(A) In 1973 Mark Granovetter, sociologist at the John Hopkins University, published an unexpected discovery [1]. By interviewing post-grads how they got their first job he found that not family members (strong ties), or advertisements or job bureaus gave them the best suggested directions to find fitting jobs, but just passing far family members or aquaintences had the best ideas who to contact. Granovetter called them “weak ties” to distinguish them from the day to day contacts of “strong ties”. In fact these interpersonal weak ties have great cohesive power and even provide relations between groups.
(B) That is why I coined the term “#Btwieners” for these very valuable weak tie providers. See [2] . They are not weak at all.
These vital civilians :
Are respected and recognized members of more than one tribe / cultural cooperating group. So they can transmit recommendations during team formations to let a certain highly skilled specialist from other tribe to contribute in such holistic co-creating team, consisting of very diverse members.
Can move freely between several tribes, like Gandalf The Grey did, That is why i named these unique people Btwieners.
The result of this network weaving is value creation and STABILITY.
They visit in small teams, repair damaged parts of systems and then travel to other places.
(C) In fact weak links/ weak ties/ btwieners are active all over nature, as shown in the impressive book by prof. Csermely [3]. This book shows that weak links are active in human brains, biochemical systems, ecologies, ant hills, etc,
Summary: How can our societies be stabilized in a crisis? Why can we enjoy and understand Shakespeare? Why are fruitflies uniform? How do omnivorous eating habits aid our survival? What makes the Mona Lisa’s smile beautiful? How do women keep our social structures intact? – Could there possibly be a single answer to all these questions? This book shows that the statement: “weak links stabilize complex systems” provides the key to understanding each of these intriguing puzzles, and many others too. The author (recipient of several distinguished science communication prizes) uses weak (low affinity, low probability) interactions as a thread to introduce a vast variety of networks from proteins to economics and ecosystems. Many people, from Nobel Laureates to high-school students have helped to make the book understandable to all interested readers. This unique book and the ideas it develops will have a significant impact on many, seemingly diverse, fields of study.
(D) How do Btwieners in society develop. The start is that kind people with empathy and certain skills assist and help others to (a) articulate their problem or bottleneck for success. (b) often this results in refering the person that needs assistence to somebody who maybe knows more about this particular problem. It can be shown in practice that the solution will be found within six (6) steps. Or there is none. It is essential that the the fact of good result is messaged back in the chain, so the referers know that it is solved and to know if the right persons where recommended. This is called the “networking activity” and it involves far more than passing business cards. This is where Btwieners appear since referals can cross any border or boundary. The only hing that counts is if a problem can be solved and the shoesize or haircollour of the solver is of no importance at all. (NL:) De Btwieners zelf leren van elk probleem wat ze helpen oplossen en vinden het plezierig als dingen weer werkend kunnen worden gemaakt. En het is steeds weer een verrassing hoe deskundig bijna iederen is die je in je “Netwerk” om hulp vraagt en hen ook weer helpt als zij ergens mee worstelen.
(E) (NL:) Ik beveel u van harte aan om op een van de kandidaten voor het Europese Parlement te stemmen van de partij < @Piratenpartij & @DeGroenen > op 6 Juni 2024, want het zijn stuk voor stuk Btwieners.
Jaap van Till, TheConnectivist
PS. Suggested “sign” for transcultural tie / link : _&_
[1] “The Strength of Weak Ties”, Mark S. Granovetter; American Journal of Sociology Vol. 78, No. 6 (May, 1973) , pp. 1360-1380 (21 pages.
[3] Peter Csermely, “Weak Links: The Universal Key to the Stability of Networks and Complex Systems” (The Frontiers Collection) Springer; 2006th Edition
In order to define a shared vision on the future it is a precondition that you make two mental track switches from the “old thinking” which is grinding to a halt all over the world.
Two ingrained prejudices are no longer valid, furthermore goverments and leaders show they can not cope with “complexity” (interrelatedness of social and economic systems). Living beings and living systems exhibit such emergent behaviour of complexity. These can not be taken apart like mechanical systems to see how they work, because this kills them. Combining them and hoping they exhibit emergent behaviour by synergy is the way forward. That creates value !!
This book has been available since October 2023 as hardcover ,but is now sold out. A pocket edition will be launched on May 15, 2024. And a film version is in preparation.
The full title = “The Invisible Doctrine – The Secret History of Neoliberalism – (& How It Came To Control Your Life)” by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchinson.
The NeoLiberalism = capitalist economic theory, all around us in action under different names: Chicago School of Economics theory, “letting the market do its work”, WEF ideology, et.al. It was very succesfully started by Mrs. Thatcher and Ronald Raegan to revitalise the stuttering social-economic systems in the industrial age. Stuttering from endless union interventions and well intended Labour governments. Neolib provided new incentives to innovate and build successful enterprises with less govt interference. It brought prosperity but now it has run out of steam since the negative effects of it have accumulated. The recipe does not work anymore, and is grinding to a halt. Core activity is that enterpreneurs extract value, with production and sales of their wares and services, at the expense of people and Nature. To name it less friendly, it is a new form of slavery, as Marx warned would result. And it has no regard for what the extraction of raw materials and fossil fuels, water did to Nature. Also waste did not concern them. Again, it provided great incentives and wealth for some but this was distributed very unequally.
The description of this book is as follows:
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We live under an ideology that preys on every aspect of our lives: our education and our jobs; our healthcare and our leisure; our relationships and our mental wellbeing; even the planet we inhabit – the very air we breathe. So pervasive has it become that, for most people, it has no name. It seems unavoidable, like a natural law.
But trace it back to its roots, and we discover that it is neither inevitable nor immutable. It was conceived, propagated, and then concealed by the powerful few. It is time to bring it into the light – and, in doing so, to find an alternative* worth fighting for.
Neoliberalism. Do you know what it is?
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I blog about this book because it is one of the reasons we have to think of alternatives*: different and new ways to create value and live in societies which are part of Nature. I hope to present how that can start in my next blog.
I recommend you pre-order this new book from star journalist Anne Applebaum, because she has reported very brilliant and accurate analyses of what is happening in the societies of Europa and elsewhere. In Hungary, Poland, Russian Federation, but also about the populist political parties in France, Germany and the UK. And she wrote standard books about the Holodomor famine in Ukraine, organised on purpose by Stalin.
In my humble opinion, diktators (and their present day version: networks of control structures) are not feasible in the long run, because a. they have been formed in reaction to the inability to cope with COMPLEXITY. And their remedy to that is simplification, isolation, “cleaning” (jailing and killing civilians), and suppressing diversity and creativity (innovation). And b. they hire loyal people at the expense of competent ones. And c. they suppress any criticism or challengers to their power. The extreme examples of them are Oligarchs, who even fear their own security guards.
Jaap van Till, TheConnectivist
The book is described as follows:
Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
“All of us have in our minds a cartoon image of what an autocratic state looks like, with a bad man at the top. But in the 21st century, that cartoon bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are run not by one bad guy, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, security services and professional propagandists. The members of these networks are connected not only within a given country, but among many countries. The corrupt, state-controlled companies in one dictatorship do business with corrupt, state-controlled companies in another. The police in one country can arm, equip, and train the police in another. The propagandists share resources-the troll farms that promote one dictator’s propaganda can also be used to promote the propaganda of another-and themes, pounding home the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America. Unlike military or political alliances from other times and places, this group doesn’t operate like a bloc, but rather like an agglomeration of companies: Autocracy, Inc. Their relations are not based on values, but are rather transactional, which is why they operate so easily across ideological, geographical, and cultural lines. In truth, they are in full agreement about only one thing: Their dislike of us, the inhabitants of the democratic world, and their desire to see both our political systems and our values undermine. That shared understanding of the world-where it comes from, why it lasts, how it works, how the democratic world has unwittingly helped to consolidate it, and how we can help bring it down-is the subject of this book.”
About the possible effects of AI and more specific the new NVIDIA GPU chipsets evolving on the digital infrastuctures required datarates. And the rollout of wifi 7.
