How images of Climate Change influence our perceptions

Where is the climate changing? If you put the words climate change into your search box and look at the images. We suspect that often you get images of polar bears standing on a small iceberg surrounded by open water, images of dry soil with cracks and crusts, and dramatic images of hurricanes, storms, bleached …

Unexpected research partner

Science rarely looks to non-scientists for ideas and solutions. But on this occasion, the nuns have helped scientists to understand more about the achoques and how to breed them. The nuns gained lots of their understanding from the indigenous people who know where to find the salamanders.

Coronavirus (7) – Groupthink by Governments and Health Authorities

When we proposed in the first blog post about coronavirus that the slow reaction and lax attitude of institutions can partly be explained by the phenomenon of groupthink, we could not imagine that later on groupthink would assume an even more dominant role in tackling the crisis. In the beginning, warnings about an emergent pandemic …

Thinking about the Spread of the Coronavirus (2) – Concepts

In the crucial month of February, in those weeks before the major outbreak in Europe, there was still room to stock up on protective equipment, to scale up the laboratories, to expand the purchase and production of test materials, to prepare for the removal of serum with antibodies in healed patients. Only, it didn't happen. …

Societal Science Fiction – 21st Century Challenges

Throughout history stories have help shaped our minds, our ideas and actions. With the increasing acceleration in information and biotechnology we need better stories about future technological, social and economic developments. In this 21th century, ¨societal¨science fiction might be an important genre, if not the most important, to interprete the consequences of accelarating technological developments.

Detrimental Social Agreements – Thinkibility Nibble

Suppose you are a member of a Board of Directors of an Organization in which you have significants interests. Would you sign the declaration below thoughtlessly? ¨We reaffirm our belief that united, we are stronger in this increasingly unsettled and challenging world. We recognize our responsibility as Leaders to make our Organization stronger and our …

Medical Stalking

This is the third post in the series “21st Century Challenges” about Who Owns Your Medical Data?. In the first post, we discussed the following: In the future, Big Data algorithms and biometric sensors may detect and diagnose a disease before we have started to notice any discomfort or signs. But would you like your insurance …

The Brilliant Failure Award – Thinkibility Nibble

Earlier in the post The Charm of Imperfection we wrote about figure-ground reversal or negative space: in art it is the space around and between the subject(s) of an image. Negative space may be most evident when the space around a subject, not the subject itself, forms an interesting or artistically relevant shape, and such space occasionally …