The Art of Being a Diehard

In our valley of tears, life can be tough. Today in 2026, however, toughness is the privilege of firefighters and soldiers. Ideally even soldiers of a distant past, such as Ulysses, Achilles or Alcibiades. Our contemporary TV heroes, on the contrary, present themselves as ‘softly boiled eggs’, as they suffer from hypochondria, unshaved beards, lack of attention and other general discomfort. Any kind of obligation is blown up to incredible proportions. Life is totally unbearable at more than ten metres from the swimming pool. A famous metaphor for our culture would make the story of the princess and the pea of Hans Christian Andersen.

This may explain our admiration for the very authentic character of police officer John McClane, performed by actor Bruce Willis. We admire this diehard police officer not so much because of his intellectual subtleness. We admire him because of his unwavering commitment to the good cause, his ‘never give-up’ attitude, his audacity and his willingness to suffer the worst of injuries with a modest smile. Toughness is not only a character trait. Toughness is a virtue and an indication of the more widely recognised virtue of courage.

In the Christian calendar we celebrate today Saint Agapitus of Palestrina, whose statue you can admire at the Duomo of Milan. Agapitus was still very young when he refused to participate in the Roman Army cult of Sol Invictus, imposed by emperor Aurelian. Therefore he was starved, scourged, hanged upside down, burned, fed to the lions, .. without much result until he finally got decapitated. Even compared to other spectacular cases of Christian perseverance, Agapitus must have been the ‘diehard’ John McClane of the Roman Christian martyrs. Of course, we need to remain aware that the traditional martyr stories did not so much aim at describing the historic events. They mainly aimed at supporting us in our faith.

Therefore, may the legend of Agapitus support us in our faith and may it encourage us to some toughness in daily life. The swimming pool is for next year. Let us return courageously to our workplace and let us practice the art of being a diehard.

Picture: By Yair Haklai - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Koppeling

Enter the Construction Sites of History

I would like to come back on one sentence in pope Leo's encyclical letter Magnifica Humanitas that inspired me particularly. Remember Nehemia was put forward as being an example of trust in God, patience, responsibility and leadership. He united the Jewish people as a team and rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem in six months, which should make him the ideal patron of the project leaders. Being a project leader myself, I tend to become desperate at times, but I realise now what a privilege it is to have this difficult but honourable responsibility.

“In this era of digital transformation, I see in Nehemia a striking parable of our own vocation, which is not to be passive spectators of social and cultural fractures, nor mere commentators on what is crumbling, but men and women prepared to enter the construction sites of history — research laboratories, technology companies, schools, the media, institutions and local communities — in order to rebuild what has collapsed and protect what is threatened.”

In this magnificent paragraph, pope Leo touches on the core problem of our time. All too often, people stand at the more secure side lines of the construction sites and limit themselves to be ‘mere commentators on what is crumbling’ in the social media. This leaves them unsatisfied and unhappy with the society and with themselves. Only by defying the fear to be ridiculed as Christians or as supporters of the common good, we can participate wholeheartedly to the construction sites of our time and by practicing solidarity, make the world a better place.

We need people who stand with both feet in the construction yards of our time: the named research laboratories, technology companies, schools, the media, institutions and local communities. In our complex role, we are called to rebuild what has collapsed and protect what is threatened. If you read the encyclical well, you know this means demonstrating team spirit and solidarity with our fellow human being who may be exploited or lost in the information society. In his own way, Leo XIV encourages us to follow Jesus and to expose ourselves to the world.

I also refer to my blogs 21 Lessons for the 21st Century and The Engineer’s Social Role.

Image by Ri Butov from Pixabay

The Hubble-Lemaître Effect at Work

On this Blue Tuesday, we may observe an awkward phenomenon at work. No matter how much we love our colleagues, our colleagues seem to drift away from us. If we consider our cubicle as an island and our manageable individual work as the perimeter of that island, we notice ‘our’ island doesn’t touch our colleagues’ islands. Due to the incredible employment costs, efficiency is essential and we will surely not have overlapping land to manage. On the contrary, there is a lot of sea between us, to be interpreted as a lot of work that is not covered by any colleague. Moreover, due to the multiplication of work, our islands seem to be drifting apart, with a risk of alienation from our colleagues.

