Europe Asia Express

| railways, travel, lebanon, syria, iran, iraq, europe

lately there has been a lot of talk about reviving the TransEuropeExpress (TEE) that had its heyday well before i was even born. If that means more investment into high-speed trans-european rail infrastructure it has my full support (even though it will be next to impossible to match the design sensitivity that came along with the TEE). Speaking about railway nostalgia, I came across this illustration on flickr today, which illustrates the networks serverd by the TEE predecessor Simplon Orinet E…

Destroying e-bikes for profit

| cycling, capitalism

early last year i wrote about the joy of using JUMP e-bikes during a short stay in San Francisco[1]. Turns out that less than one and half years after being introduced, these bikes, while still being perfectly good and much needed, are getting retired and destroyed by the truckload. This seems to be the outcome of an unfortunate but probably inevitable collisions of the logics of startup consolidation and the dysfunctional way how the US legal system structures liability. As many others have poi…

On urban cycling and electricity

| cycling, urbanism

I have always considered myself to be a fairly accomplished urban cyclist. These days i am finding myself learning again, this time trying to master the art of drafting-off e-bikes in urban traffic…

Towards an auto-generative Public Domain?

| algorithms, art, artificial intelligence, copyright, dystopia, photos

A couple of days ago,  I came across the website generated.photos (via the Verge) a new service that offers 100.000 computer generated portrait images and positions them as an alternative to traditional stock photos. The Verge article highlights the fact that the pictures can be used "royalty free" and the generated.photos website claims that "Copyrights ... will be a thing of the past". This made me postulate on twitter that we might very well be witnessing the emergence of an "auto-generative…

Towards a Shared Digital Europe

| digital policy, europe, european union, access to knowledge, activism, commons, democracy, economics, internet, public spaces, technology

Today, we are launching a project that i have worked on for the last 6 months: A Vision for a Shared Digital Europe. I started working on this while i was still at Kennisland (where the idea was born) and i have continued this work after my departure from KL with Centrum Cyfrowe and the Commons Network. This vision is an attempt to set the stage for a different way about digital policy making in Europe. With our vision we are proposing a uniquely European way that refuses to the the digital spac…

On selling AI fever dreams to gullible publics

| artificial intelligence, digital policy, public spaces, technology

The Guardian recently had an op-ed by John Naughton on how the media is guilty in selling us AI fantasies at the behest of the technology industry. This scratches my long held belief that (a) AI is both poorly understood and as a result (b) completely oversold (at least when it comes to non-trivial problems of optimising consumption patterns[1]). In his op-ed Naughton primarily looks at how industry serving narratives about AI have come to dominate media coverage of AI, which he mainly attribute…

Cheating in San Francisco

| cycling, united states

The last time i rode a bike in San Francisco was in 1996 when i was here for the Cycle Messenger World Championships. Since then the city has changed a lot, and while much of that change has not been for the better, when it comes to cycling things have improved a lot. In 1996 bike messengers where pretty much the only ones cycling and as a cyclist you had to fight for your space on the road which was pretty much constantly challenged by ignorant/agressive motorists. These days the city is full o…

Leaving Kennisland (pt. 2)

| kennisland, work, digital policy, copyright, technology, social media

The text below is an adapted version of a text first published on the Kennisland website under the title "Time to move on: what we have done to improve copyright and access to cultural heritage". Both texts are identical except for the last section. The version published here provides a more in depth reflection on the challenges ahead for digital policy making. At the end of 2018 we will end our activities in the areas of copyright and cultural heritage. Kennisland has been working on…

New Horizons (leaving Kennisland)

| work, kennisland, copyright, future

For the last eleven and a half years Kennisland has been my professional home and base of operations (first high above the the Keizersgracht and since 2015 as part of Spring House). Today we have announced that it is time for me to leave to make place for the next generation to take over the helm at Kennisland. The past decade has been an amazing ride during which I have learned and grown a lot. Over the years I have had the opportunity to work with lots of amazing people both at KL and all ove…