Lecture 12 - panel discussion Mon Oct 8 (15-17)

.

Time and place: Monday Oct 8, 15-17 in lecture hall E3

Title: "Images of the future"

Moderator: Daniel Pargman, KTH/School for Computer Science and Communication/Media Technology and Interaction Design group

Panelists: 

• Mattias Höjer, KTH/Environmental Strategies Research (FMS) and the Centre for Sustainable Commuication (CESC)
• David Webb, Retired financial analyst, investment banker and hedge fund manager
• Peter Nöu, Senior Program Manager at The Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (Vinnova)
• Ambjörn Næve, KTH/Knowledge Management Research group 

Talk: Course participants have been presented with a variety of images of the future. The very last lecture won't be a lecture at all, but rather a discussion between invited guests who are expected to have widely differing ideas and opinions about the future and about the future of sustainability. Can we imagine a future sustainable society? What would it look like? What are our chances and what is our best course of action in attempting to reach that future? And, what is the role of ICT and media in relation to these questions and issues? 

About the panelists:

Mattias Höjer is a professor in Environmental Strategic Analysis and Futures studies at FMS/KTH and director of the Centre for Sustainable Communications, CESC/KTH. He has mainly been working with so-called "backcasting approaches" in futures studies, developing target-fulfilling images of the future. As director of CESC, he is responsible for a research group working on a broad range of topics related to ICT and sustainability, focusing mainly on environmental sustainability, in cooperation with a group of partner organisations.

David Webb is the founder of Origin Investments AB, which has applied to the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (Finansinspektionen) for permission to manage a market neutral long/short equity strategy designed to serve as a core holding for institutional investors. Mr. Webb was the founder of Verus Investments, where he managed long/short equity hedge funds with AUM in excess of $600 million. Previously, Mr. Webb was a Senior Managing Member of Shaker Investments where he was the sole manager of long/short equity hedge funds with AUM in excess of $1.3 billion. Mr. Webb has served as an Associate with the venture investment arm of E.M. Warburg, Pincus & Co., Inc., and as an Associate with the Mergers and Acquisitions Department of Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. Mr. Webb moved with his family to Sweden a few years ago to escape the impeding collapse of the US banking sector.

Peter Nõu is Senior Program Manager with The Swedish Government Agency of Innovation Systems (VINNOVA). He is central in defining and administering sectors of 'Information Society' and 'Sustainable Cities' within the 'Vinnova Grand Challenges Program'. Open data, crowd sourcing and intensive prizes are other initiatives he’s been driving since joining Vinnova in late 2008, as a senior expert in the ICT and services sectors. Prior to joining Vinnova, Peter worked 15+ years in CTO and CIO roles in various industries and startups, always engaged in implementing strategic advantages of Internet technologies. This became a passion of his already 20 years ago, when as employed by the Swedish Government, he saw the birth of the Internet economy in Silicon Valley during the years 1992-94. He later joined Telia Research and helped launch Passagen, the Swedish 'First Wave Large Portal'. Peter has also worked in the strategic management consulting firm SMG. His degree is in engineering Physics from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.

Ambjörn Naeve has a background in mathematics and computer science and he presently heads the Knowledge Management Research group at KTH. The KRM group specializes in communicative modeling, unplanned collaboration and disagreement management. In 1976 Ambjörn discovered a cheap and efficient way to concentrate solar radiation, which started his thinking about "the big switch" that is necessary if human civilization is to become sustainable: Switching from globalized production, supported by localized (and proprietary) information, towards more of localized production, supported by globalized (and publically accessible) information.

.