An introduction

[Trond Andresen <Trond.Andresen@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

As a subscriber both to pen-l and pkt, and inspired by Michael
Perelman's proposal on pen-l that we introduce ourselves to each other,
I enclose my attempt below.

I propose that everyone who has the time and inclination submit
introductions, and that the list managers of pen-l and pkt ensure that
these are archived somewhere, so that we can look up some background on
a specific person if we feel like it. This dry impersonal e-mail medium
will surely benefit from this?

-------------------------------------
Trond Andresen	(Trond.Andresen@xxxxxxxxxxx)
Department of Engineering Cybernetics
The Norwegian Institute of Technology
N-7034 Trondheim, NORWAY

phone +47 73 59 43 58
fax   +47 73 59 43 99


---------------------

I am 46, tenured lecturer in systems and control theory at The Norwegian
Institute of Technology.

I am a good lecturer (so the students say), but my list of publications
short. I like to do a million different things (see below) besides
lecturing, and my academic CV will therefore never be anything to brag
about.

I have been project leader of a gas- and electric driven
demonstration vehicle program at the University. Now I am coordinating
further activities concerning "pure" electric vehicles.

I am also very interested in economics, and hope that dynamical systems
people - even when we have no formal economic education - may have some
interesting things to say in economic debates. My main interests in
economics are

- the dynamics of accumulation and maldistribution.

- the alternative monetary system of Silvio Gesell, Irving Fisher,
  etc. ("Stamp scrip", "Schwundgeld"), recently advocated by for example prof.
  Margrit Kennedy in Germany. For PKT'ers: Keynes gives his evaluation of
  Gesell's contributions in the General Theory, ch. 23.

- discussing and constructing renewed visions for non-capitalist
  societies: New types of economic organization, leadership, democracy,
  media systems, impact of technology, you name it.

- discussing the topic of national economies vs "globalization".

I have been a member and an  activist on the (then Maoist)
"revolutionary left" since 1971, still hanging on, but not using much
time on party politics. Today I consider myself an independent marxist
with strong anarchist and decentralist leanings. I write regularly
on political and economic issues in Norwegian newspapers.

I love Sci-Fi, and read a lot of it. Favourite novels are "The Left
Hand of Darkness" and "The Disposessed", both by Ursula K. Leguin, but
also such "hard" S-F-novels as "The Player of Games" by Iain Banks,
"Eon" and "Blood Music" by Greg Bear, and even (shudder) "The Mote in
God's Eye" by such Heinleinian crypto-fascists as Niven & Pournelle.

I have held University jobs all my life, except a three year period as
an electrician in a shipbuilding plant in 1979 - 1982.

I am divorced, have 2  daughters 18 and 21. I have for the last two
years been living with my current partner. She is a radio journalist
working with environment issues in the NRK (which is the Norwegian
parallell to the BBC, i.e. gvt.-funded public service national
broadcasting).

I also do some radio myself: I am the free-time editor of an activist local,
non-commercial and fairly popular left-wing FM radio station here in
Trondheim in the middle part of Norway (130.000 inhabitants).

Trondheim lies in the middle (just where the thick part of the country
ends, end the thin northern part starts, look at a map!) of Norway.
Trondheim is famous for it's medieval cathedral "Nidarosdomen" and
infamous for its windy and rainy weather (ugh!).  Incidentally, the
city is not named after me (even if the name literally means "home of
Trond"). The city will be one thousand years old in 1997.