Astronomers will recognise this. The resemblance with the Hubble-Lemaître effect is striking. The Hubble-Lemaître effect describes the observation that the celestial bodies around us show a red Doppler shift proportional to their distance from us. The conclusion was that all celestial bodies are therefore moving away from each other and the universe must be expanding. Replace ‘celestial bodies’ by ‘colleagues’ and ‘distance’ by amount of work lying between you and your colleague, and you get the point. No matter how hard we work, the amount of work ‘not done’ is always getting larger and we are not getting closer to our colleagues, on the contrary. There is always more work coming in. No matter how many colleagues we can recruit to fill the gaps, work between us multiplies faster than we can execute it. We see our dear colleagues drifting away from us and they may observe the same phenomenon.

The redshift observed may be an analogy to the red cheeks we show by leaving so much work undone. If our colleagues are a bit shameless and pay only attention to our personal shortcomings, our relationships may deteriorate and we may even become disconnected workers.

The solution to the Hubble-Lemaître effect at work is halting the multiplication of work. Throw at least 50% of new actions into the oblivion pit! Looking back in the past, you will notice a lot of actions never led to any progress. I agree we don’t always know this in advance. We could have guessed, however. We should create new actions with a sense of responsibility. Actions which simplify should be preferred over actions which make life more complex. In the long term, there is more work disappearing through sound oblivion than through proper execution.

Last year on Blue Tuesday, we discussed the Yerkes - Dodson Law.

Image by Rizve Joarder from Pixabay 

Ode to Quantum Mechanics

Quantum mechanics deal with the behaviour of small particles such as electrons. This turns out to be important for engineers when they deal with semiconductors. That's how I got in touch with this exotic subject myself when making my master's thesis in 1988.

Quantum mechanics leaves no doubt: everything is uncertain. On the one hand, this is a damper on the revelry of science. At the end of the nineteenth century, it seemed that the world was deterministic and that science could understand and predict everything. Since then, we have discovered counter intuitive phenomena and uncertainty principles. Schrödinger's cat was no longer to be found where we thought.

There is also a good side. Quantum mechanics introduces a certain magic to science. Georges Lemaître's primordial atom, the idea that quantum mechanics could be at the origin of our existence, may not make the miracle of being any less miraculous, but it is already somewhat possible in the scientific sphere. In quantum mechanics, measuring is really observing. The observer inevitably influences the measurement he makes. John Archibald Wheeler's thought experiment even suggests that quantum mechanics plays a role in our perception of the origin of the universe.

It may be just a dreamy thought, but quantum mechanics seems to be a scientific basis for love. Just like in love, in quantum mechanics there is attraction, repulsion, ambiguity and unpredictability. A colleague of mine once asked me the question: "How can you be so sure that an atom has no consciousness?". Perhaps the behaviour of small particles is unpredictable because they have consciousness. Alles Leben ist eins. But this is not a scientifically based claim.

I also refer to my blogs: "The origin of time" and "The nature of light".

Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

The Yerkes - Dodson Law

On this Blue Tuesday, we may want to have a look at yet another work performance theory, namely the Yerkes-Dodson law. In its most classical representation, it shows work performance on the Y-axis versus arousal (stress level) on the X-axis. The curve typically has an ‘inverted u’-shape or bell shape. For complex tasks, the stress level tipping point (maximum) typically occurs at lower levels of stress than for simple tasks.

The scope of validity of the Yerkes-Dodson law may be a point of discussion among experts, but we all feel it corresponds to our own experience. We need a little bit of stress to come to good performance – we call this ‘flow’. However, when stress gets too high, we tend to get anxious, superficial, confused and we lose our concentration.

In a certain way this law pleads against additional pressure and against multitasking. Multitasking may be required when individuals need to achieve a certain productivity for the money they are paid. Productivity has become a major concern in labour market policies. Nowadays, you couldn't afford giving an employee a single task, although it could be better for his stress level.  Multitasking increases the complexity of work and increases our stress level. We will inevitably end up on the lower right-hand sides of the curves and show relatively poor work performance. Stress and all related inefficiencies seem to be unavoidable in this valley of tears. It may make sense to spare our colleagues and ourselves from more.