Last week I did read the press releases from NVIDIA that showed their new Blackwell GB200 etc. chips with more power and less energy consumption as the H200 chip family that data centers are installing right now. See: nvidianews.nvidia.com and also take a look at the Keynote of its president Jensen Huang at the GTC developers conf in San Jose. https://www.nvidia.com/gtc/keynote/?nvid=nv-int-unbr-611784
This info makes me dizzy. The speed in which this AI tech in developing is baffling. Journalist still describe this company as producers of GPU’s, but it is much more. Structural changes and breakthroughs in ICT and a lot of other fields are taking place. Like digital biology ! Not just Moore’s Law at work of doubling numbers of transistors but doubling of TerraFlops processing in parallel on images, patterns and videos as in our brains too.
In this case the value chain is: ASML- TSMC- NVIDIA- NLG5 . The real change is that this is a split from IT processing of text and data —> TO Processing of Images and Patterns. and cross referencing them from large datasets. In fact our human brain is also split in two segments regarding to functionality: (briefly)
A. Sounds signals throug ears and language, syntax, semiotics, logic and meaning and memories
B. Light images through the eyes, with parallel paths to the brain where the images are filtered and sharpened, patterns are extracted movement recognized and models are compared and remembered.
Only on higher levels in the brain these two segments are combined and made conscious. So the emergence of NVIDIA Processors for images signals for me that ICT is going through a structural change. See the speech of Jensen Huang again with his as a background.
Lots of new records for processing and storage in central systems as well as CPE’s, but I recommend you watch also the load and increased capacity demands on digital connections this will have !
Although many have recently forecasted that the Edholm Law graph (logarithmic chart of Customer Premises network access speed aka bandwidth (link capacity in Mbp/sec) versus time [years] will from a streight line (doubling every 18 months?) will bend down / level off in the future. I forecast that it will continue on this line at least. This will mean that we will have to wire our digital infrastructure with 10 Gbps —> 100 Gbps access and up. Possibly using multple fibers for each home, office and plant. And the consequence will also be that we must develop full optical switches and routers asap.
In other words : while everybody is awed by the GigaFlops of the new microprocessors, and storage systems will we have to upgrade our optic fiber links & grids and dataswitches sooner or later?
Well, for decades both processing and datarates have grown by a fantastic rate. Below is Moore’s Law stating that transistor count per processor chip vs time would double roughly every 18 months (in my notation W(transistors density) = 18 [months], and costs halved. Notice it is exponential growth (constant repeated doubling time).
ASML in recent years was able to develop lithograpy systems for chips that kept following this Law.
Moore’s Law
Edholm’s Law, attributed to Phil Edholm CTO of Nortel at the time noticed a similar rapid rise in Internet network access speeds. W(network access speed) = 18 months
Edholm’s Law
I started as a young engineer in 1972 doing timesharing access with a TTY with dial-up modem to the Honeywell Bull computer in California with end-end speed at 110 bits/sec.
My home connection with opt fiber is now 4 Gb/s peak capacity. (Delta Networks, NL). So that confirms the above prognosis. People have kept asking me for decades “will this speed/ bandwidth/ datarate demand continue to rise, or will it level off ??
1. It is difficult to imagine for many, but yes it will. “But but but …. people can not digest such large dataflow.” No they can not. Human braincapacity is approximately 2400 bits/second (?). TV watching does not count because that can hardly count as information :-). My grandchildren can watch and process higher information rates when they are gaming. But that is not the point. As Kees Neggers, then CEO of SURFnet (the NREN of NL) once made the following remark: “humans may not digest info from faster links, but computer – computer conversations & traffic can”.
2. Up to recently internet datatraffic was for a large part Ethernet — Ethernet links between LAN’s. And on the bottom of your Apple laptop you could read that the Internet chip connected to the internal parallel bus was specified as Ethernet at 100 Mb/s *). So it is not surprising that Wide Area Networks where provided with 100 Mbps (ADSL on twisted pairs) and more recently with multiple Gb/s.
*)And that was odd, since the Laptop could connect with 100 Mb/s, the incumbent France Telecom (FT) operator testified in the Senate in Paris “that no client in France would even need a faster connection than 2 Mbit/seconds”. Not really surprising because that is what they offered : 30B+D ISDN (=2Mb/s)connections for connection of PABX in-plant telephone switches and phoneline 2B+D 64 Kb/s for consumers.
Upper level of the bus speeds of the present processors (for example the Apple M2 multicoreprocessors) [clock rate n GHz] is multiple Gb/s.
From this observation I derived VAN TILL’s CONJECTURE.:
The network connection Wide Area access speed will grow in time until it matches the internal device BUS speed of the more and more complex processors and datastores.
As above, so below
In other words, my conjecture says: “As Inside, so Outside” to paraphrase the famous Hermetic Rule which is The Law of Correspondence : “As above, so below; as below, so above.”. It may be a good idea for the British to apply this to Brexit (isolation is not very clever). And Populist politicians should notice this too.
That is why Moore and Edholm curves grow (explode) as fast as eachother 🙂 and they are NOT leveling off.
Why is this ? Most simple explanation is that people do not want their computer or smartphone to behave and respond different from when the are processing data stored on their device or when they are connected to a cloud computer somewhere else on the planet (slight delays due to the speed of light through the cables are ok as long as the delays are not varying).
3. The Van Till Conjecture let loose on the NVIDIA new chips in 2024, means that the needed external connections will have to handle 800 Gb/s (Specs Spectrum-X800 Ethernet) between AI servers. But following my logic it will in a few years have to grow to 1.8 TByte/sec bidirectional bus between GPUs inside the NVIDIA dual chip, which translates to about 14 Tb/s external links, which will be required in 2039.
The present world record for optic fiber link capacity is 22.9 Petabits/s (multiple fibers in parallel) was set at Eindhoven University, see my FFECTIEFF list of “champions” number 50. So link speeds can go up.
5. I do not ask you to believe me. I am just telling you. So tell it to your network operator. But ask her first to sit down.
6. To dive into more detail the defined version of Edholm’s Law showed not one but three parallel lines.
The standard market view is that we have Wireline (cables, optic fiber pairs) and Wireless and that wireless (with your laptop or smartphone) will sooner or later overtake wire connections. That view is false. In practice “wireless needs wires” , which means that wireless on local area’s / plants / offices and lecture halls drives demand for wired wide area links. And contrary to wishful thinking of telco’s Nomadic wireless with Wifi is about 80% of all wireless. Nomadic means that you move between several locations during the day and sit stationary at a desk to use your smartphone, tablet or laptop. The 20% real mobile use with Public Wireless like G4 (UMTS), G5 and G6 mobile comms will allways be slower than nomadic because of the extra protocol overhead for handover between basestations and billing.
If nomadic is charted properly for more recent figures my guess is that it explodes rather in parallel with the wireline speeds now in 2024 and beyond. Confirming that Endholm trend is the recent rollout of Wifi 7 which is more formally known as the standard of IEEE 802.11be. The implementations of this new standard is rather new since many network providers and users have just rather recently switched to use wifi 6 or wifi 6E (IEEE 802.11 ax).
Improvements of wifi 7 are: * maximum capacity of wifi 6 is 9.6 Gb/s and wifi 7 can transport 46 Gb/s * lower latency * a number of frequency bands (in 2.4 & 5 & 6 GHz) at the same time (multilink operation for access points) * from 1024 to 4096 QAM modulation * Preamble puncturing (less overhead) * more stable in case of momentary congestion * distance ??? * Wifi 7 Mesh capability???
My expectation is that new application like VR and AI (see above) will boost demand for Wifi 7 and faster fiber links, so that makes for instance Apple Computers decision to postphone (pun intended) wifi 7 for their next iPhone maybe next year rather silly. The network industry expects that in 2024 233 million devices will support wifi 7 and in 2028 that will be 2.1 billion. I expect that the next MacBook (laptop) of Apple has WIFI 7 implemented.
