So far in 2014 I’ve spent at least three days a week in Stockholm, putting in some serious crunch hours with my amazing team mates. When I am here, I always make an effort to find a couch to crash on at the wonderful Hus24 – a co-working/co-living space right smack downtown in Stockholm, a house filled with entrepreneurs, yet another proof that Stockholm’s tech scene is among the hottest ones, and the place I lived when I did full-week commutes to Stockholm last fall.
Last night, as a thank you for letting us crash on their couches (again), my partner in crime and I bought pizza and beer for the whole house last night. (Yeah, yeah, no-bread burger and a cup of tea for myself, if we should be detail specific…)
In any case. The point I am trying to make is that in Stockholm, there is a house filled with awesome people, and last night we had a great, long and super fascinating discussion which could be easily framed as the title of this blogpost.
Long, intricate, borderline philosophical, deep, involving 15+ people, upsetting, wonderful, and overall sprinkled with tech – sometimes the practical, applied tech and sometimes the tech which borders on religion and utopia and dystopia all in one. In the course of four hours we touched on, in no particular order, a critical evaluation of the academic system, how facing death puts life into perspective, how people are going to live when there is no more employment, flappy birds, whether Swedes are simple-minded and whether people living in the forest without internet are happier (immediately followed by someone screaming “Noooooo! I would have gone craaaazy!’), how gratitude is relative and comparison with others is sometimes life changing and sometimes destructive, yet the topic was and continued to be the practical application of philosophy in today’s society – or the lack thereof.
There’s just something different about entrepreneurs. Solid and foundational geekiness leading to a somewhat desperate urge to solve all life’s problems, combined with great visions for the future – utopia sometimes bordering on dystopia… I love it!