Super Bowl commercials teach us how to conceive of surveillance. While Apple promises to fight Big Brother with a personal computer, Coca-Cola invites us to think different, i.e. positively about security cameras. The whitewashing of surveillance accompanies the ‘big brotherization’ of Apple. However, the whitewashing may only be a distraction from another more subtle, more effective (and after all more amusing) progression towards a dystopian future: the constant sharing without friction and language and thus without the distance that would allow for reflection and critical thinking. In this essay, I discuss the symbolic value of the year 1984 and its link to the ongoing move from lingual to visual communication. It underlines that the television screen or smartphone is the sibling of the surveillance camera and shows why the dystopian future we fear won’t be like George Orwell’s 1984 or Anthony Burgess’ 1985.
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Now that higher education is closed in Corona lock-down, schools are only going to continue very partially (“pretend” they 're still open), we run the risk of pricing ourselves out of the market. Because if it really is only about knowledge transfer, there are of course so many more interesting documentaries and in the field of knowledge transfer there is so much more interesting than even top scientists can put together themselves. Not even Einstein was a documentary maker.
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We have come to understand our world less and less, despite the countless one-liners (and slogans) that influencers and advertising people are constantly shooting at us via social media, among other things. We can no longer describe our world - it has simply become too complex for that. HBut marketing and communications people make it seem like plain language can convey any message, which, as this column argues, is absolutely not true.
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Visit Zuid-Limburg, Koninklijke Horeca Nederland and Hiswa/Recron have asked Breda University of Applied Sciences (BUas) to conduct an exploratory research into the possible impacts of aircraft noise on tourism and recreation in the Southern part of Limburg province, Netherlands, in relation to the current and future exploitation of Maastricht Aachen Airport (MAA). Tourism and recreation are key economic sectors in the characteristic landscape of Southern Limburg. Goal of the project is to review the state-of-the-art of knowledge on aircraft noise impacts on tourism and recreation, and to survey potential visitors of the area on their attitudes towards aircraft noise, in order to map the potential impacts on tourism and recreation in Southern Limburg.Clients: Koninklijke Horeca Nederland, Hiswa-Recron, Visit Zuid-Limburg