Prof. Dr. Ir. Sander Bais, from The Amsterdam University (UVA) author of many books, has written three new books about Quantum Physics called “The Power of the Invisible” – The Quantessence of Reality – I highly recommend these to you. It can be understood very well since these books are written very masterfully. For students as well as any interested person.
You can order them from the Amsterdam University Press or from Amazon books. And for students in remote places these books became available downloadable online as eBooks (PDF), see the Amsterdam University Press site.
And…. I think it is time to organise another Solvay Conference to gather the present breakthrough thinkers!
Opinie van ir. Jaap baron van Till prof.em. Medeondertekend door dr. Matthijs Pontier en Mark Anthony van Treuren, leden van de piratenpartij.nl
Grote consternatie bij (vorige) regering, ministeries en werkgevers. Wat is er nou eigenlijk aan de hand? Waarom heeft ASML aangekaart dat ze uitbreiding in het buitenland overwegen en is BosKalis voor een groot deel al verhuisd naar Abu Dhabi? VNO-NCW heeft verklaard dat mogelijk zelfs tien grote beursgenoteerde bedrijven overwegen hun hoofdkantoor te verhuizen naar landen met een minder slecht vestigingsklimaat. Maar het zijn er veel meer dan tien. Ook mergers & aquisities in waardeketens kunnen een rol gaan spelen. Ons land is een internationaal knooppunt. Dan moet je ook niet verbaasd zijn over internationale “transfers”, om in voetbaltermen te spreken.
Er zijn dus meer bedrijven die overwegen te vertrekken en daar scenarios over maken. Waarom? De echte drijfveren kunnen hele andere zijn dan die men richting politiek aankaart.
Ook een aantal van hen noemden mij meerdere overwegingen om fysiek en/of juridisch te verhuizen. Behalve de fiscale, regel-gevings en politieke onvoorspelbaarheids-redenen, die in de kranten al genoemd worden denk ik dat er een paar onderliggende issues zijn die in Den Haag nog niet begrepen zijn.
Er is een wedstrijd gaande in de wereld om technisch bekwaam talent aan te trekken en die vaardige slimpies een zeer diverse en leerzame omgeving te bieden zodat ze blijven bijdragen aan innovatief vakwerk en waarde creatie. De beste die er zijn en die met een heel divers team van andere specialisten kunnen samenwerken. Zeker, dat geldt ook in de gezondheidszorg, en andere bedrijfstakken waar nu gebrek aan personeel is omdat de echt effectieven nog niet op prijs worden gesteld. Ja, die toppers zijn voor een groot deel uit het buitenland, so what? Migranten massaal weren? Zou heel erg stom zijn. Al jaren zijn vele verpleegsters in Zwitserland gaan werken. Xenofobie ? Waarom hebben we dan geen probleem met voetbalelftallen die grotendeels uit topspelers bestaan uit Verwegistan. Omdat ze goed spelen!
Het bijna geheel ontbreken van technisch inhoudelijke kennis, ervaring en concensus over gewenste toekomst scenarios, dat wil zeggen lange termijn algemeen belang policy richtlijnen in Regering, parlement en ambenarentop. Waar wil Nederland in 2030 zijn boterham mee verdienen? – zoals Henk Volberda terecht vraagt. Laat je dan eens bijpraten door technische jongens en technische meisjes die dat wel in hun mars hebben. Veel van onze kinderen is trouwens al lang verhuisd naar TikTok en ChatGPT.
Van een industriële maatschappij zijn we nu in een ‘dienstenmaatschappij’ beland die aan het digitaliseren is, met heel veel transities en plotselinge veranderingen. Dat maakt velen onzeker en verlangend naar vroeger of minimaal “alles moet zo blijven”, op zoek naar zekerheden en voorspelbaarheid. Daardoor staat onze overheid bijna op alle beleidsterreinen stil, in Pauze. Met een vermoeide elite en instituties die gefaald hebben, zie de toeslagenaffaire en het Groningen instortingsdossier. Terwijl we juist zo moeten organiseren dat we veranderingen aankunnen, moderniseren en creatieve oplossingen bedenken en met complexiteit kunnen omgaan. Dat kan met behulp van opdelen van organisaties in kleine goed verbondendecentraleteams. Helaas moeten we dan snijden in het aantal “managers” op kantoor, remmers in vaste dienst, die als overhead zeer weinig waarde creëren en veelal geen kikker van de kant kunnen duwen. Het levert enorme besparingen op als deze werkverschaffing gestopt wordt. Die kunnen dan in het Groeifonds van de overheid ten behoeve van innovaties en modernisering gestopt worden. En dan kan de “innovatiebox” juist vergroot worden. Een aantal van de organisaties op bovengenoemde lijst heeft dat decentraliseren al gedaan en werkt aan modules die in elkaar kunnen worden gezet. En ook in de krijgsmacht van Ukraine heeft dat noodgedwongen plaats gehad. Daar kunnen we wat van leren. Aan het front worden immers innovaties uitgetest en gebruikt. Nieuwe dingen in Europa vaak in de Nordic landen gestart maar die hebben betrekkelijk kleine bevolkingen. Dat maakt ons land meer ideaal als testgebied voor technische doorbraken, maar ook voor grote events, popmuziek en sociale media. Er is hier een populatie van prettig gestoorde mensen die niet om toestemming vragen voor iets nieuws.
Ook is nog niet bij iedereen doorgedrongen dat deze succesvolle organisaties als kern niet een product of dienst hebben maar een proces. Dat wil zeggen dat ze steeds bezig zijn met een volgende innovatieve verbeterings-stap, vaak met doorbraken die dingen mogelijk maken die anderen nog niet doen waarvan “iedereen” zei dat het onmogelijk was. Doet Elon Musk ook steeds. Waarom? Ze zijn in een race met concurrenten die vroeg of laat na kunnen doen wat zij nu kunnen. Dus wordt er met grotere snelheid door-ontwikkeld: verbeterd en nieuw uitgevonden; sneller dan de concurrenten kunnen namaken. Dat is wel een onzeker en riskant proces, zeker voor bankiers en andere financiers in de EU. Onzekerheid. En je hebt er moedige en geniale jongelui voor nodig om trots onmogelijke dingen aan de praat te krijgen. Deze organisaties willen niet ondergaan wat Kodak en Nokia moesten doormaken: blijven steken in een product range die ingehaald en overvleugeld wordt. In de VOC tijd werden ook risicovolle reizen gemaakt, maar de steden die de schepen financierden hadden een cashcow zonder onzekerheid: graantransport vanuit de Oostzee. Buffers dus. Ook vanwege grote fluctuaties door varkenscyclus productie overschotten en vervolgens weer te grote vraag. In Noorwegen hebben ze om die fluctuaties te helpen opvangen daar een fonds voor ingericht vanuit hun olie en gas baten. Anti-cyclisch investeren door overheden!
Ook deze issues zal de “Operatie Beethoven” moeten adresseren, opgetuigd als ministerieel topoverleg naar aanleiding van de hartenkreten van ASML Ik hoop dat ze er oren naar zullen hebben. Zo niet, dan verspeelt ons land zijn welvaart en welzijn. Een beter vestigingsklimaat zorgt voor waardevolle bedrijven, met internationaal denken en doen, maar ook toegankelijke infrastructuur en culturele voorzieningen waardoor mensen hier graag willen wonen, experimenteren en duurzaam samenleven.
12 maart 2024, JvT#
PS: 22 maart. Tot verbijstering van velen heeft onze 2e Kamer in meerderheid gekozen om het Groeifonds, bestemd voor financiering van -opstarten van- innovatieprojecten op PAUZE te zetten. Dit is een klap in het gezicht van een aantal bedrijven die al heel veel tijd hebben gestoken in het voorbereiden van de papierwinkel van gezamelijke projectvoorstellen. Dit is wonderlijk en geeft een onbetrouwbare indruk van onze regering en parlement. Vertrouwen was toch iets wat hersteld moest worden? Waar gaan wij in de toekomst ons brood mee verdienen? Met vergaderen?