Let us further reflect on the Yerkes-Dodson Law at work and at school.

I refer to my blog: The Disconnected Worker.

Picture: Afbeelding van Enrique Meseguer via Pixabay

Poise, Bravery, and Hope

New Year’s resolutions usually aim at doing something, either more or less. We may intend to do more sports, eat less, smoke less, or even work less. Could we also aim at changing our attitude and state of mind to a certain extent? It may be needed in this time when everyone around us seems to be in deep despair about our future, whether it relates to work, war, immigration, climate, or the dangers of eating Christmas trees.

In this valley of tears, there is really a lot to worry about. Although there is always a slight irony in my blogs, our common tendency to be pessimistic is not totally unjustified. Our fears are triggered by the incredible rate at which everything changes. We are missing solid structures in our lives. The solid structures of religion, marriage, family, work often turn into liquids, and it sometimes looks as if we always need to restart reconstructing them like Sisyphus. It makes us extremely vulnerable. Even worse, pessimism may become self-fulfilling.

My New Year’s resolution would be to stay steadfast in the face of uncertainty. We can’t really decide never to be afraid. Fear is an emotion and usually catches us unexpectedly. We can however try to keep our poise and stay brave in the face of what is coming. The brave attitude is certainly less comfortable than the ‘run away’ or ‘blame it on the others’ attitude but it is the one which we regret the least later on. What keeps us going is the hope. The pessimists may be right but hope never dies.

Picture: pedestrian bridge in Tours, France 2019 ©Wim Lahaye

The Art of Delegating

The work around us tends to multiply. Even and especially at peak performance in our work, we need to think timely of new employees and potential successors. If we don't train them in time we may get lost on our lonely island of work and be forgotten by mankind after our death. Workplaces don’t carve the names of the deceased in stone, not even in sand. Without successors it is not only us who will be forgotten but even the fruit of our work will disappear for good.

Breeding new successors requires trust. A successor can only continue your work if you took the time to make him/her familiar with your work. You also need to allow him/her to make a contribution to your work so that your work also becomes his/her work. Your successor also needs to trust you otherwise he/she will not take care of the continuity of your work. A successor doesn’t only need your knowledge, your skill or your craftsmanship. He/she also needs your motivation and your fire.

Therefore, let us slow down our current work a little and talk to potential successors. In the long run our work will not have slowed down and it will be our successors who will bring our work to completion and fulfilment.

Picture: Thorbeke Monument in the Hague via Pixabay.

The Green Leaves of Summer

Every year, I go through two periods of melancholy, one in June after the high feasts of spring, Easter and Pentecost, and one at this end of summertime. In Dutch we use the word ‘weemoed’, which is somewhat less sad than melancholy, and closer to the German ‘Sehnsucht’, the most romantic of all words. Etymologically you could try to translate weemoed as woefulness, but woe is a bit too sad in English. This limited sadness if of course related to our yearly duty to leave Lazy Tasty land and return to the land of cold, darkness and work, the land of reality.

We had a particularly wet summer season this year with the advantage that we could enjoy the green leaves of summer for so long. The link brings you to the song sung by the brothers Four, slightly different from the original soundtrack of the film The Alamo (1960), directed by John Wayne.

In the Ardennes, we could relive the school excursions we did at the age of ten. We did the walk along the river Hoegne as well as the walk on top of the Gileppe dam. It is a way to reconnect with the past, a way to reconnect with ourselves.

Picture: courtesy of Bernard Gastmans 2024

International Women in Engineering Day

Every year on June 23, the world celebrates International Women in Engineering Day. I noticed on an old picture there was only one girl in my 30-student thermodynamics class of 1986. The reason I write this blog however, is that people tell me the M/F ratios have not changed that much since, whereas we were all convinced, back in 1986, that things would change soon.

