In a world that is confronted with climate change, instant wars, collapsing banks, global terrorism and an oil price that is jumping up and down, the old ways of doing things just don’t work anymore. ICT has enabled us to link everything together. A digital layer of connections has merged with our old infrastructures of trains, plains and boats creating a network that has simply become to large and complex to grasp. We can no longer take the machine apart to understand its parts. Are we just going to pretend nothing is wrong, sit down and brace for impact?  Dealing with that kind of complexity has to be done bottom-up, believing in adaptiveness, self learning and letting go of control. We need new tools, new ideas, a new generation and above all, new leadership. But how are you to define a strategy in such an age of uncertainty? For a study on the Future of Work FreedomLab partnered once more with ViNT , the institute that explores the impact of new technologies.

Africa is a developing region, trying to climb from the bottom up. Many regions on the African continent are suffering from extreme climates, environmental degradation, colonial trauma, language barriers, HIV, illiteracy, poverty, famine, artificial borders, dictators and armed conflicts. But at the same time, Africa is also a continent of tremendous unleashed potential of natural resources, human capital and economic activities. For several years in a row now, Africa is the fastest growing region in the roll-out of ICT infrastructure, especially mobile. In FreedomLab’s new study into this continent we sketch a thorough picture on the status quo of many of the aspects of the African growth dynamics. And we’ll discuss the hurdles as well as the tremendous opportunities.

Bunga bridges the gap between social footprint (what a company is) and the company itself (identified by name or synonym) in any web accessible context. Everyone can get a footprint anywhere on the web.

Everyone, in society, leaves his footprints. Some of these are good, and some of them not. As responsible members of this society we look at ourselves. We believe disclosure (being transparent) is necessary to ‘report’ to society. Disclosure is not always voluntary. In this connected world a covering up is increasingly difficult. But we thought we could take this principle of transparency one step further. We created Bunga!

‘Me the Media’ deals with user generated content and the questions it raises. Like:

• If everybody is in control, than who is in charge?
• If the medium has just become a medium, than where is the message?
• How do we deal with the fact that mass-media turn into a media-mass?
• ….

FreedomLab partnered with Vint in a visual-experiment. We tried to visualize the history, present and future of media by applying a kind of Dogma-style rules. Could we visualize the book in ten minutes by using 100% YouTube material

NextGeneration Study

A study researching the digital lives of generation risk. We had our kids panel elaborate on themes like virtual friends, downloading, Second Life and corporate blogging.

Who determines your near future?

New technologies enable new tools from cars to trains and computer chips. All have an impact on our experience of space and time. The world becomes more transparent and decentralized. It becomes smaller and our lives more efficient. or doesn’t it?

How has globalization changed our world?

In this documentary we studied the effects of globalization on society. As Thomas Friedman has suggested, this development has led to a world in which everybody can work together and in which everybody is equal. But is that really the case? A panel of five experts share their thoughts on the changes in a globalized world.