My virtual world

I am completely hooked on youtube. Every day I use it to listen to music, look at a funny clip or to learn something new. Yesterday I read in the Dutch magazine Elsevier that Youtube is making an enormous loss every year. Despite millions of users the costs of maintaining the site is skyrocketing. Well, I hope that Google sees it as an important marketing tool and a tool to increase internet users all over the world. I also think it has a democratic value and brings the world together in a completely new constellation.

One of my favorites on youtube right now are the many films from is www.ted.com
TEDTalks shares the best ideas from the TED Conference with the world, for free. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

My new personal favorite is global health professor Hans Rosling. Anyone interested in getting an update on the developing world and where we are at should look at one of his speeches. He is not only smart and interesting to listen to but also brings about statistic in a fun and exciting way.
Please have a look at;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

Another interesting film to watch is “Did you know”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpEnFwiqdx8

This film was made for educators in the US a few years ago and has been updated several times since then. I gives us a picture of a changing world where Asia is passing the OECD countries within years (or maybe they already did?).

We sometimes talk about all the dangers of internet, about the unclear structure of it and the threat it could pose to a democratic society. These are all serious problems but I think the positive aspects are even more important. We now need to focus to get the price of computers down linking people from all over the world together. In a global economy it is important that we have global access to information. E-democracy is a key factor to development and stability.

Last week I took part in an interesting conference at the International Centre for Local Democracy in Visby, Sweden. I was there to learn more about municipal partnership as we have collaboration with Voi in Kenya. Tomas Ries, a researcher for the National Defence Academy held a speech explaining that we are now so linked in the world that political, economical and social aspects influence each other on a larger scale. Instability in any of these fields in any country immediately has an effect on a global scale.

In my view internet is a way of opening doors and information flows that might have been difficult to spread in any other way. Ideas about the world, news, religious believes, philosophy, creative solutions, information about disasters and mistakes etc. gets spread in the virtual world wherever you might live. Something is changing and I like to agree with Rosling that things are getting better despite health threats and famine. We can make things better but we have to do it together.

Please try the links!