyone to see?
FreedomLab
In Economy, FreedomLab Insights, Technology and Innovation

Non-fungible tokens are all the rage

Written by Arief Hühn
March 17, 2021

Do you remember CryptoKitties, the virtual cats that collectors spent thousands of dollars to buy on the blockchain? They seem to have been merely the forerunners of the currently faddish non-fungible tokens (NFTs). In essence, any digital asset that a creator wants to make unique can be turned into an NFT (digital works of art, music, sports moments, and even tweets) and monetized. The NFT acts as a non-duplicable digital certificate of ownership; it will be stored on the blockchain and can be bought and sold like any piece of property. While the digital asset itself will still exist on the Internet, only the buyer of the NFT can call himself the owner of the “original” asset. As such, NFTs can be a financial investment, a sentimental purchase, or a collector’s item. NFTs can even contain smart contracts that, for instance, give the creator a cut of any future sale of the token. Although opinions on NFTs vary, once the hype around the space settles down, the idea of tradable digital assets will be here to stay.

Burning questions:

  • Which industries are next in line to make use of NFTs?
  • How will the tokenization of art and music influence the production and experience of these cultural items?
  • What will be the consequences of the introduction of digital scarcity for digital economies?
  • Will we be able to reliably connect NFTs to physical items?
FreedomLab
In China, Corona, Economy, FreedomLab Insights, Technology and Innovation

The unique strength of Chinese business alliances

Written by Alexander van Wijnen
March 9, 2021

Geely, one of China’s biggest automakers, has announced strategic partnerships with Tencent, Baidu and Faraday Future. Li Shufu, founder of Geely, argues that these partnerships are inspired by the School of Vertical and Horizontal Alliances, a school of thought from ancient China’s Warring States period that urges weaker organizations to cooperate in order to compete with incumbent powers. It may be difficult to determine whether Li’s vision is markedly different from regular strategic cooperation between companies. However, there seems to be a unique quality to the cooperation of Chinese tech firms. Geely, Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba create collective business models to an extent that U.S. tech firms such as Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple do not. Besides the School of Vertical and Horizontal Alliances, the idea of guanxi capitalism, which assigns high importance to interpersonal relationships, further adds to the importance of such cooperation within the Chinese economy. Furthermore, the developmental state tradition of China places the Chinese state at the center of facilitating such cooperation. In the coming years, Chinese business alliances will likely gain importance and could increasingly come to create a global competitive advantage for Chinese tech firms.

Burning questions:

  • To what extent do Chinese business alliances create a competitive advantage over the U.S. and Europe?
  • Does Li’s reference to the School of Vertical and Horizontal Alliances reflect the growing tensions between the Chinese state and Chinese tech firms?
FreedomLab
In Corona, Economy, FreedomLab Insights, Philosophy, Society and Culture

Will a post-corona era arrive in the coming years?

Written by Jessica van der Schalk
March 9, 2021

The phases a society experiences in a crisis are predictable, according to disaster psychology. First, we enter the honeymoon phase: people don’t quite feel the scope of the crisis, nor of its implications and are willing to work together. Then, a period of distrust and depression dawns, in which the gap between community needs and available resources widens. It can get grim: the disillusionment phase follows. In the final phase of reintegration, we adapt to a new reality. We are presently in the phase of disillusionment. According to experts, the pandemic will eventually become endemic, circulating the global population for years to come. However, there are strong indicators (e.g. new variants outsmarting vaccines, the coronavirus being zoonotic) that several more years of social distancing measures will be required before we reach that stage. The call for politicians to stop referring to the current situation as temporary and instead consider it permanent is therefore growing louder. This would allow the phase of reintegration to begin, in which new light can be shed on the costs and benefits of mitigating the impact of the coronavirus.

Burning questions:

  • Will societies reach consensus on ethical issues such as the price each generation must pay for mitigating the impact of the virus or the consequences of refusing to be vaccinated?
  • Will financial aid for certain businesses like airlines, physical stores, etc. continue even if it takes years for their services to be enjoyed again as they could in the pre-coronavirus world?
  • Will people be able to adapt to the reduction of freedom and physical contact that comes with mitigation, or will this result in endless unrest?