Very important to understand what is happening NOW and about our FUTURE. As a historian Blom is IMHO a beacon for Euro Civilisation (NL: Beschaving).
In the interview he refers recent book he wrote: “De Onderwerping – Een geschiedenis van de verhouding van de mens tot de Natuur”. Also available in German and Italian. Blom told me that an English version is under preparation. One of the descriptions of this book is as follows:
In his book, the author examines the question of how homo sapiens were able to maneuver themselves into such a precarious situation. The search for an answer takes him far back to Mesopotamia. Here they appear: Gilgamesh of Uruk, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, to name just a few names. We have thus entered the space that represents the home of the Bible. Of course, this book didn't fall from heaven. The influences of the environment are diverse (e.g. the history of the flood). Right in the first Bible. In the book, man is given the task of "subduing" the earth (in the original: forcing it down! Gen 1, 27). The order given from the highest authority does not fail to have its effect. It continues to shape our thoughts and actions right up to our present day. Philosophers contributed appropriate argumentative aids (cf. Ms. Bacon, R. Descartes). Just as a root system branches deep into the ground, so does this thinking: slavery, colonialism, the oppression of women... The list can be extended. Because such thinking has become second nature to us, we are often no longer aware of it. A new, enlightened way of thinking is needed. The play is over. The theological backdrops must be dismantled. The book contains a clear diagnosis. Appropriate therapy should not take too long to arrive.
A community is in decline when it is not interested in the future. I am interested in that and so are many young people. Therefore I try to define Scenario’s based on what Philipp describes, see my upcoming Blogs. I do have the impression that the European Pirate Parties (piratenpartij.nl and piratenpartei.de) have this shift in basic philosophy as their core ideas and drivers to take action.
Here is a very impressive article written by George Monbiot in the Guardian that clarifies who is behind a number of authoritarian national regimes, and why. They enforce Neo-Liberalism, which in essence extracts value for themselves from where ever they can, at the expense of (enslaved) people and Nature. It sounded very attractive at the times of Reagan and Thatcher, since it is a great driver of economic activity and wealth creation, but now in 2023 people start to realise that it only enriches the top 10 %.
They get seriously rich in income and wealth and get even richer and wealthier each year. Much beyond the inequality of success that the Mandelbrot-Zipf ranking would forecast. The first ten are not about the same and there is nearly no dynamics of getting upwards and getting downwards in success. The chart of best tennisplayers does have that ranking but obviouly the wealthiest persons in the world cling to their extreme and growing wealth, and do not want upward movement by new champions aiming to replace the top ones.
The reality is that millions of people all over the world start to understand this anomality and furthermore Neo-Liberalism is running out of steam. It does not work anymore. It is outdated just like colonialism (value extraction from countries that your nation occupies). The oligarchs are a sad bunch of loosers. Because we are starting to realise that the oppression and slavery are mostly unnecessasary. If poor people are given a fair income for their work and if a basic income is implemented (removing the constant fear of not able to make ends meet) the result is very positive. They do volunteer jobs or new jobs.
In its place we have to change to a situation where we create value by combining, cooperation and innovation. This needs diversity of skills and different views on the issues, so the opportunities are more clear and synsrgy can benefit all contributors.
So fortunately the political/social/economic focus in the world is shifting from [Capitalist Neo-lib. Value extraction for a few rich people at the expense of the workers and Nature] to { Value Creation by Combining} = (Synthecracy) towards a new golden age of cooperation. Power will shift hands too, unstoppable into the hands of the value creators themselves instead of the hands of their old slavemasters.
jaap van till, TheConnectivist
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WHAT LINKS RISHI SUNAK, JAVIER MILEI AND DONALD TRUMP? THE SHADOWY NETWORK BEHIND THEIR POLICIES
By George Monbiot`* – The Guardian Jan.2024
The Atlas Network’s dark-money junktanks are behind neoliberal policies around the world. And you may find its leaders on a resignation honours list near you
There are elements of fascism, elements borrowed from the Chinese state and elements that reflect Argentina’s history of dictatorship. But most of the programme for government announced by Javier Milei, the demagogic new Argentinian president, feels eerily familiar, here in the northern hemisphere.
A crash programme of massive cuts; demolishing public services; privatising public assets; centralising political power; sacking civil servants; sweeping away constraints on corporations and oligarchs; destroying regulations that protect workers, vulnerable people and the living world; supporting landlords against tenants; criminalising peaceful protest; restricting the right to strike. Anything ring a bell?
Milei is attempting, with a vast “emergency” decree and a monster “reform bill”, what the Conservatives have done in the UK over 45 years. The crash programme bears striking similarities to Liz Truss’s “mini” (maxi) budget, which trashed the prospects of many poor and middle-class people and exacerbated the turmoil that now dominates public life.
Coincidence? Not at all. Milei’s programme was heavily influenced by Argentinian neoliberal thinktanks belonging to something called the Atlas Network, a global coordinating body that promotes broadly the same political and economic package everywhere it operates. It was founded in 1981 by a UK citizen, Antony Fisher. Fisher was also the founder of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), one of the first members of the Atlas Network.
The IEA created, to a remarkable degree, Liz Truss’s political platform. In a video conversation on the day of her “mini” budget with another member of the institute, its then director general, Mark Littlewood, observed: “We’re on the hook for it now. If it doesn’t work it’s your fault and mine.” It didn’t work – in fact, it crashed spectacularly, at great cost to us all – but, thanks to the UK’s media, the BBC included, which continue to treat these fanatical corporate lobbyists as purveyors of holy writ, they’re off the hook.
Last year, the IEA was platformed on British media an average of 14 times a day: even more often than before the disaster it helped inflict on the UK. Scarcely ever was it challenged about who funds it or whom it represents. The three peers nominated by Truss in her resignation honours list have all worked for or with organisations belonging to the Atlas Network (Matthew Elliott, TaxPayers’ Alliance; Ruth Porter, IEA and Policy Exchange; Jon Moynihan, IEA). Now, like US supreme court justices, they have been granted lifelong powers to shape our lives, without democratic consent. Truss also put forward Littlewood, but his reward for wrecking people’s lives was blocked by the House of Lords appointments commission.
Nothing has been learned: these corporate lobby groups still mould our politics. Policy Exchange, which, as Rishi Sunak has admitted, “helped us draft” the UK’s vicious new anti-protest laws, is also a member of the Atlas Network. We might describe certain policies as being Milei’s or Bolsonaro’s, or Truss’s or Johnson’s or Sunak’s, but they’re all variations on the same themes, hatched and honed by junktanks belonging to the same network. Those presidents and prime ministers are just the faces the programme wears.
The dark-money junktanks, and the Atlas Network, are a highly effective means of disguising and aggregating power. They are the channel through which billionaires and corporations influence politics without showing their hands, learn the most effective policies and tactics for overcoming resistance to their agenda, and then spread these policies and tactics around the world. This is how nominal democracies become new aristocracies.
They also seem to be adept at shaping public opinion. For example, around the world, neoliberal junktanks have not only lobbied for extreme anti-protest measures, but have successfully demonised environmental protesters as “extremists” and “terrorists”. This might help to explain why peaceful environmental campaigners blocking a road are routinely punched, kicked and spat upon, and in some places run over or threatened with guns, by other citizens, while farmers or truckers blocking a road are not. It might also explain why there is scarcely a murmur of media coverage or public concern when extreme penalties are imposed: such as the six-month prison sentence handed in December to the climate campaigner Stephen Gingell for slow-marching along a London street.
But the worst is yet to come. Donald Trump has never developed a coherent platform of his own. He doesn’t have to. His policies have been written for him, in a 900-page Mandate for Leadership produced by a group of thinktanks led by the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation is – you got there before me – a member of the Atlas Network. Many of the proposals in the “mandate” are, frankly, terrifying. They have nothing to do with public demands and everything to do with the demands of capital.
When Friedrich Hayek and others first formulated the principles of neoliberalism, they believed it would defend the world from tyranny. But as the big money poured in, and an international network of neoliberal thinktanks was created to develop and articulate its demands, the programme that was supposed to liberate us became a new source of oppression.
