Joost Steins Bisschop

The impact of new information technology

He trained to become a monetary economist, started out as an entrepreneur, and ended up as a consultant, tech-philosopher and columnist. Joost Steins Bisschop has a knack for offering crystal clear analyses of the impact that new information technology has on society. As a consultant on web-related matters, he stays at the cutting edge of developments, and as a columnist for Het Financieele Dagblad and author of several books, he shares his lucid insight with the broader public.

In the 1980s, Steins Bisschop developed a back-office system for a stockbroker. He went on to found a number of companies under the name SPC Group, before becoming a partner at the internet consultancy Jungle Minds in 1999.

Since 2000, he has written a weekly column for Holland’s leading financial daily Het Financieele Dagblad, in which he not only considers the impact of technology on society, but also the influence of society on technology. Is it a bad thing that millions of children chat via the web? How important is eye contact? Is the future of online offline? And what is the value of a handwritten letter? These are the kind of issues that Steins Bisschop discusses, critically and skeptically, but also enthusiastically and preferably with a touch of humor. Two collections of his columns were published in 2003 (‘Chatten met je dochter’) and 2006 (‘Wie weet of het waar is’).

Steins Bisschop and Jungle Minds partner Gert-Jan Smits also develop the Internet Scorecard, a means to assess the effectiveness of websites. And on Fridays, Steins Bisschop teaches at a primary school, where he gives classes in math, chess and French to students who are up for a challenge.