With 7 days to go the presidential elections in the USA are coming to a close. With ‘important republicans’ supporting Obama it appears to be a done deal. But until the polls close you never know what the result will be. Obama needed almost 2 years to get where he is now. I thought elections culminated on 1 day. It now appears to be an illusion in this era of time-shifting. With postal voting and early voting d-day has changed to deadline. And I expect this presidential election to turn into an anticlimax.

In his Theory-U Otto Scharmer names four different forms of organizational structures that are related to the four different stages of listening (downloading, debating, dialogue and presencing) that we go through while travelling on the journey of the U: the centralized organisation, the decentralized organisation, the network organisation and the ecosystem organisation. To me it was quite an eye-opener to see the network in this row of organizational forms and to reflect on its position and its successor. But is the ecosystem an utopian ideology

Last week I talked to various people, amongst them John Gray, Charles Leadbeater and Daniel Cohen. All interesting talks about society, technology and of course, the economy. I all asked them if they thought we’d come to the end of an era. Namely the end of capitalism. Yes, they all answered, we’ve come to the end of capitalism in the sense of the ‘financial capitalism’: the system that has lead to the build up of tremendous wealth creation in the financial sector. But we are still far from the eradication of capitalism as the ideology on which a society operates…

Climate change front runner Al Gore merely addressed the problem of climate change, he did not have an answer to the problem. Once in a while, when somebody raises the topic of fighting the climate change, I drop the perspectives of our earlier discussed government, business and citizens framework. The conversation usually changes from vague problems and mixed feelings to a far more concrete discussion of how to solve the problem. This switch between wild speculation and a real discussion is only Initiated by offering a few handles. These handles miraculously turned doom thinkers into realists, trying their best to come up with a solution of there own.

In the home of the brave there is a ‘raging battle’ for the next leader. It is no surprise the McCain-Obama battle is getting increasingly nasty. But with endorsements by influential republicans Obama appears to be the clear winner. Voting for a president is usually done once. But in the land of the free democracy has dramatically changed the last year and a half. The Obama campaign has just announced to have reeled in $150 million in funds during september alone. Obama gave the people not 1 vote but many, transforming politics with the true power of networking.

Last week I have visited the ‘Stedelijk in de Stad Bouwkeet’, a project in between the closing down of the temporary location at Central Station and the re-opening of the regular location at Museumplein of the StedelijkMuseum Amsterdam. The project is a container travelling through the city and aims to bring the museum more in touch with its audience, being a meeting point, information centre and lecture location. Last week’s event was about how to set up an exhibition. Besides that I learned something about peer-education and a globalizing modern art scene.

With the global financial crisis everyone is full of ‘responsibility’. The financial institutions should have taken their responsibility, as should have the those who can’t afford the mortgage they have. And if you borrow something you can’t return you are not very responsible. But I think we have not been paying attention to what responsibility actually is. Ever since we consider ourselves enlightened we confuse moral responsibility with responsibility. If you deconstruct responsibility it follows that consensus and regulation are very important. But the essence of responsibility is that it only works when you are held responsibility, perhaps by yourself…

Adobe has developed, or better reintroduced a PDF format that should be resistant to the changes of time.* The demand for standardisation of formats by libraries that want to digitally store and preserve their treasuries is growing. It looks like Adobe is contributing to the Road to Sustainability, but is it just to believe that their standards will hold and be durable? I recon the invention of printing was considered to meet this standard as well, but guess what: PDF! Now lets see what McLuhan would make of this.

After the crash of 1929, U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal initiated a package of transformations on economics reformations. In light of the stock exchange crash of 1929, the package included a growing government influence on the capitalist market. The government had seized the financial tools that controlled the economy and moved away from the idea that “the market knows best”. Sounds familiar… With our latest crash in mind, the question arises what the future is of capitalist system.