My favourite Professor, Hans Rosling, is an amazing person and charachter. I have met him and he is great .
Hans Rosling is a Swedish medical doctor, academic, statistician, and public speaker. He is Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institutet (The home of the Nobel Committee in Medecine and the highest ranked institute in Sweden and top Europe) and co-founder and chairman of the Gapminder Foundation, which developed the Trendalyzer software system.
Rosling rose to international celebrity status after producing a Ted Talk in which he promoted the use of data to explore development issues. You can see the TED talk here: TED Hans Rosling: The Magic Washingmachine
Roslings main theory is that the world is better than we think – our view of the world, especially developing countries is outdates and colonial – dating from our time in school decades ago. He also has a strong opinion that media is not reflecting Africa and emerging economies in a proper way, bit in fact in a patronizing and ignorant way.
This is a brilliant interview from Danish News where the News host tries to question Roslings criticism of media in this perspective.
I love when Roslings says to the journalist “the facts are not up for debate, I am right and you are wrong”.
“The facts are not up for debate. I am right and you are wrong”.
You can see the video here – “Don’t use news media to understand the world” (English subtitles): Hans Rosling battles a Danish news journalist
Enjoy!
Digitization has become a priorty for Sweden and Swedish Government.
“This is the most important long-term issue for Sweden – it is about the future growth and jobs of the future”, says Minister Mikael Damberg to media, “we are in the fourth industrial revolution. The production is changing, the way we treat consumers, business models. Everything is changing”.
Sweden is one of the world’s leading IT countries. We had early developed a powerful broadband internet infrastucture for the entire country. The Internet and broadband/data/IT penetration in population among the highest in the world. Almost everyone has access to high-speed networks.
As an early adopter of Sweden was ranked as the world’s leading IT country for several years in the 2000s. Now, other countries have caught up. Therefore, keep the Swedish government is now developing a new digitization strategy for the coming years.
“We are in the fourth industrial revolution”.
The Swedish authorities have a very advanced level of data relative to most other countries, but there is always room for improvement. The future will demand it. Also the Swedish business community has a very high level of automation and high tech penetration.
“For business, it’s about new ways to control production systems, creating new business models. The process itself creates new business models. And it changes the relationship between man and machine”, says Minister Damberg.
If Swedish industry to succeed, the state acts. This is done through an initiative called, ‘Smart Industry’ – a new strategy for Sweden.
“We are far ahead in terms of our digital infrastructure and Swedes are also prone to change. But many other countries are making great efforts,” says Minister Mikael Damberg.
Yesterday the EU Customs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici participated in the EU Trade Seminar at the World Customs Organization (WCO) on Rue de Marche 30 in Brussels.
Today the EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström visited WCO to participate in a ‘Women in Trade’ meeting.
It was Ana Hinojosa, the Director for Compliance and Facilitation – and a good friend of mine – that had invited Commissioner Malmström to the World Customs Organization for the network meeting. A great initiative.
It is naturally extremely important for the Customs community to have regular contacts with key people in the global trade environment. I was very pleased and proud to see that our Commissioner visited the WCO.
Commissioner Malmström earlier today on Twitter expressed her gratitude and happiness about having participated in the network meeting at the WCO.
Also Secretary General Kunio Mikuriya has over the years done a lot to raise the profile of the WCO by inviting different decision makers to visit the home of Customs, the World Customs Organization.
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