In his book ‘The Adaptive Corporation’, Alvin Tofler warned that “One has to be blind to be unware that something extraordinary is happening to our entire way of life. The swift spread of microprocessors… biotechnology… the electronicization of money… the convergence of computing and telecommunications… the creation of startling new materials… the move into outer space… artificial intelligence – all such technological advances are accompanied by equally important social, demographic and political changes”.
Today we do witness – and unfortunately quite often ‘turn a blind eye’ on – interrelated, mutually reinforcing events or ‘liquid states’ (to name a few) at all levels of our daily life, in:
- Politics: Brexit… Elections in US (Trump), France (Macron), Hungary (Orban)… Europe of Brussels vs Europe of Nations… Protectionism… Anti-globalism… De-globalization and late globalization (Turcan 2016; Turcan et al. 2020)… Slobalization (The Economist 2019)
- Science and technology: Genetically modified crops… Nuclear energy… Fracking… Global warming… Artificial Intelligence… Big Data… Block Chain
- Health: Eating disorders… Immunization… Resistance to anti-biotic
- Social: Mass migration… Extremism… Terrorism… Nationalism… Chauvinism… Sovereignty
- Ethics: Astroturfing… Astrotwitting (Lee 2010) … Fake news… Post truth politics
What do all these ‘liquid’ states have in common? They share at least three key properties (Turcan, 2020):
- high degree of newness and uncertainty,
- high degree of innovative power,
- high degree of negative social impact
Theorizing and theory building during various phases of research are pivotal to make sense of and succesfully cope with the above 'liquid states' and thier key propertiers.
TBRP brings together researchers, passionate about newness, uncertainty and theory building - TBRP foundation pillars - from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, with complimentary theoretical and conceptual approaches, techniques, methodologies and instrumentation, goals and motivations. Several interdisciplinary, integrated, collaborative research projects are put together on the basis of an interdisciplinary methodology and research environment jointly facilitated and led by TBRP faculty:
