TONIK 2025
I dag er altjóða tøkniráðstevnan TONIK, sum snýr seg um nýggjastu rákini innan tøkni, nýskapan og list.
Fleiri fyrilestrarhaldarar úr bæði Føroyum og útlondum hava lagt fram gjøgnum dagin.
Elsa Berg, borgarstjóri, helt eisini røðu.
Her eru brot úr røðuni við heitinum Tórshavn: A Capital of Innovation and Visionary Thinking
- "It is easy to assume, that we in the Faroe Islands are too remote, small. But it all depends on our perspective, on ambition. Maybe we are remote geographically with the Atlantic Ocean surrounding us, but are we remote in culture, innovation, technology, industry, knowledge, vision? No, we are not. We are part of a global ecosystem of exactly those things among many others. It is not limited by physical borders but rather connected by technology and its endless possibilities – and we depend on each other.
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In 1859 Charles Darwin – the founding father of evolution – wrote “the origin of the species”, where he beautifully explained how species change over time. However, he initially struggled to pinpoint the driving force behind this transformation – what causes species to shift in color, shape and form across generation and generations. It wasn’t until he encountered the work of Thomas Malthus, a British social economist, best known for his writings on population growth, which stated that people will always threaten to outrun food supplies unless reproduction is checked, that he finally grasped the driving force of his theory of evolution by natural selection: namely competition for survival.
Well, great ideas don’t stay in their lanes — Malthus’s population theory leaping into Darwin’s evolutionary thinking shows how bold insights can cross sectors and ignite revolutions in entirely different fields. We build on each other's experiences in regards of ideas, thoughts and solutions in our ecosystem.
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In Tórshavn we aspire to be a knowledge-driven municipality. We depend on knowledge-based society to evolve. So how do we contribute to innovation in our municipality?
First of all, we allow visionary thinking in all our solutions. This is whether, we are discussing housing, living, busses, businesses or big investments in our municipality, but also regarding what we prioritize. For me, it is important that we recognise the critical importance of protecting plant life and biodiversity and the pressing climate crisis.
As an example, the political majority in Tórshavn has decided to explore the possibilities of future green fuel together with others, through workshops, projects and shared learning.
We not only allow visionary thinking but encourage it and expect it with the question: How can we find better solutions?
We collaborate with our university in order to create a space for knowledge-exchange, we challenge ourselves to think differently, and we include industries, our citizens and specialists in our solution-thinking".
