Category: Complexity & Catastrophe

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Review: Pathology of Power

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Country/Regional, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Environment (Problems), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial)
Amazon Page

Norman Cousins

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Detailed Exposure of Power Killing Intelligence, July 30, 2011

This is a new edition of the book, and so very timely. If I had the money to give one book to every American, this would be it, followed by TYRANNICIDE The Story of the Second American Revolution and my all time God Bless America favorite, The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation's Most Ordinary Citizen.

Here is the author's opening statement:

“Connected to the tendency of power to corrupt are yet other tendencies that emerge from the pages of the historians:

* The tendency of power to drive intelligence underground;

* The tendency of power to become a theology, admitting no other gods before it;

* The tendency of power to distort and damage the traditions and institutions it was designed to protect;

* The tendency of power to create a language of its own, making other forms of communication incoherent and irrelevant;

* The tendency of power to spawn imitators, leading to volatile competition;

* The tendency of power to set the stage for its own use.

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Stephen E. Arnold : The Landscape of Enterprise Search

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Catastrophe, Education (General), Information Operations
Stephen E. Arnold

Stephen E. Arnold: The New Landscape of Enterprise Search. A Critical Review of the Market and Search Systems. Published by Pandia, Oslo, Norway, 2011.
ISBN: 978-82-998676-0-3

Pandia Book Page

The following enterprise search companies are covered in detail:

Autonomy
Endeca
Exalead
Google Search Solutions
Microsoft and Fast
Vivisimo

Book Page

 

Phi Beta Iota:  For over fifteen years Stephen E. Arnold has been the “virtual CTO” for OSS.Net (ceased operations at end of 2010) and Earth Intelligence Network, of which he is a founding partner.  We have reviewed the 154-page document, and as with all publications by Stephen E. Arnold, author of the still-trenchant Google Trilogy, have found it to be deeply helpful including sharp but polite eviseration of both Google and Microsoft (Microsoft comes out ahead of Google, but has its own sucking chest wounds).  What is clear to us is that none of the major vendors are serious about  the necessary migration to open source software that integrates information sharing, multi-media analytics, cross-disciplinary directories, and deep web applications, for example, integrating c drives and emails across all poverty stakeholders.  The big new trend in this book–and in our own research–is the compelling nature of five minute videos as documents of lasting value.  We are seeing this in open education and non-government decision-support.  Combine that with on demand translation and the way is open for someone to create the M4IS2 system of the future.  We doubt it will be Google, and we are certain it will include OpenBTS for the three billion poor, the center of gravity for future knowledge.