CEMUS Diaries Entry - week 42
Per Andersson
Sustainability geek and entrepreneur, former Course Coordinator at CEMUS
Time flies and it´s now 2 years since I worked as a course coordinator at CEMUS. Since then I have worked as an independent consultant in the field of Sustainable Development with a wide range of Projects behind us by now. The team that I work with all come from a background at CEMUS as students and/or coordinators. Together we created projects as Cleantech Challenge, Biketown and Sustainability hackathon, all with the aim to contribute to more sustainable and innovative society.
And if it´s one thing that I have taken with me from CEMUS, it´s that if you want to make a change you need to get shit done! It might sound silly but it´s not as easy as it sounds. Many times you find yourself getting trapped in paper work or dead ends. People saying NO only means that you are one step closer to reaching a person saying YES. And if you find yourself working in a place where you have absolutely no chance in making a change, STOP!
But the biggest thing that has happened to me after my time at CEMUS is that I became a parent.
As no surprise a lot of things change when having a child, and as all parents you aim to give your child the best possible upbringing. But that’s where one of my fears kicks in, as the society we build looks very different from when I grew up. Internet did not exist in homes and mobile phones were used for work and “yuppies”. Now kids are feed with unlimited amounts of “CRAP”! I use the word CRAP from a course that I took in computer science at the University, CRAP in = CRAP out! Meaning; that if you feed your computer models with really crappy data, you will get even more crappy data out. And so it goes that if you feed your entire society with useless nonsense, as Paradise hotel, Pewdiepie, The Kardashians etc….you are likely to end up with a clown as leader of the “free world”. With this said, I have not lost all hope. I still see great potential in the digital society. Used in a good way change can come faster and movements start in days that earlier would have taken years. But the CRAP is taking more and more space in our daily life and looking in the rear view mirror no one could ever imagine the influence the digital media would have on our lives. So how to help my daughter to navigate through all the CRAP will be my main task for the coming years, but more likely my daughter will help me to navigate through the future of digital media. Because one thing is for sure; the next generation will have greater capabilities in using digital media than their parents. And hopefully see the CRAP for what it is!
In conclusion, skip the CRAP and get SHIT done!
This is a part of the 25th Anniversary blog series “CEMUS Diaries: Stories from past, present and future”, where we invite present and former staff, students, work group members, associates, and other CEMUS friends to reflect on their time at CEMUS and shed critical light into the future. Read the other CEMUS Diaries entries here.The Interconnectedness of Earth by Jackie Roth >>