The sudden collapse of empires

[...] empires do not in fact appear, rise, reign, decline, and fall according to some recurrent and predictable life cycle. It is historians who retrospectively portray the process of imperial dissolution as slow-acting, with multiple overdetermining causes. Rather, empires behave like all complex adaptive systems. They function in apparent equilibrium for some unknowable period. And then, quite abruptly, they collapse.

Niall Fergusson makes an interesting point in Foreign Affairs, even though he can only back it up with anecdotal evidence.

Posted via email from Nico Luchsinger

Demystification vs. disenchantment

I attended the DLD conference in Munich in January, a great get-together of internet, design and marketing types (and lots of other people), glamourously organized by Burda, a German media company.

On the train back, I wrote a blog post about the conference (in German) that I entitled "The demystification of the digital world", referring to the concept of demystification ("Entzauberung") as introduced by the German sociologist Max Weber in the early years of the 20th century.

I had written about demystification before, describing it as a crucial skill for the 21st century. Demystification as Weber understands it is the notion that everything in our world is theoretically understandable - that there are no myths anymore. In the context of DLD and the digital world, I used the expression to describe the notion that - theoretically - (almost) everything is now technologically possible. This leads to a shift in focus from the "How" to the "Why". We are less impressed by technological breakthroughs just because they are breakthroughs, and increasingly start asking the question what the new technologies are actually good for.

I believe that Weber saw demystification as something very positive, and I also see the demystification of the digital world as a positive development that shifts focus to more relevant questions. I was thus surprised when I found out (through reading «Chief Culture Officer» by Grant McCracken, who references Weber) that the German word "Entzauberung" that Weber uses is translated into english as "disenchantment" - which to me has a clearly negative connotation.

I am, however, not a native English speaker, so here's my question: Does the word "disenchantment" really have negative connotations in English, and does as a result of this maybe even Webers concept have a negative connotation?

Posted via email from Nico Luchsinger

Netflix presentation on corporate culture

http://www.slideshare.net/jpelliott/netflix-a-culture-of-high-performance

The presentation isn't new, but I've been talking about it yesterday with Fabian and just wanted to make sure I'll find it again in the future, so I'm posting it here.

Posted via email from Nico Luchsinger

Eine Ehrenrettung der historischen Selbstzweifel


Der Lichthof der Universität Zürich - Foto von notfrancois (Flickr)

In dreieinhalb Wochen endet mein Studium in Geschichte an der Universität Zürich; und heute ist meine letzte Kolumne für das Historiker-Magazin "Etü" erschienen. Sie argumentiert, dass Selbstzweifel im Studium (zumal dem der Geschichte) nicht nur unvermeidbar, sondern unabdingbar sind - und widerspricht damit zumindest teilweise der Kolumne, die ich vor etwa einem Jahr verfasst habe.


Eine Ehrenrettung der historischen Selbstzweifel

Es ist ein beliebtes Spiel, Studierende bestimmter Fachrichtungen anhand ihrer gemeinsamen Merkmale zu beschreiben: Juristinnen tragen High-Heels, Ökonomen Poloshirts und Ethnos haben alle Rastas und Palästina-Tücher. Für Geschichtsstudenten hingegen scheint es kein eindeutiges äusserliches Merkmal zu geben. Und trotzdem glaube ich, dass es etwas gibt, dass die meisten von ihnen eint: Grosse Selbstzweifel.

Des Historikers (und der Historikerin) Selbstzweifel manifestieren sich dabei auf ganz unterschiedlichen Ebenen: Gibt es eine historische Wahrheit, und wenn ja, können wir sie finden? Ist historische Forschung überhaupt relevant? Und: Was ist der Nutzen der Historie für das Leben? Geschichtsstudenten, so schien mir oft, zelebrieren diese Selbstzweifel geradezu mit einer ans Zynische grenzenden Gleichgültigkeit über die Relevanz des eigenen Tuns.

Und obwohl ich dieses Ritual selbst oft mitgemacht habe, haben mich die Selbstzweifel auch immer genervt. Sie schienen mir schlicht nicht angebracht (ich habe vor einiger Zeit in diesen Spalten unter dem Titel «Warum Geschichte das beste Studium der Welt ist» gegen sie angeschrieben). Doch jetzt, am Ende eines langen Studiums, ist mir klar geworden: Diese Selbstzweifel sind gut. Mehr noch: Sie sind essentiell. Als Geschichtsstudent soll man nicht seine Selbstzweifel ablegen - sondern, in einer zugegeben etwas paradox anmutenden Selbstspiegelung - nur die Zweifel an seinen Selbstzweifeln.