You could ask why this matters. This is a justified question. Why does it matter that one gender is underrepresented in a particular subject or faculty? Couldn’t we just live with that? The classical answer from the point of view of industry/ society, is that some potential is underused: the underrepresented gender may contribute more than it actually does. This ignores the fact that there may be an overrepresented gender, the men. Perhaps the overrepresented gender is contributing inefficiently to the bottom line, assuming that each gender has specific inherent qualities the other gender may have to a lesser extent? There is however another reason why imbalance is bad. An unbalanced ratio may make studying at a particular faculty less attractive for the students themselves either because of too many of your own gender or because of too many of the opposite gender. Gender imbalances may lead to boring study places and boring work places.

As for the causes, I have been reading a lot of articles about this. Most articles spend too much attention on why girls / women don’t study engineering, but they don’t spend sufficient  attention on the boys/ men motivation, as if that doesn’t matter much. Moreover, the articles focus too much on career impediments, like glass ceilings and salary differences. These career impediments equally exist in other professions, so why should there be a bigger problem in engineering? The choice for a scientific or engineering profession is made at secondary school, long before these career differences are actually experienced.

Most articles agree on a few things. There are hidden forces in education which drive boys / girls in divergent directions, and this is not so much related to school orientation, but rather family role related. It is interesting to note that this divergence is worse in industrialised countries. In poorly industrialised countries, men and women are equally forced to look for a job with sufficient revenue, whereas industrialised countries offer the luxury to women to accept somewhat less paid, but stable part-time or 9-5 jobs. As a result, paradoxically, industrialised countries seem to have more imbalance in the M/F engineering participation ratio.

Another finding is the role of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is the degree to which you are confident you will be able to solve a difficult task. For technical challenges, girls/women seem to have a lower self-efficacy than men, but the question is whether this low self-efficacy is sufficient ground not to start the studies. Men with low self-efficacy exist as well and are kindly asked to study engineering anyway and suffer the consequences of their lack of self-confidence. “Bite on your teeth!” we say in Dutch. I'm joking a little but our society is tough on men as well.

I’m in favour of general STEM actions to encourage young people in general for science. However, I’m not in favour of girls-only actions, as these may have an adverse effect.

I refer to my blogs: ‘The Engineer’s Social Role’ and to ‘European Young Engineers’.

Afbeelding van Dee via Pixabay

The Future of Flanders in Space

This is the text I wrote for the Flanders Technology and Innovation Closing Festival. It served as final scene of a Space Exhibition in Antwerp. Here is the full text.

We explore space because we are curious about what we will find. Travelling in space sometimes demands the utmost of what we can do: the lightest and strongest materials, the most powerful engines, the most sensitive instruments and, above all, the greatest imagination of the best minds.

Every journey changes a perspective. The space we travel to is also the space from which we emerged. With so many challenges we meet ourselves a little, but we also learn to love our Earth a little more. For example, the first trip to the moon brought the beauty of our Earth into focus. Countless satellites now image this beauty every day.

It is now time for the next step. Perhaps around the middle of this century, people will see the Earth disappear like a speck in the sky, only to land on another planet. The challenges will be enormous, not only for the crew. Thousands of people will work on it, also from here in Flanders. But we will get to know ourselves better again.

I refer to my blog: "Space Trends in 2022" and to my Dutch blog "Zie ons doen".

Picture: FTI Slotfestival March 2024©Wim Lahaye

The Engineer’s Social Role

There is a history of the technical marvel IMEC in presentation form. In it, Professor Hugo De Man characterized his closest colleague the late Professor Roger Van Overstraeten as a ‘visionary Fleming’. According to Professor De Man, it had always been the intention "to put Flanders on the map of the industry of the future by training a generation of engineers who, in addition to a solid scientific basis, also have an eye for the social and economic progress of the people."

