In the last couple of weeks or so, two seemingly insignificant news stories have reached my ears. First, Starbucks announced they enter the Finnish market - yes, there are still markets where the brand isn’t active yet - and second, the main Finnish newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat (HS), revealed plans to move from broadsheet to tabloid format.

My somewhat antihipsteresque circle of acquaintances, all but a few easily described as knowledge workers or belonging to the creative class, seems to gre..

 I have already earlier written about homo ludens and the new ethos of creativity. It is pretty interesting how the notion homo ludens has become popular in the contemporary discussion.

It seems we have understood that a human being is not just a homo economicus of economic rationality nor the engineering blacksmith of homo faber but also a playful human. The famous key work regarding this thematics is the classic book Homo Ludens (1938) by the Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga (1872–1945).

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 In the postmodern media society, one can say without exaggeration that digital information, telecommunication technology and new media intrude ever deeper into people’s everyday lives.

For example, the Internet and mobile phone cultures (including games) of recent years have had concrete and remarkable effects on the media practices and everyday routines of contemporaries.

As technical integration has travelled towards a “smart phone” and “communicator” that utilizes networking, dynamic multime..

In the contemporary world, our way of living is increasingly mediated and even expanded by media experiences. We are living, in fact, in the age of experience design. Mediated, first-hand experiences are giving way (at least to some extent) to synthetic experiences generated by new media.

“Experience,” "experience industry," “experience economy” (Pine & Gilmore 1999), and “experience society” (German, Die Erlebnisgesellschaft, see Schulze 1992) have become central themes and notions to describ..

It is not an innocent coincidence that some of the most popular keywords today are change and vision. Change is necessary and inevitable, many people say. Vision can refer to the strategic goals of a company, organization, community, person, state, regional area, etc.

The word “vision” also contains a humorous meaning since one dictionary definition of the word is a hallucination experienced while in a religous trance or strongly inibriated.

Times are changing. Yesterday’s truth is not necessa..

It seems that the contemporary age is filled with paradoxes. Unlike the techno-paradise prophecies from decades ago today’s knowledge workers are under constant and high pressure. We feel that the Zeitgeist (spirit of the age) is very hectic, there is never enough time, there is always a deadline around the corner, too many ongoing processes are happening at once… and so on... and so on.

Stress management and the ability to relax are often tested when time is limited and you’re in a constant hu..

I still want to comment the thematics and current discussions regarding the future developments of work?

I was interviewed by Welcome to Finland magazine some months ago and asked to tell my views and opinions on this particular topic. Here are some of my key citations (with new titles chrystalizing key themes and topics) of the article:

Uncertainty, chaos, change, volatility…

”It should be made clear, that the change in working life and society is not stable. Different people and organisations e..

SlowHill is an innovative Finnish music project consisting of legendary masters of experimental music: Mr. Tapani Rinne aka RinneRadio and Vellu Maurola aka Dj Slow.

About a year ago I was asked to write a short essay to be used as sleeve notes for SlowHill’s latest release. The album, Muzak, consists of ten calm musical pieces that enjoyably stimulate the mind. I listened to the album continuously as the rich colours of the Finnish autumn slowly turned into the dark of early winter.

Muzak is ..

We are soon to enter year 2011. Surrounded still by financial crisis, climate change, pension bomb, and swine flu, the Western soul is troubled by confusion, fear and contradicting moods.

Culturally pessimistic prognoses portray world wars, revolutions and the downfall of the Western civilisations. The optimists, on the other hand, smilingly await the future – as naively as the folks on the upper decks of the Titanic once did, the sceptics would say. All in all, we live in a hectic, turbulent, ..