In Argentina, where Milei has stepped into the vacuum left by the gross misrule of his predecessors and is able to impose, in true shock doctrine fashion, policies that would otherwise be fiercely resisted, the poor and middle classes are about to pay a terrible price. How do we know? Because very similar programmes have been dumped on other countries, beginning with Argentina’s neighbour Chile, after Augusto Pinochet’s coup in 1973.
These junktanks are like the spike proteins on a virus. They are the means by which plutocratic power invades the cells of public life and takes over. It’s time we developed an immune system.
The organisations in this list are those I can RECOMMEND, because what they do WORKS. So, not everything in our country has been grinding to a halt due to the Government Policy deadlocks and voting breaktroughs from voters uncertai about a turbulent future, wars and other conflicts between bubbles.
Introduction. We are in the midst of a very confusing time where several things are making a TRANSITION. The old successful Neo-liberal ventures (based on Value Extraction from low payed people and Nature’s resources) does not work any more. The Nomenclatura of very wealthy people do still manage to hide their fast growing Wealth behind positive messages of modest incomes and payed taxes, and modest inequalites, but the middle classes do start to send messages during elections that their sympathies for the political leaders is running out. Distractions are all over the media like sports, football and new political parties that are xenophobic and promise safety. A bit like the 1930’s. And lots of conflicts separate people in zero-sum opposing fractions.
What people like is positive stories. There are many “Communities of Action” & Fellowships and small and big groups that channel sources of positive energy. There is good news from companies or organisations that have made the transitions and are growing and learning at an amazing rate. Companies I would like to go working for if i was a bit younger 🙂 #SmartGirls like progress and innovation 🙂
Here is the list of teams, companies & people that succeeded in the Netherlands to create international value chains by creating value most often by interconnecting stuff from a lot of specialized top products and they all are learning from eachother and their clients, so they improve very fast. They have high qualty external relations and know how to cooperate and harvest synergy. This shows the organisations that deserve to carry the #FFECTIEFF label, in no partiticular order. And this list will be updated regularly. Please notify me of possible candidates. What they have in common is the strange fact that most of them are world famous except in the general public, press and elite of the Netherlands. Dutchpersons have difficulty to praize exceptional accomplishments and love it to bring stars down to the polderwater level by critique or “ja maar” comments.
The FFECTIEFF list
This label is derived from the fact that these organisations make things based on technology and engineering that WORK “effectively“, versus pre-transition organisations that still boast that they aim to be more “efficient”, like Rabo Bank recently did. A power struggle in the upper management layers will result. A well designed re-organisation to un-freeze centralised companies can be done relatively quick.*)
1.Company : ASML.com and its value chain; Products: Lithography machines for baking of fast chips; Leaders : Martin van den Brink, Peter Wennink and now Christoph Fouquet. A very readable book was written about the exciting start and development phases of ASML was written by Marc Hijink (in the NL language): “FOCUS – De wereld van ASML- Het machtsspel om de meest complexe machine op aarde”; Uitg. Balans. An English language version of Focus will be released Q1 2024. Courage and Inventivity !! Now they are working on the next machines after EV. My guess is that they will make transitions to lithographic design of chips to process photon streams instead of electrons. ASML is investing in production and R&D locations in Berlin and USA too. And hiring smart young people from all over the world. On December 21, 2023, ASML shipped the first new generation lithography system: a High NA EUV system to Intel.
2.Company: AMS-ix.net Services: AMS–IX is a neutral member-based association that operates multiple interconnection platforms in a number of countries. Switching equipment: brilliant and scalable Juniper switches and routers. Leadership : Peter Burgel. The AMS-IX locations do peering and transit for the biggest total datastream in the world. Non-combat zone Knotenpunkten of the digital infrastructures.
3.Company: Fugro.com Services: collecting and maintaning Geo-Data about the sea floor and below.
4.Company: Navaza.comProducts: Water Filters that can clean water from the environment into drinking water. Very active in Indonesia and Kenia and other countries. Leaders: Lieselotte Heederik and Guido van Hofwegen and their teams.
5.Protocol: Wi-Fi oftewel WiFi =local (on premises) access to Internet for smartphones, tablets and laptop computers; Inventors, developers and standardisation (IEEE 802.11 Wireless Fidelity) by Kees Links and Victor Hayes. Nederlandse vinding die door miljarden mensen wordt gebruikt in licentievrije frequentie banden.
6.Protocol: EduRoam Safe on-premises WiFi access at Universities and Schools with Automatic authentication of student or staff member to check if that person is registered at school or university everywhere in the world (except China?) and then giving roaming access to Wifi. Inventor: Klaas Wierenga when at SURFnet (2002). Now GovRoam (for public servants) and PublicRoam (for the general public) are growing too in NL and Belgium. EduRoam is used daily by hundreds of thousands of people.
7.Company: ASM International,Located: in 15 countries, started in Almere, NL. Products: IC wafer processing equipment: for disposition of thin films. Very influential
8.Organisation: The SURF ICT-Cooperative of universities and schools in the Netherlands for change management of the shared digital infrastructure & supercomputing facilities, to interconnect their LAN’s. It is the NREN (national research and education network of NL. At international conferences it is often recognized that the young technical specialists of SURF are about five years ahead of those of the other NREN’s. Leaders: Jet de Ranitz and her team. SURF also has an important role in the international standardisation of R&D datasets, from for instance PhD studies, in order that they can be reused and combined again later.
9.Company: Kelp Blue Biotech company active all over the planet (zeewier kweken), re-wilding the oceans. also CO2 sink !!
10.Organisation: ASTRON They develop and run radio- astronomy telescopes, arrays and the Europe wide radio frequency reciever-networks (LOFAR) to process and analyse deep space (and back in time phenomena) weak signals, with a correlation center in Drienerlo, NL. Also long baseline worldwide signal processing is done there with a supercomputer. Senior investigator dr.ir. Jan Noordam is a key player in the effort to standardise astronomical observation data, so it can be exchanged and combined by astronomers and students.
11.Company: Defenture BV in Tiel. Develops and manufactures specialist low weight vehicles for military purposes. Commando teams from all over the world consider and buy their “rugged jeeps”, consisting of modules , the best available when test driven and when specs are compared with other such cars.
12.Company: NDIX, with HQ in Enschede is a distributed Internet Exchange network offering high availability closed company VLANS, in NL, Germany and soon also in Denmark. Leaders: Peter Lenten, Thomas van de Lagemaat en Jolanda Pluimers. NDIX is now part of Relined, one of the daughters of TenneT (transnational energy backbone). Founder: Jeroen van de Lagemaat.
13.Company: Speer IT , the platform for fiber optics registration and asset management. They have set the standard for their nation-wide database of GIS info for all the FttH and FttB networks in our soil. One of their services is access for a limited number of network constructors to their “COCON Fiber” database. So they may lease & use existing dark fibers of other builders as segments for an urgent fiber interconnection. Leader: Kees Jonker. Several other countries are setting up similar databases under licence.
14.Organisation: Bloemenveiling Aalsmeer , the biggest flower auction in the world, now part of the Cooperative FloraHolland which besides Aalsmeer also has auction facilities near Leiden. The huge building of the auction in Aalsmeer can be observed from space without need of a telescope. Flowers (water standing up, basicaly) are cut in the morning brought from many coutries to Aalsmeer, auctioned and then distributed as fast as possible by lorry or planestorage below the passengers to shops all over the world. Besides managing the auction facilities the cooperative also manages the value chains downwards towards the shops. The auctions keep growing because the best prices are made there.
15.Company: Smit Salvage is one of the most famous salvage and ship rescue companies in the world. Origins in Rotterdam harbor, now part of BosKalis. They did very spectacular salvages using very innovative and heroic techniques all over the world.
16.Company: Switch Datacenters. Growing rapidly as cloud computing center and co-location for IT services, they stand out by employing sharing warmth from cooling with housing corporations (#warmtenet #GreenIT). Leader: Edgar van Essen.