We did indeed have some professors at our University of Leuven who gave a little more than the sober lessons. On the one hand they tried to teach us a kind of entrepreneurship and on the other hand they reminded us of our social role and our social responsibility. Entrepreneurship was not an end, but rather a means to improve the socio-economic fabric of society and the common good. This may all sound rather obvious, but it never was, on the contrary. Not all colleagues showed the same interest in social themes. Deep specialisation threatened to suck many fellow engineers into the deep oblivion pit of the professional nerds. It didn’t end up that bad, however. The problems to be solved became so complicated that only good teamwork proved to have a chance of success. Furthermore, new developments are now being evaluated very thoroughly in terms of their social relevance. After my studies, at the engineering association and at the European Young Engineers,  I met many like-minded people.

The profession of engineer is indeed a wonderful profession, although it sometimes takes courage. It certainly deserves promotion among the various groups that are still underrepresented in this profession. But the beauty of it all is that I became more and more aware that I did not have a profession but a vocation. In "Science as a vocation" we already saw that this vocation can be described as a kind of apostolate in the industrial landscape.

I also refer to my blogs: "The Why of Technology” and to “The Trap of Technology".

Picture: Brussels Airport Runway, courtesy Jan Straus

Work

James Suzman’s book title sounds to us like an order. This is exactly the subject of this book. How did we get to today’s attitude towards ‘work’, including our work ethic?

The author starts with nature. Work dissipates energy and increases entropy in accordance with the laws of nature. Strange things happen: male masked weavers (birds) make and break their nests endlessly for no other apparent reason than to show off for the female masked weavers. The energy they dissipate in doing this is in no relation to the functional outcome of their work.

The author then considers work in an anthropological view. Our ancestor hunter gatherers only ‘worked’ for meeting their instant needs. It is through the agricultural revolution that man started working for meeting his future needs and it is at that point that slavery originated. The author then describes the evolution of ‘work’ and its meaning in the industrial revolution with the intellectual contributions of people like Thomas Robert Malthus, Benjamin Franklin, John ‘Saint’ Lubbock, John Maynard Keynes and John Kenneth Galbraith.

The author points to a few aberrations in society’s attitude towards work. The agricultural and industrial revolutions have brought us to a certain work ethos and a corresponding belief in merit as the right measure for work reward. Yet the highest earners are not the hardest workers but the largest owners of assets, being thereby the largest receivers of dividends and bonusses. It is not the labour effort that pays off, but the market value of the ‘work’ one seems to offer to society. Other related aberrations are the silly ‘war for talent’ and the cases of karoshi in Japan.

The author also points to Parkinson’s law according to which work inevitably expands to fill the time available for its completion. Bureaucracies will always generate enough internal work to justify their existence. Many people don’t have meaningful work anymore but fill their time with the rope of their house mortgage around their neck. The author concludes that many of our core assumptions about economy and work are an artifact of our past and we could free us from them to imagine and create a better future.

I refer to my blogs: Ode to Industry, Full Time could be Less and Revolution is in the Air.

Space Trends in 2022

On this international day of human space flight, also called Yuri's Night, I am making an overview of the current trends in my work area. One of these, the competition between nations, was already discussed last week. A review article from two years ago was about the applications of satellites in everyday life.

Today's article got published on the Flanders Space website.

The photo shows the first launch of the space shuttle Columbia on April 12, 1981. I turned sixteen that day and followed the event with great interest. (Columbia later made a fatal re-entry on February 1, 2003, leading to the end of the space shuttle program.) 

Picture from shutterstock.com

The Disconnected Worker

On this Blue Tuesday, somewhere between the fourth and the fifth Corona-wave, we make some awkward observations. First, we have never been told so often that it is important to be happy at work. (A boss of mine told us in the nineties that we were not at work to be happy; there is some truth in that but the fact that his employees still remember his statement today, is clear enough.) In their search for rare talent, employers do their utmost to show concern for the well-being of their employees. Secondly, a lot of employees do not want to return to their workplace, not because of the infection risk, but because they don’t feel well anymore in their workplace (especially in the so-called 'cubicles' or in landscape offices). A lot of them got tired fighting in solitude against unachievable expectations.

Tomorrow 19 January (2000-)2022, we remember Frederick Herzberg, who described the two-factor theory or Motivator-Hygiene Theory. Basic idea is that job satisfaction comes with intrinsic motivators like challenging work, achievement, recognition, responsibility, autonomy and meaning. Job dissatisfaction is not the opposite of job satisfaction and comes with extrinsic hygiene factors like salary, status, job security, benefits, work conditions.

