Paraphrasing Massimo D’Azeglio who said “We made Italy, now we need to make italians”, I can say “Europe is made, now it is time to make Europeans”. Since 1987 the Erasmus project is an answer. Even if I haven’t taken part in this project I really think it’s a great way to create what the future European citizens will be. Young students traveling and studying through-out Europe meet fellow European students and make friends. Boundaries and prejudices fall apart and open-minded people get born to make a new category of students and citizens. Here is a nice interview giving you the chance to see what an important role Erasmus is playing in making the Europeans.
Today’s world is extremely informative. You can search for things you wish to know more about as fast as the wink of an eye. Someone would call this information galore, someone else would call it: information overflow. Information is abundant, most of the times pertinent to our research intentions, and most importantly, it is overwhelming. Gathering and embedding information, being it a new recipe, or what you didn’t know about islam, is extremely time consuming. Enriching, but time consuming. Fundamental to one’s culture, but mostly passive. So, how can anyone make good use of all the information that has been gathered? How can we turn ourselves from readers to inspired writers and thinkers?
It is simple: by taking a step back from the desk and step out for a walk in the park. The constant flow of information is vital nourishment to new ideas and solutions, but it also represents a very disturbing noise source. Only by turning off the pc, or taking some silence time for myself, I really experience how good all the things I have been reading and exploring can be. So silence, or at least long breaks, are optimal places in time and space for new ideas to get born, thanks to our skillful and fast internet surfing.
marketing value creation (?)
Thanks to TED and Rory Sutherland, I came to know of this genial way of creating new through marketing, at zero cost. Which do you like better? Square shreddies or diamond? I would say: diamond.
Do you want to watch the video talking about this? Go here http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_an_ad_man.html