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“Today we no longer have the right to pretend that we command a unique position from which we can view the truth about the world. We must learn not to judge different areas of knowledge, culture, or art, but to combine them and to establish new ways of coexistence with those who enable us to meet the unique demands of our time.” Ilya Prigogine & Isabelle Stengers, Man’s New Dialogue With Nature,1979

PUBLICATIONS

Organizing valuable events is one thing but leaving a tangible and sustainable trace is another one. That is why every CROSSTALKS theme is covered in a publication with international impact.

Publication List

> Pre-publication (2009): The Boiling Frog Litany

This pre-publication wraps up the interdisciplinary launch of the CROSSTALKS project Energy Efficiency: Facing the Facts and Learning to Cooperate.

We enter the last stage of the energy era and the problems have become bigger than the benefits. We are in the midst of 4 substantial crises: (1) the reliance of cheap labor, logistics, global economy and food on energy (2) the location of the oil production in political instable countries (3) reaching peak oil, meaning that pretty soon now half of the global oil is used up and the second half will become unaffordable (4) the highly underestimated feedback loop of the climate change.

The frog indeed is boiling and the global economic crisis might just be the golden opportunity to tackle these questions in a sustainable way. Contributions by the late Nicolas Glansdorff, Max Mergeay, Angelo Vermeulen & Kristina Ianatchkova, Elke Beyer, Geert Palmers and Gerrit Jan Schaeffer.

> Publication 3 (2009): In Sicknesss and in Health. The Future of Medication: Added Value & Global Access.

People want to live longer and remain healthy. Through series of seminars, workshops and publications from 2005 to 2008, CROSSTALKS gave an incentive to a more integrated and more efficient health care, starting from the challenges to accessible and safe medicine for everybody. Health is not a matter of politics only, health care is. Through a continuing process of exchange, CROSSTALKS wants to generate a growth model with added value for all the stakeholders in health care. A crucial factor in this project is the open collaboration and knowledge exchange between academics, the corporate world, doctors, pharmacists, patients, sickness funds, social partners and politicians. Read more..

> Publication 2 (2007): Brave New Interfaces. Individual, Social and Economic Impact of the Next Generation Interfaces.

Some of the articles are loosely based, while others are directly based, on the discussions, insights and perspectives raised during the Brave New Interfaces workshop of 27 April 2006 in Brussels. The topic of exploring existing and future interfaces and their design emerged from numerous discussions on whether some spectacular technological innovations also meant or implied something more than just technological progress. So we gathered key people from the European design, architectural and technology-driven worlds to reflect on the meaning of working, thinking and acting in an interdisciplinary way … and what the added value could be. Read more...

> Publication 1 (2005): How Open is the Future? Economic, Social & Cultural Scenarios inspired by Free and Open Source Software.

The first CROSSTALKS book “How Open Is the Future?” is cited as very relevant as well by universities as MIT, Duke University and Stanford in the US as by Cambridge University in the UK and many universities in South America and Asia. But in the mean time the book is referred to by all the major open source and not so open source communities in the world as a source for inspiration. Read more here.