In a lot of cases, employees get discouraged because their opinion is never really asked. A computer questionnaire is not a good way to collect opinions. The ambient noise level in computerised companies is so high that only the loudest voices are being heard. This is most discouraging. Simon Sinek insists that good leaders are good listeners and that employees can only achieve the (‘Herzberg’) job satisfaction by looking for their ‘why’. Hilde Helsen developed her own method to assist Dreamers who Do in achieving this.

Happiness at work cannot be an employer’s responsibility only. Employees also need to get rid of meritocratic compulsive thoughts. One typical compulsive thought sounds like this: if employee A is the manager of employee B, then A must be happy and B must be unhappy. A must be the best and B must have done something wrong in the past; B can only blame himself. You may notice this reasoning is ludicrous, but suppose you end up in situation B? Jealousy (in German there is a more subtle nuance between Eifersucht and Neid) is a bad idea. How ridiculously this may sound, it dominates the way we think in a meritocratic society. The way we think is a perfect recipe to be unhappy at work.

I refer to my blogs: “The Why of Technology” and “Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation”.

Picture: shutterstock.com

Ode to Craftsmanship

Knowledge is silver, but skill is gold. In the Middle Ages, new craft brought great wealth to the emerging cities. This is still the case in our current economy. Employers are desperately looking for employees with expertise. Craftsmanship is also beautiful. Gute Technik ist immer schön.

Craftsmanship is valuable because it takes talent, time, patience, discipline, and intrinsic motivation to acquire it. This is precisely what makes craftsmanship so rare: today there is too little time and patience to allow craftsmanship to mature. Due to skilled manpower shortage, young people must show craftsmanship immediately and get discouraged early. Let us revalue craftsmanship.

I refer to my blog: Ode to Industry and The Engineer’s Courageous Mastery.

Picture: shutterstock.com

To a Renewed Collegiality?

When you return to work after a long home office period, it could happen that your colleagues look nicer and friendlier than ever. In fact, if you are not careful, they might hug you and cuddle you to death.

Where did the old sharks remain? Did we assume too long that colleagues could not be nice to each other? It is clear that the long absence from office has created a new awareness. Yes, we may have missed our colleagues. When we return to office, we don't like the idea of immediate confrontation. It is as if we don't want to destroy the peacefulness of our empty offices. Perhaps the online diversity and inclusion sessions have made us think differently of our relationships with our colleagues.

Is this another naïve thought? Perhaps it is, but meanwhile, let us use the momentum and let us give this renewed collegiality a chance of becoming somewhat more sustainable.

Picture: shutterstock.com

D & I versus Competition

Large companies spend an increasing amount of time on Diversity and Inclusion initiatives. This is good in itself, and it doesn't need to be justified by the fact that D&I supporting companies are worldwide more successful than others. The reasoning can be also inverted: successful companies tend to operate in diverse places, recruit a diverse workforce and can afford investing time and energy in D&I.

Recent evolution in the topic is the question whether people really feel included in the workplace. It somehow reminds us of Hans Christian Andersen's tale of the ugly duckling: everyone can experience that awkward feeling: "Do I belong here?" and "Where do I belong?". Initiatives like www.understood.org plead for more understanding for parents and children struggling with hidden impediments. Generally, people should feel safe disclosing disabilities that aren't visible, even in the workplace.

I am very much in favour of this and I believe in the benefits for industry. However, D&I will not work if we continue believing in meritocracy and individual competition. Salary and recognition, including 'right to stay' in bad times, are still too dependent on individual, often subjective, evaluation. If we believe in diversity, we should also believe in diverse, non-quantifiable, contributions. Competition should be between companies, not inside companies. Individual performance will become meaningless over time and subordinate to team performance. In a D&I culture, individual attitude should be recognised and rewarded however.

Generally, a culture of numbers will harvest numbers, and the workforce will become unhappy over time. A culture of collaboration and inclusion will harvest good numbers and beauty, and the workforce will be proud and happy.