17.Company: TomTom they develop and improve Sat-Nav systems and now also deliver navigation databases for other Sat-Nav systems and APP’s. They aquired some years ago the high quality database of digital maps Tele Atlas. Founder of that company was the brilliant Tom van Rijn. Despite his age and declining health he is still full of innovative ideas, see the website Alsikministerwas.nl (Eng: “If I was cabinet minister”). TomTom is changing its position to go upstream (2D -> 3D location database) in the value chains of SatNav systems.
18.Company: Paperfoam Very successful manufacturing of very finely processed cardboard, which looks like plastic but desintegrates if thrown away. Very often used as packaging for equipment. Leader: Woen van Andel.
19.Company: Booking.comServices: Runs an up-to-date online hotel reservation system operational in many countries. And it can deliver car rental, airport taxi’s. It developed into an allround travel service.
20.Company: Vaventis BV. They produce Air Filters for in-house use, offices, schoolrooms etc. Active in many countries. It measures air quality continously, cleans air and returns warmth into the room. Product is called “Fresh-r” Indoor Air Care. Leader: Philip Bredt
21.Company: i3d.netGlobal low latency network for gaming and other time critical systems. Founder: Stijn Koster, who quit after 21 years.
22.Company:Leaseweb.com Services: dedicated servers for Special processing and storage. The Leaseweb HQ office is located in Amsterdam, one of the world’s foremost Internet hubs in the Netherlands. Amsterdam consistently ranks in the top 10.
23.Company: Team.Blue They make online business success simpler. Supporting local entrepreneurs and small businesses, they serve over 2.5 million customers across Europe, enabling them to build, grow, and scale online. Location: growing from Leiden, and now in 10 other countries
24.Company: LeydenJar Technologies. Product: patented battery component (pure silicon anodes) which is implemented in the biggest Electric Vehicle solutions. Leiden.
25.Organisation: The GÉANT Project, running an inter-NREN network, started in Amsterdam. We called it RARE then (Réseaux Associés pour la Recherche Européenne) and later TERENA. Just now the GÉANT project assembles in Montpellier – 260 participants, 31 European countries (Albania to Zwitserland – easy A to Z ). Everything R&E infra, from Trust and Identity over clouds, security and networks. International, of course… One of its leaders: Erik Huizer. While Géant is the cooperation for NREN’s in Europe, the informal Global Research & Education Network organisation #GREN helps NRENs to cooperate worldwide.
26.Organisation: Buurtzorg It is a pioneering healthcare organisation established in 2006 with a nurse-led model of holistic care & domestic help in small local teams that revolutionised community care in the Netherlands. It is now the biggest home-care and “wijkverpleging” org in our country. Teams of professionals, self selected, without managers self steering (lower cost !). Now 10.000 professionals in 24 countries. Founder: Jos de Blok, and his son Joost, Stichting Buurtzorg Nederland. Update on their huge success and other spinoffs: https://www.telegraaf.nl/financieel/564378056/mister-buurtzorg-opgevolgd-door-zoon-als-den-haag-belt-voor-ministerspost-ga-ik-erover-nadenken
28.Company: Van Oord. Huge dredging company and marine contractor, with operations all over the world.
29.Company: Marktplaats Online auctions of used stuff (second hand).
30.Company: Catawiki Auctions of Graphic Novels, wine, antiques and lots of other stuff.
31.Organisation: Hacker Camps. Every 4 years a huge open-air hacker-camp is organized by volunteers where several thousand computer nerds with tents from all over Europa come to gather for several days to present, discuss and learn mostly white-hat digital things. With also police and govt-services geeks present. Last one was MCH (May Contain Hackers 2022) in Almere, near Amsterdam. CCC.de in Hamburg does similar events. Founders where: Rop Gongrijp and Arjen Kamphuis (who unfortunately went missing in the north of Norway).
32.Organisation: Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. This is an European Hub airport. It has scaled up immensely using a half circular fractal architectural structure (see (f) below), which leaves room for expansion by enlarging the outside surface that planes can park and connect with bridges for the passengers. See photo below. Schiphol is the home base of high quality airline KLM.
33.Group of NL companies with high power Waterpumps. They can be invited to quickly come and pump water out of cities that are flooded. For instance before Brexit these “Dutch” companies came to the resque in England after heavy rainfall there.
34.Organisation: NABUUR . The Nabuur Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Giethoorn, Netherlands. It aims to help in the development of impoverished communities by enabling people from other countries to help the community members through Nabuur’s website. Clue is that Nabuur asks persons in local communities what their most urgent need is to survive in that village, and then organsises the gathering of such tools etc and the transportation of it to that village. This is the mirror image of what development aid organisations do (assume a demand and then trying to fullfill that with foreign aid and volunteers). Founder Siegfried Woldhek (now famous for his drawings of personalities)
35.City Area of Rotterdam Harbor and Europort sea harbor. Second biggest and busiest container harbor area after Shanghai. Connected with Antwerp (Belgium), Amsterdam harbor and inland Venlo, Duisburg etc. with pipelines, roads, optic fiber cable networks and railways. Also designed and managed in a fractal structure (several scales and sizes of similar structure).
36.Organisation: FTM(Follow The Money). This group traces money flows between people and companies to give/get influence by corruption. Can not be hidden 🙂 When in doubt, follow the money.
37.Organisation: Bellingcat. Foundation in NL. Group of volunteer factfinders in UK and NL that check and trace FakeNews and false propaganda. And they also show how it was fabricated. Founder: British blogger Elliot Higgins.
38.Company: NXP Semiconductors, Nijmegen, Eindhoven NL (HQ), split off from Philips, specialty: analog & digital circuits, for car industry, Autonomous Home, NFC and IOT. CEO: Kurt Sievers. I have a clever idea for application on a large scale of their high frequency RADAR.
39.Material: Glare, carbonfiber metal layers yielding very light and strong material for aeroplanes, patented by Akzo Nobel, developed and manufactured by former Fokker Airplane factory near Delft.
40.Company: Sluis Garden seeds, this company and others in NL went to work upstream in the flower, vegetables and fruit growing value chains.
41.Ecology of Glasshouses in West Holland (Tuinbouw Westland) and around Venlo, NL. They produce huge amounts of tomatoes and other fruits with a special auction hall near Delft. They are continuously improving their operations by way of innovation sessions each week where they select one of the companies to experiment and report success or failure after which the whole group implements it or not on their own premises. Such shared innovation was encouraged by Rabo Bank giving loans or not. I can imagine that the next Hyperscale Data Centers will be built in parts near or in those Glasshouses (Kassen) to share excess warmth from the computer servers that must be cooled. Sharing problemsolving for all participants.
42.Candidate: the Adyen is a huge payment serviceprovider with financial transaction processing plants. Founders: Pieter van der Does and ArnoutSchuijff.
43.Occupation: DJ’s from NL, like Tiësto, are worldfamous. A rather new one breaking through is DJ Philou Louzolo , he is very successful with a #FUSION of musical styles from several cultures.
44.Company: Ahold. Started as a NL supermarket chain Albert Heijn (AH), Ahold-Delhaize the holding now is family of great local brands serve 60 million shoppers every week in the United States, Europe and Indonesia. This very digitized and leading edge innovative retailer combined and combines pioneering (digital) innovation with classical consumer marketing, communication and product devellopment TOGETHER with often much smaller innovative startups. Founder was mr. Albert Heijn himself who personaly enforced the barcodes to be printed on all items sold in AH stores. Not only for the online cashregisters and its ICT network, but to measure the performance of every kind op product in the stores, together with its location in the shop. So he got grip on his suppiers 🙂
45.Company: WakaWaka The WakaWaka Foundation is an international NGO based in the Netherlands. They did design and manufacture very clever and robust solar battery lamps. Very often used in refugee camps to enable kids to read at night. And useful for hikers to be able to recharge their mobile phones in remote areas. If a hiker buys one, another ww is donated for in a foreign country. See picture below.
