Adapting to Paradoxes

Dr. Kjell A. Nordström, assistant professor at the Stockholm School of Economics, dazzled the audience at the 2001 Foodservice Summit with his insights into ‘karaoke capitalism' and ‘temporary monopolies'. The 2009 event brought another opportunity to sample his audacious interpretations of today's paradoxes, both commercial and cultural, including gender roles, urbanisation and the future of the family. Report by Bruce Whitehall.
 

Developing the hypothesis that people increasingly lived "alone together", Kjell Nordström highlighted how very recent technological changes were contributing profoundly to a new social  landscape. People led increasingly separate lives in terms of housing, family and long-term relationships, yet they were connected on-line to vast networks of virtual acquaintances. This situation has been accelerated by the emergence of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, which have ousted pornography as the no. 1 application of the Internet. Or is social media just  another version of sexual activity - a new form of pornography? On the same theme, could business conferences, which were still growing all around the world, also be seen as an example of "alone together". There was plenty of evidence that executives had many more pressing things to do, yet they flocked to conferences, presumably to feel less alone by randomly joining lots of other business-people.Nordström detected one underlying motive: people increasingly felt nervous of a knowledge gap - "despite unbelievable  growth in the accumulated knowledge of humanity." Fears of not being fully in touch were greater than ever before.
 
That could help explain why one of his clients, the giant Siemens organisation, still found it important to collaborate with a small  Indian software company with just 12 employees. Not even Siemens, with 482,000 employees in 192 countries, can pull it off alone, Nordström concluded. The infor mation gap was why people collaborated and formed joint ventures. It explained alliances  between universities, airlines and many other types of organisation. It also helped explain why achievements in science were considered of greater importance and status than ever before. Yet people believed in science less and less. In fact, it was in crisis, Nordström concluded. It promised nuclear-powered energy for ever, no more pandemic, no more Black Death, it gave us antibiotics and diagnostic tools. "They promised us everything was under control, but just look at what happened with HIV," he pointed  out. The apparent inability to deal with the world's ever more complex issues led to a "I don't care" helplessness which in turn fed the growth of superstition and alternative beliefs. It also  encouraged people to disregard warnings, such as the heart-stopping potential of giant hamburgers and similar fare. A typical attitude was: ‘Yes, I have read the studies but I don't believe them.'