The Why of Technology

The Why of Technology has always seemed obvious. Technology was perceived to fulfil a shortage. It fulfilled a need that had been unfulfilled all too long.

This is changing. On the one hand, the basic needs are being fulfilled and the new needs are becoming ever more subtle. On the other hand, the complexity and the cost of new technologies are getting out of control. A focused orientation is needed. It becomes essential to choose well where scarce resources should be allocated to. The corona crisis forces us to stay at home and think. It encourages us to think what society could really need next in terms of technology.

The why of technology can be written as an ABC: Achievement – Beauty – Commodities. Commodities are obvious, since Homo Habilis started creating his own tools and weapons millions of years ago. Commodities are the fruit of our creativity and our industria (activity). They are still important. We need trains, we need water, electricity and Internet. We need smartphones and social media. Beauty may not be the first word we associate with technology, but for the engineer or designer, it is an important driver. Achievement is a very powerful driver. In the Middle Ages, it made superpowers invest in cathedrals. In the 16^th century superpowers rivalled with maps. And in the 21^st century, superpowers invest their money in satellite constellations. The eagerness for achievement made America go to the moon. It will make mankind go to Mars very soon. Technology also needs to fight its own drawbacks. We need a circular economy to keep the world sustainable. We need technology to get rid of carbon dioxide emission, to resolve the traffic tangle, to protect our data, etc.

As the possibilities of technology are endless, we really need to ask ourselves the question in what direction we want to go. What do we want to do with Artificial Intelligence, with gene manipulation, with new materials, with hydrogen fusion? How much progress could we make when we understand better how the brain works? Should we try to extend our habitat to space? These questions are not easy to answer. The mere fact that something is possible, doesn’t justify its development. The question is both collective and individual. It is both material and spiritual. To what kind of existence are we called? What is an ideal way of living? It is a scary question in postmodern times. What is our mission and what might be our destiny? We could come up with individual answers that differ very much. Can we also come up with a collective answer?

I also refer to “Homo Deus” and to "A Sea of Change".

What Satellites Can Do for You

Satellite applications and services make up the essence of my work life. As I regularly talk about satellites and their applications in daily life for interested groups of people, I thought it would be a good idea to summarise all this in a short article. It is useful for laymen to understand how important and diverse the applications are. And it is useful for people in the satellite world to have a concise summary that helps them to overthink the multiple possibilities. Some of the topics have already appeared in this blog, usually under the label work. As this article is however close to my work life and my CV, I decided to publish it as an article on LinkedIn.

European Young Engineers

European Young Engineers is an association of young engineers associations of different European countries. It is based on a rotation system: every six month one member organisation or member state organises a meeting for European Young Engineers in its home country. The meetings usually consist of professional workshops, company visits, cultural excursions and social happenings. In this way, European Young Engineers get to know each other, and they learn about other countries' companies, technical innovation areas and cultural cities. EYE meetings can be lots of fun but they are also rather demanding on the organisers. Last weekend, I had the honour and the pleasure to speak at the EYE conference in Eindhoven (a great place to be for engineers!).

I was happy to be among the founding members when the Dutch Young Engineers took the initiative to meet the Flemish Young Engineers in Antwerp 25 years ago. Looking back in time, one can identify a number of things that changed since then. EYE was founded only five years after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. We can’t say this European scar has completely disappeared, but a long way has been gone already. We have an integrated market now, and a common European currency for a number of members states. On the technical level, the world has changed as well. The fax has been replaced by the Internet. We have now mobile phones that can do more than one call on a charged battery, and the mobile phone has become a smartphone. We have also seen the emergence of social media since then.

EYE is really a demonstration of positive forces (dunameis) in Europe. On the one hand, the engineering profession is perhaps the profession where international collaboration is most fertile, especially for young engineers. On the other hand, this collaboration is pleasant and it creates lasting relationships. Europe needs courageous vanguard movements like EYE. I’m so glad this initiative continues and flourishes. We had to do this because it was possible. What you can do, you also have to do. I refer to earlier blogs related to Europe.