46.Company: Wahu This is an mobile App-based organisation to collect waste plastic in Indonesia. In cooperation with Ahold Indonesia. WAHU is a waste management system that brings good to people and planet by encouraging people to collect plastic waste and earn money. It has until end 2023 collected 1.8 million kg of plasic. They operate 8 waste sorting centers and have installed 268 trash barriers in Indonesia’s rivers. With generous support of sponsors and partners plus the power of community ! Founders: Michiel Reinoud and Merlijn Lammersen.
47.Education: The Terrawijs School. These people realized that the present primary schools are producing children that where useful for the Industrial Age (factory workers: arriving on time and be obedient). This school is helping children to find ways to create useful things and skills for 2024, linked to each other and nature. Sustainable. The children are finding their passion and feel enlightend. Founder: Tessa Hoogeland in Amsterdam. Terrawijs is inspired by Real School Boedapest and Green School Bali. Other such up-to-date schools are the Technasium schools: combination of Gymnasium and leaning to discover modern beta technology skills.
48.The worlds premier specialist on BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) Iljitsch van Beijnum. See his most recent book on BGP. It is is a set of rules that determine the best network routes for data transmission on the internet.
49.Company: TKH developed from the Twentsche Kabel fabriek, manufacturer of cables for energy, telecom and optic fibers for computer networks. Now has factories all over the world.
50.Breakthrough: Researchers at the Optic Communication group [High Capacity Optical Transmission Group] of Eindhoven University of Technology (TUe) where able to send data at the rate of 22.9 PetaBits/sec over space division multiplexed Optic Fiber cables. Post-doc Menno van den Hout and Researcher Chigo Okonkwo cooperated in this project with other scientists in Japan and Italy. According to Okonkwo, such high-speed connections help more people remain connected with higher capacity links to- and in the backbones of the internet. It also makes new applications possible, such as artificial intelligence AI. That technology is, in his words, “bandwidth hungry.” Source: ANP.
51.Organisation:NOG(Network Operators Group, a foundation established in NL). One of their international taskforces is very active since the Russian invasion to Keep Ukraine Connected. They ask the civilians who run the digital networks there what their most urgent technical needs are. Then they collect such equipment (Fiber Repair Tools, etc) and volunteers drive truckloads of that stuff to Ukraine. Incentive is to keep the people there who did hide below ground connected to their relatives and children, connectivity vital for their survival ! Taskforce lead = Daniel Houben. Please help this Ukraine Project with support and donations.
52.Organisation: Potverdorie! wat lekker This group processes fruit which looks not perfect into jam pots. And they sell these pots, with a combination of jam and a spice, in a big variety at good prices to delicatessen shops. Key is that the taste of the jams is from the inside if the fruits. Fruit plantations are happy too because much less of their harvest is thrown away. Founder: Charlotte Heine started this activity seven years ago with big success.
53.Company: Minkels in Veghel. They have lots of stuff for datacenter infrastructure: Minkels racks, Minkels ColdCorridors and Minkels Data Center Assessories.Key is that they deliver 19″ racks that can also harbor European standard size rack boxes and fit into the standardized floor segments of co-locations. For instance for Equinix digital infrastructure company. One of Minkels founders was mr. Morssinkhof.
54.Company: Gaastra Sails . Worldclass, superior yacht sails and windjacks, ocean tested.
55.Company: Eurofiber. Hybrid connectivity platform with very high availabilty, see BTG article : https://bit.ly/3tDiC0PDriver: Paul Naastepad.
======= update Feb 18 2024========
56.Company: Thales. They rolled out a new super-radar system for artillery and air-defense the GM200 MM/c, see: https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/markets/defence-and-security/air-forces/ground-master-200-mmc Thales has rolled out a new radar system for Artillery and Air Defense.The GM200 MM/c is a mobile truck based system that can detect and identify up to a thousand flying objects per second. It is a variant of the successful Smart-L radar & guns developed and implemented on Navy ships. The Russian army is a real artillery force, which looks where there are weak spots on the frontier and then bombards there. With this new radar NATO armies can detect faster where devices are coming from and shoot them out of the sky. And it can identify between rockets/ plane/ drone orgrenade. It even can distinguish between birds and drones, by the propellor.
57.Organisation: SeniorWeb. I helped start this group of young-volunteers (ca.3000) that helps senoir citizens across the hurdle of using personal computers and online mobile phones. The seniors are often nervous because of their fear of doing something wrong by pressing the wrong button, etc. This activity is now 25 years old in our country and gets parents and grandparents out of their old age isolation, for a small yearly fee.
58.Military CCC. In NL there is a strong know-how network of experienced specialists in Command, Control and Communications systems. They have labs, proving grounds and are often involved in NATO projects or UN peacekeeper projects.
59.Organisation: Rijkswaterstaat and the Civil Engineering faculties of our 4 Universities of Technology train and employ worldfamous civil engineers that design and build dikes and canals. Vital for our delta of rivers country which is for a large part land which is below sea level, including Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (8 meters blow sea level, so pilots must have a special licence to land there, overriding the altimeter warning signals). Civil engineering companies are hired all overv the world to help construct harbors and fight floods (in England and New Orleans).
60.Organisation: BetterBe specialising in Automotive Leasing with installations of API/SAAS software worldwide. One of its main drivers is Theo Balijon.
61.Ecology of Software Developers for serious Games in and around Amsterdam, Delft and Wageningen. Examples: MediaHeads.nl , Vertilo Games , Cool Games , HCL Tech. List, see: Directory of NL Games industry Games industry expert and investor is Joost van Dreumen in NY.
62.Federation of Technology Sector companies in NL.FHIWith origins in organising sector events, conferences, exhibitions and networking meetings the FHI has grown into an active collective of suppliers and builders in 4 sectors: industriële elektronics, building automation, industrial automation, and laboratory technology and it forms a network of technical specialists.
63.Company: Conscia Nederland, designer and implementors of IT Infrastructure in Europe, which took over Vosko Networks in Gouda, very skilled in Ethernet digital networks for medium sized locations, like hospitals. They did grow based on selling and implementing my invention at AKZO, the Tillegraaf (R) baseband modems and Plector (R) multiplexers for asynchronous TTY compatible terminals.
===== update Febr 24========
64.Organisation: RIPE NCC Network Coordination Center in Amsterdam is the Regional Internet Registry for Europe, Middle East and Central Asia, we serve over 20,000 members in 76 countries. We register IP addresses and ASNs, and act as the secretariat to the RIPE community, which acts as a platform for everything concerning Internet.
65.Company: Prosus is an investment company based in Amsterdam which has roots in South Africa. It is one of the largest technology investors and operators in the world. We back local entrepreneurs that build valuable products for more than two billion customers and help their communities thrive. We empower our teams to develop their skills and build meaningful careers. We create long-term value for our shareholders and our many other stakeholders. (AI value chain)
66.Company: Besi = BE Semiconductor Industries N.V. This company in Duiven has and produces machines to interconnect chip into compact and fast boards, especially with and around NVIDIA AI chips. DESI develops leading edge assembly processes and equipment for leadframe, substrate and wafer level packaging applications in a wide range of end-user markets.They have also factories in Singapore, Maleisia and Vietnam. CEO is Richard Blickman. (AI value chain)
67.Company: Wolters Kluwer is a publisher and international supplier of information. Already half of its income is from products which make use of AI. They took over last year Della AI, supplier of AI technology for legal affairs. And they acquired Invistics which can trace medicine in hospitals. CEOis Nancy McKinstry. Wolters Kluwer has at present 450 jobopenings for smarts. (AI value chain).
68.Lobby: DDA = The Dutch Data center Association, which is the Trade Association for Data Centers in The Netherlands, which unites leading data centers (Hyperscaler Cloud servers) in the Netherlands in a common mission: the strengthening of economic growth and the profiling of the data center sector to government, media and society. The high number of hyperscalers in NL is also a result of the excellent Optic Fiber cable Digital Infrastructure in our country. Driving foreman is Stijn Grove. (AI value chain)
69.Company: Allinq Networks specialises in the physical engineering work of implementing and maintaining digital infrastructures, like digging trenches, soldering fibers and rolling out FTTH networks. They started as Schuuring Networks in Harderwijk and now do work in a number of countries. And they do a lot of training with their hands-on know-how.
