Over the years, ever since Chris Anderson published his book ‘The Long Tail’ in 2006, he has been criticized by some about his conclusions. Grant McCracken has pointedly debated with Chris about the impossibility of a ‘million niches’, leading in his opinion to niches of ones, and therefore unprofitable, unlike Anderson likes to suggest. Recently associate professor at Harvard Business School, Anita Eberse, has conducted research and comes to similar conclusions. What does that mean for the tail everybody seems to want to have these days?

Environmental concerns have emerged as a dominant driver of global corporations, combining impulses to be good stewards of the planet with profit maximization. Any company with a supply chain, especially those operating globally, must either reduce oil consumption or rapidly see profits eaten up by fuel bills. Green means business.

My OpenMoko has arrived! Finally, after much anticipation, I have my own Neo FreeRunner. I knew we would be in for some serious work to transform it into a phone. But like the early days of installing Linux from floppy it is scary but incredible fun. An open project hides nothing, not even the mistakes that are made. But it evolves at great speed, especially with the increasing activity in ‘the community.’ It will take some time for my FreeRunner to catch up or overtake the iPhone. Until than I will use it as a phone…

For China the big question in the post-olympic decade will be if they can hold the gigantic country together while probably having to learn to deal with hyper-growth, at least one financial crisis, and continuous democratization - Chinese style. Therfor The Communist Party of China is seeking for a national identity and is turning to its authentic history. During the spectacular olympic opening it were not  revolutionary heroes like Mao or Deng Xiaoping who were celebrated. No, Chinese officials prefer to emphasize its ancient philosopher in becoming the figurehead for China’s new national identity: Confucius.

Ronald Dworkin is American legal philosopher and currently Professor at University College London and the New York University of Law. In his work he tries to develop a system of distributive justice. Part of his distributive justice system he needs a concept of equality and a definition of freedom, in the political sense. From a philosophical standpoint it is problematic he introduces morality and subjectivity, but from a political standpoint he is recently (2007) awarded for his contributions in ‘grounding law in morality’. (Freedom in the Liberal Tradition.)

Last week we discussed the theme of interdependency within the context of the Fromm model. That has led to an angle shedding light on the aspect of control and trust within an interdependent community. I have stated language to be one the most interdependent systems humans have created and argued for the importance of trust within such an interdependent system, a trust in each other, but more on a trust in the system and its truthfulness.

For some time now more and more businesses have become truly globalized. They use local people and local development, far abroad. These businesses have their products manufactured in cheap labor nations as it renders higher profitability. But globalization has only been possible due to this cheap labor, due to cheap transportation and increased transparency . The first two conditions are changing as current developing nations render high inflation numbers and today’s rising fuel prices. Will we see a return to the local marketplace?

‘China Paradox‘ is a festival around the topic of art and journalism in China. The two day festival was illustrated with films and discussion and was a meeting place for native Chinese, oversees Chinese and others like me who are interested in China. After the first sessions of films I would have proposed ‘China Disorientation’ as a good title for the festival. The films showed a Chinese identity for which I couldn’t find a place. Definitely there was some sort of paradox in it, but that paradox was so heterogeneous and ambiguous that it did not meet my binary expectation of a paradox any longer. But the paradox is maybe not to be found in the message, but rather in the medium and the receiver…

If I were to have to choose a new university career the University of Amsterdam has exactly my curriculum, I think. Next year they will start with Future Planet Studies. It is a bachelor of 3 years and part of the Bèta-gamma program (meaning your education is physics (natuurkunde) oriented.) Very interesting, especially since they claim to teach the student abilities to formulate visions for the future of the planet. They don’t educate truth, they educate skills to deal with tomorrow.