Denn die Selbstzweifel sind ein Ausdruck der Wissenschaftsauffassung der Geschichte. Geschichte hat sich schon immer sehr intensiv mit sich selbst und ihrer Wissenschaftlichkeit auseinandergesetzt. Dieses Nachdenken führte aber nicht zu einer klaren Methodologie, einer klaren Struktur, einem kohärenten, anwendbaren Gedankengebäude. Es führte, wie das intensives Nachdenken so oft tut, zu einer Reihe von Widersprüchen, zwischen denen sich jede Gewissheit aufzulösen scheint.

Diese Unsicherheit, so bin ich heute überzeugt, ist nur oberflächlich eine Schwäche. Denn sie ist auch die Voraussetzung dafür, akzeptierte Annahmen konstant zu hinterfragen und sich selbst und seine Vorgehensweise gewissermassen laufend neu zu erfinden. In einer sich schnell entwickelnden Welt kann diese spezielle Form von Anpassungsfähigkeit, von Adoption, nur von Vorteil sein.

Ein angehender Geschichtsstudent hat sich vor einiger Zeit per E-Mail bei mir gemeldet und mich um Ratschläge für sein Studium gebeten. Ich habe bis heute nicht geantwortet. Die Selbstzweifel haben mich daran gehindert, eindeutige Tipps zu geben. Der einzige Ratschlag, den ich geben könnte, ist: Liebe deine Selbstzweifel. Sie sind mühsam; aber sie sind es wert.

Posted via email from Nico Luchsinger

Ein SMS von Orange

Mein Mobilfunkanbieter Orange hat mir soeben dieses SMS geschickt.

Ja, Orange - ich bin tatsächlich 27 Jahre alt. Seit dem vergangenen September. Fällt euch das erst jetzt auf? (Ich bin ziemlich sicher, dass ihr mir damals ein Gratulations-SMS geschickt habt.) Und was genau ist die Orange Young Option überhaupt? Habt ihr jetzt schon etwas deaktiviert? Wenn ja, was?

Nichts gegen Kundenkommunikation per SMS - aber das ist doch eher verwirrend als erhellend. Ruft doch nächstes Mal einfach an.

Posted via email from Nico Luchsinger

My online presentation editor misses me

I received the e-mail below from online presentation editor Prezi the other day, and it made me smile. I think that sending out this kind of personal-sounding, funny and maybe slightly quirky messages can be hugely beneficial for services like Prezi. People don't want to be treated as customers; they prefer to be treated as friends. I never got a message like this from PowerPoint.

This also reminded me of the great confirmation e-mail that my good friends at Holstee have created; I've copied it in below.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Prezi <noreply@prezi.com>
Date: Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 5:53 PM
Subject: Prezi misses you!
To: Nico Luchsinger

Header

Prezi misses you!

We noticed you haven't been to prezi.com in a while. Since you've been gone:

* If you're a student or teacher, you can now use Prezi for FREE through our educational license
* New editor: more powerful and easier to use than ever
* Reuse feature: make prezis in less time since you never have to build one from scratch
* Learn Center: tips, tricks, tutorials, and more

This long-distance relationship would be easier for us if we knew:





If you have trouble viewing or submitting this form, you can fill it out online.

©2010 Prezi Inc. | 388 Beale St, Suite 1015, San Francisco, CA | Get support on Prezi | Work at Prezi

The e-mail from Holstee:

Jan 11, 2010
4:17am

Transaction ID 
*******************


Your HOLSTEE order :-)

Hi Nico!

Glad to see you will be one of the first on the block to sport some fresh Holstee gear!

You will look great in your new RubiksShirt $30 (Regularly priced: $40)!

You will receive a confirmation when the shirt is en route: 
Nico Luchsinger
**************, 
Zurich, Zurich 8004
Switzerland

If you have any questions or comments feel free to email or give us a ring at: (505) 500-4656

Best wishes and a big hug!
The Holstee Team

Posted via email from Nico Luchsinger

Notes from the past

Today, while cleaning up my room, I re-discovered a collection of old notebooks of mine. I have been carrying small black notebooks around for the past few years, and used them for pretty much anything. I kept at least some of them and today, I flipped through them again. It’s an awesome way to be remembered of things you have long forgotten; a form of inspiration from the past.

I have taken pictures of some pages I found particularly interesting, and I’ll post them with short explanations or stories here in the next few weeks. I assume that that’s not really of interest to other people but, well, I’ll do it anyway.

The picture above (dated June 2006) is very typical of how my life was structured then (and, in some parts, still is): On the left side, there are notes on the Spanish Inquisition from a class I’ve been taking at the time; the upper right side is a list of tasks mostly related to Polyparty, a big student party I was organizing, and on the lower right is some form of work structure for a company I had founded with some friends then (I’m pretty sure we never implemented the structure, and just from the notes, I don’t really remember what the idea of it was exactly).

Posted via email from Nico Luchsinger

After the trip

For a few days after a trip there's always the battle between the road and the work, and you just have to hope that the beauty of what you are making is worth trading away the beauty of moving, because that's pretty beautiful, too, and it's hard to know which is more worthy of time.