70. Company: Volta Energy offers for-hire green and sustainable mobile energy supplies with solar panels AND quiet diesel-battery backup for construction sites and events !! I wonder if these can be combined with high volume water pumps, that are available in NL also?
===========Added Febr 26 and March 22=======
71. Lobby: The partnership between “Women in AI Netherlands” @womenInAINetherlands and “Women in Tech(R) Netherlands” @womeninTechNL . This is a strong network of #smartgirls. For more info: contact @LiekeLamb on X.
72. Company: Royal Kaak, leading edge manufacturing of Bread Bakery machines and complete (pre) production lines. Develops new and improved machines in contact with bakeries all over the world. Does employ 3D metal parts printing and shares those printers with other companies in NL.
73. Lobby: Fiber Carrier Association (FCA) connects suppliers of FttH networks & their rollout and municipalities planning and organizing such rollouts. Driver is Andrew van der Haar. Stratix consulting maintains an up to date database of presently available local Optic Fiber connections.
74. R&D organisation: SRON the Netherlands Institute for Space Research in Leiden, they have an excellent track record for building instruments to do remote sensing of our planets ecosystems from space. One of its leaders is dr. Aaldert van Amerongen.
75. Company: BirdCRM (was Messagebird) techcompany in Amsterdam, provides CRM and message services (sms and WhatsApps) for companies. Started by Robert Vos and Adriaan Mol (also runs payment service Mollie. (Has implemented AI systems.).
76. Company: Innatera Nanosystems Develops chips that identify patterns from sensordata analog currents and voltages. Using Neural Network processing based on how the human brain processes sensor input. Billions of devices are sold each year with between 10 and 30 sensors each. Processing of these signals can be done connected to the chips of Innatera. This company is a spinoff from R&D at TUDelft, NL. Leader of the team is dr.ir. Sumeet Kumar. (Sensor AI processing)
=====Added April 4.
77. Company: DataSnipper New Unicorn in the Netherlands Their AI Software eases the work of accountants: searching in datafiles and crosschecking made less timeconsuming in Taxes, Healthcare, Insurance and Mining. Did attract multiple rounds of investment. Leader is former Silicon Valley topper Vidya Peters and her team. 100 smarts work in NL and 50 in other countries. I am curious if they can help the NL “belastingdienst” with their urgent modernisation ??
Interpretation: from this List you can percieve the organisations that where and are successful in the “Internet Value Chains“, started around 2000. And more recent a new technology paradigm is starting up : “The AI Value Chain” roughly becoming visible as: Zeiss, VDL, ASML, TSMC, NVIDIA, Besi, Prosus, Hypercenters, Optic Fiber Networks, Digital Infrastructures, WiFi, Apple Computers. That is where the action is right now, with daily new discoveries and surprises. As a student, I would try to get a study project (Stage) there!
Fractal structure of Amsterdam Airport Schiphol
Driving success of each of these groups on the list is:
(a) a SECRET: they found one or several ways to DO things that ‘everybody considered impossible to do’ (like Elon Musk did a number of times), and some other unique bold moves to solve dilemma’s or cross boundaries “brick walls” with BREAKTROUGHS.
(b) harnessing one or more of the FIVE Networking Effects (see elsewhere on these blog pages) which create value for the leader teams and their suppliers and the clients/ users in VALUE CHAINS.
(c) by avoiding vertical integration. Develop infrastructural platforms. Allways involve the highest quality contributors. And continue learning from eachother and developing further.
(d) that we can cope with large & small / long & short duration fluctuations: fractal fluctuations. Reason: lowlands NL is a Delta of changing rivers and sea levels, so we had to cope with those to survive.
(e) have a stategy of outsourcing to the BEST possible and reliable contributors in the chain and still learning together in the value chain, including with the clients and end-users. Making constructive combinations that yield Synergy for all participants. And keep things de-central & with collective intelligence and shared aims.
(f) have a strategy for upscaling in a fractal way. Encourage processes of improvement and new leaps.
(g) attract talent and train the interested smarties in teams.
(h) they can be trusted to deliver on promisses and produce quality.
(i) they have sensitive antennae for the unexpected, unlikely, orthogonal, sudden. And like to surprise planners, managers, accountants with their audacity. 🙂
(j) most of these projects have started as low profile “skunk works”, using poststamp budgets, and trainees to build prototypes; while the management had no clue what we where doing. Like when i started building the later succesful ‘Tillegraaf (r)” linedriver on inplant PTT copper phone cables. In the long curve of developing your idea avoid asking permission as much as possible! Managers hate uncertainty even if it can have a positive outcome. see: https://theconnectivist.wordpress.com/2013/02/09/dont-ask-for-approval-and-these-50-new-idea-killers-will-not-stop-you/
(k) they have the ability to understand very quickly what is said or written. (“Snel van begrip”). They stand out in crowds with that.
(l) they are constructive instead of destructive.
(m) they where never worried if it was “impossible”(as vested interest people allways say) what they wanted to do, see (j), make COMBINATIONS and never stop asking questions !! Curiousity is your engine 🙂
(n) some of the FFectieff organisations on this list have in common that they are “Instrument Makers” aka Makers of Precision Tools. Our country has a long tradition of making the best possible instruments. Examples are: makers of lenses and telescopes (Descartes, Huygens, Spinosa and Anthoni van Leeuwenhoek), makers of clocks and chronometers for navigation on ships, ESTEC Labs for making satellite sensor systems, telescopes of Astron, see on the List above.
*) For assistance to help your “community of action” get more positive energy (SYNERGY) from decentralised constructive combinations, you can contact me.
Let us hope that conditions in the Netherlands for such companies will not worsen, so they will move their HQ to other countries, or sell themselves to bigger consortia with Centralisation.
In one of my next blogs I will zoom into how REAL INNOVATION works. It will be called “Learning Curves” 🙂
Curious about what is coming? Then I advise you to watch anything that centers around : *AI pattern recongnition and -matching *Collective Intelligence & decentral authority * The BetaCodex method for decentralisation of organisations *Decentralisation & network interconnection *Social Synthetic Apertures (many of its inplementations are classified).
MY CONCLUSION: Focus in the world is shifting from [Capitalist Neo-lib. Value extraction for a few rich people at the expense of the workers and Nature] to { Value Creation by Combining} = (Synthecracy) towards a new golden age of cooperation. Most of the successful organisations on the LIST are examples of Combiners that create synergy for the contributors.
jaap van till, TheConnectivistversion 21 (complete with a Logo which i did add that the nominees can present on their products or services): January 22, 2024. Version 27 : update April 4 .
PS. You may argue that for instance the Banks, Philips Electronics, Heineken, Akzo Nobel, Shell Oil, KPN, Hoogovens, DSM and Unilever belong on this list too, since they started and innovated in The Netherlands too. But in my humble opinion they are already enough in the public eyes and march through the media frequently, without my help.
PS 2. A plan, in its infancy, is to organize a “invitation only” meeting/conference with these heros. Where some of them can explain their aims and perhaps some of them can form new combinations. A bit like the super influential Solvay conferences on Physics and Chemistry last century in Brussels. Who can offer me the sponsorship of such meeting? I am allready gathering names of top visionaries in the coming Society, Economics and Technology. With constructive and EFFECTIVE ideas :-))
PS 3. To judge “successfulnes” do not look at the SIZE of the organisations in question (that is old industrial thinking) but look at their rate of growth: how short is their TIME TO DOUBLE turnover. Defined by me as W( x ) = y [months]. For instance W(ASML) = 12 months.
Waka-Waka Solar battery Lamp, instead of smoking oil lamps
The listed are entitled to add this on their website: FFECTIEFF LISTED
The Connectivist 