Johan Staël von Holstein in Singapore: We Are Enslaved by 2.0 Technologies!
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 8:03PM The controversial debater and entrepreneurship advocate from Sweden had essential opinions for every individual to consider.
By Joakim Persson from ScandAsia
The Swedish serial entrepreneur Johan Staël von Holstein has made Singapore his new home since a few years back. He hopes he will be able to stay on, now seeing Singapore as the country with the “smartest politicians in the whole world” and as splendid for business start-ups.
Johan thinks Singapore is the one place in the world really understanding the need for supporting entrepreneurs. Not that he intends to initiate any more start-ups from scratch himself though, but rather help others.
Second best thing to love
The outspoken Swede has for decades been a strong advocate for innovations and entrepreneurship and mostly in relation to IT and new media. And often he has seen little understanding and action from politicians and governments.
And, also being a charismatic and well-known speaker, he often sees politicians as the key to the problem - or the solution - while the entrepreneurs are the fulfillers; those generating all tax revenue and being the ones behind all businesses.
Among the milestones so far he started Icon Medialab, which succeeded, says his CV, in fundamentally changing the entrepreneurial climate in Sweden. Further he started IQube, an incubator with ambition to create the world's best infrastructure and ecosystem for entrepreneurs in early stages.
“Entrepreneurship is the second best beautiful thing to love,” he said at the Designing Asia 2.0 gathering of the leading innovation network in Asia, arranged by Qi Global.
Johan speaking at Qi 2011
Enslaved by 2.0 technologies
Still, while calling for increased support for the entrepreneurs he is at the same time urging for legislation in the Internet era.
And he has some relevant issues to share which directly and indirectly should be of concern to all us.
What is on his mind now is genuine concern for where things are heading: we are totally enslaved by 2.0 technology companies, Johan let the audience know in Singapore back in October, representing the technology industry.
The evolvement of technology is going to continue being absolutely exponential for innovations, and entrepreneurs can solve all the problems the planet is facing. Breaking the monopolies, enabling all individuals getting access to these software would allow everyone to participate in the entrepreneurial frenzy.
However, he highlighted a fundamental concern relating to privacy, ownership and control of the individual’s digital assets.
Facebook is a concern? Yes.
"90 per cent of all my communication today takes place via Facebook, and 90 per cent of what I do there is work-related. And 90 per cent of all people I know and another 4000 I am connected with are on Facebook – how could I leave that? I have no choice! They have digitally enslaved me."
“People are forced to accept this and be stuck in these structures. And as long as you keep these technologies away from the individual – we can taste them but cannot access them to utilize to our own advantage and do what we want. We are completely in their hands,” he explains to ScandAsia.
In Johan’s mind, one’s own combined experiences, interests and skills should be controlled by the individual – and not be owned by Facebook or anybody else.
Each and one of us should have our own, if you like, cube.
“Privacy isn’t going to be dead for a long time. I hope. And why is this so important? I am no consumer - I am a person. I consume maybe 10 seconds a day. It’s about my memory, tastes, photos and my relations. I am giving away my brain to corporate institutions as they please. And this is going to be so bad that ‘1984’ is going to look like nothing. Like when the brand says they own their customers. But if I own you and all the value you create is mine – then it is slavery!”
“As a result of how the financial and political markets wrongly views entrepreneurship in a wider perspective, the engineers have built something that assimilates a gigantic Soviet, where everything is monopolistic, where you have one search engine, everybody is treated as part of the masses, treating us all alike etc.,” Johan paints the picture.
Lack of soul and passion
And the idea that everything should be for free on the Internet is a catastrophe to Johan.
"Put away that incentive to earn money in order make everything free – how will it then end? If I take my combined knowledge and experience and pack it as information and put it on the Internet and the info is for free – then information and knowledge is useless."
“If we live in societies with such realities – no wonder Europe and the U.S are falling apart like a house of cards!”
Then Johan highlights another fundamental problem; a system error with the banking world. And if anyone should have experience in this it is Johan himself.
“Practicality all companies are today owned by the pension funds, which are the workers’ savings. And the result is that companies are no longer owned by entrepreneurs, so there is no soul or passion behind it to grow larger and stronger and profitable, Instead short-term ideals run wild in the hands of greedy bankers. Meanwhile entrepreneurs, the real heroes in the society, find it very difficult to get any capital for their company start-ups, the only ones who can are companies associated with banks.”
Food for thought and a lot to digest.