Jonathan Harris writes this in his daily project "Today". 

Posted via email from Nico Luchsinger

Leaning forward in time

Researchers at the University of Aberdeen found that when people were asked to engage in a bit of mental time travel, and to recall past events or imagine future ones, participants’ bodies subliminally acted out the metaphors embedded in how we commonly conceptualized the flow of time.

As they thought about years gone by, participants leaned slightly backward, while in fantasizing about the future, they listed to the fore. The deviations were not exactly Tower of Pisa leanings, amounting to some two or three millimeters’ shift one way or the other. Nevertheless, the directionality was clear and consistent.

Very interesting article from the New York Times relating to how we experience time and space. Thanks to Thierry Blancpain for pointing me to it.

Posted via email from Nico Luchsinger

Multiple selves

 

As we enter the new century, we can see yet another change. Kids do not have multiple memberships so much as multiple selves. They are many people bundled into one. And now we can't tell very much about them from the way they dress. Now  they belong to networks [...], and this is the new locus of the self. These kids are distributed across social worlds and cultural worlds. The days of a definining social group are gone. The days of fixed membership are gone. Indeed, the very idea of a generation may well be over. (emphasis mine)

Interesting quote from the book Chief Culture Officer I'm currently reading. Not sure I agree with all of it, but the notion that "networks are the new locus of the self" has something to it, I guess. Full review of the book to follow.

Posted via email from Nico Luchsinger

The three challenges for Europe

The Abduction of Europa, by Tizian (1562)

I attended a talk by british historian Timothy Garton Ash today on “Europe in a non-European world”. Garton Ash spoke at the University of Zurich, in the same place where, 54 years ago, Winston Churchill famously proclaimed ”Let Europe arise!” Today, given the incredible development of Europe and the European Union, even Churchill would be surprised, said Garton Ash. Yet Europe, he continued, is also in trouble; it faces three big challenges that it must tackle:

The first is the challenge of improving relations with “Islam” (by which Garton Ash mostly meant the Arab states). Turkey, he argued, must become a full member of the European Union; furthermore, it is in Europe’s own vital interest to build a real neighbourhood policy towards the Arab states and help them develop. Without this, Garton Ash warned, the pressure of mass immigration from these states could “tear our society apart”.

The second challenge is what Garton Ash calls the “Renaissance of Asia”. The power that shifted from Asia to Europe 500 years is shifting back to India and, most of all, China. Garton Ash compared the emerging superpowers with 19th-century European states that believe in their absolute sovereignty. Periods of power-shifting have always been periods of war, he warned, a danger that is aggravated because it is likely that China will endure an economic crisis in the near future. To avoid tensions, Garton Ash called for “massive constructive engagement”: European universities, he said, should take in as many Chinese students as they possibly can.

The third challenge, finally, is the global issues; first and foremost global warming. There is a need for collective action, Garton Ash said, but supply of it is still lagging behind. He called for a G-3 - a group consisting of China, the U.S. and the EU - to set a strategic global agenda.

The underlying question with all these challenges is, of course: Why did the European Union do so little until now to tackle them? Europe, concluded Garton Ash, lacks leadership, lacks proper institutions - but most of all, it lacks a coherent public opinion. In fact, the one thing that Europeans have in common is America. Everywhere in Europe, people know what is going on in American politics - much more so than what is going on in other European countries, or even other countries outside Europe. 

The European Union, said Garton Ash, is a victim of its own success. It could only be so successful because it was a vision, a telos - and now that it has been achieved, the problems start to show. Germany, for long a motor of European integration, has become “a second France” (which is to say just a normal European state), because it has lost one of its main reasons to drive forward the European project - unification.

Posted via email from Nico Luchsinger

Some quotes from DLD10


Image by dotdean on Flickr

I attended the DLD Conference in Munich earlier this week. It was my first time, and I'll certainly be back - from all the conferences I've seen so far, DLD is one of the best (my favourite remains LIFT in Geneva though). Here are some noteworthy quotes and thoughts from the conference:

"Whenever media changes, society changes." - Hubert Burda quoting Walter Benjamin.

"It's not about simplicity, but about subtlety." - Jonathan Harris on storytelling.

"Technological feasibility is not a problem anymore. Now, it's about policy." - Dave Morgan from Simulmedia

"The real dangers facing the development of the web in the future are complacency and mystification." - David Gelernter

"If the web is so good in bringing people together, then what the hell are we all doing here?" - David Gelernter again

"Don't listen to the consumer. Surprise the consumer." - some participant at the marketing panel whose name I didn't get.

"There is no web 3.0 yet. We're still in the middle of the web 2.0." - Reid Hoffman

I wrote about DLD in greater detail for my blog at NZZ (in German).

Posted via email from Nico Luchsinger