Complexity & Resilience – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/09/272011/10/01

Review: Public Parts – How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Information Society, Intelligence (Public)

Jeff Jarvis

5.0 out of 5 stars Being Twittered, a Helpful Contribution,September 27, 2011

I was going to use the existing review as a guest review at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog (all point back to their Amazon pages), but on further investigation have found that this book is being Twittered, and the Executive Director of the Earth Intelligence Network thinks very highly of it (he read it, he does not do reviews, this is my way of sharing his views and my links as well as flagging the book for the global readers of Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog). So in part to give the author a break, in part to urge used of the Look Inside feature that Amazon enables and the publisher utilized, and in part to point to the below books, I give this book five stars and suggest that it deserves a bit more praise than it has received.

AA Mind the Gap — Vote and/or Comment on Review

Amazon sucks in some ways. The following two relevant non-fiction titles are “not allowed” by their rules against “self-promotion,” never mind that they are the only two books on their respective topics and highly relevant to the domain that this book addresses.

2010 INTELLIGENCE FOR EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability

2008 COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

2011/09/212011/12/11

Review: Full Spectrum Diplomacy and Grand Strategy – Reforming the Structure and Culture of U.S. Foreign Policy

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Democracy, Diplomacy, Humanitarian Assistance, Information Operations, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Public), Leadership, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Priorities, Public Administration, Religion & Politics of Religion, Science & Politics of Science, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle

cover full spectrum diplomacy — Amazon Page

John Lenczowski

5.0 out of 5 stars Long Needed Treatise, But Too Expensive,September 21, 2011

EDIT of 11 December 2011: Gene Poteat, President of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) has an excellent review of this book in the Summer/Fall 2011 issue of Intelligencer. The following quote is from his review, it captures the essence with perfection:

“The weakness and deteriorating standing of America in the world today is the failure to take into account the role of information, disinformation, ideas, values, culture, and religion plays in the influence and conduct of foreign and national security policy.”

While the above glosses over the corporate capture and abject corruption of all three branches of the Federal government, it certainly summarizes and recommends the book in question. See also my graphic, “Information Pathologies,” loaded above next to cover.

End Edit

In the midst of an economic depression, it is a real shame to see a book that is so very relevant to unscrewing the Republic, and also see the same book terribly over-priced. At 230 pages this book should be offered at 24.95, and a donor should be found to permit the author to speak to the Department of State via the Secretary's Open Forum, with a free copy of the book to every person attending.

Information Pathologies — Click on Image to Enlarge

The author is the founder of the Institute of World Politics, a rather unique institution that offers three Masters programs and that strives to do what no other university can claim: to teach a mastery of all of the instruments of national power, and to teach how culture, ethics, strategy, and philosophy can come together to drive Whole of Government planning, programming, budgeting, and execution so as to advance both the prosperity and the protection of the Republic.

This book came to my attention after I found and truly enjoyed another book out of the Institute of World Policy, by Cultural Intelligence for Winning the Peace by Juliana Geran Pilon. Everything I read about the Institute, or by those associated with it, offers a very strong, coherent, culturally-compelling vision of how to advance positive values inherent in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America.

Continue reading “Review: Full Spectrum Diplomacy and Grand Strategy – Reforming the Structure and Culture of U.S. Foreign Policy”

2011/09/152011/09/16

Review: World 3.0 – Global Prosperity and How to Achieve It

6 Star Top 10%, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Culture, Research, Economics, Information Operations, Intelligence (Public), Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Public Administration, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Survival & Sustainment, True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Pankaj Ghemawat

5.0 out of 5 stars Six Star Nuanced, Brilliant, the Stuff of Nobel Laureates,September 15, 2011

This is a nuanced book. It is not possible to “review” it without having actually read it, read it carefully, and then read it again. It was easily a five as I got into it, and then became a six as I appreciated just how magnificently the author has reframed all future discussion of this topic, and set the gold standard for data-driven discussion–not something they do in Bonn, London, Paris, or Washington.

This is not a book for data geeks. The author excells from the first page in emphasizing the importance of perception and understanding (however wrong they might be_, and the tangible relevance of convictions, history, and philosophy….these MATTER to business, and in this book I believe the author takes the intellectual and ethical level of any business discussion about globalization and about regulation up a notch.

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2011/09/132011/09/13

Review: Whole Earth Discipline – An Ecopragmatist Manifesto

5 Star, Complexity & Catastrophe, Complexity & Resilience, Culture, Research, Economics, Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Priorities, Science & Politics of Science, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), True Cost & Toxicity, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Amazon Page

Stewart Brand

Surprising, Challenges, Perhaps Wrong on Some Points,September 13, 2011

This book is an absorbing read, and several of the top reviews are very useful to anyone considering buying the book (also available in paperback, Amazon is now NOT crossing reviews over from different forms, a mistake in my view, but perhaps motivated by their trying to give the millions of new reviewers a starting point against those of us who have been reviewing books on Amazon for eleven years.

This book can read at multiple levels, and I dare to say that to reach each additional level, a second and third reading of the book is required.

Level 1: An overview of books that Stewart Brand has read and his general sense of the world.

Level 2: A deeper engagement with his thinking on climate change, urbanization, and biotechnology

Level 3: A very deep and necessarily skeptical reading of his book, mindful of many areas where he may be wrong while appreciating the extraordinary lifetime of intellectual and ethical leadership that he brings to bear–this is the man who created Co-Evolution Quarterly, Whole Earth Review, the Silicon Valley Hacker's Conference that I was elected to in 1994 and am attending this year (4-6 November), and the Clock of the Long Now, as well as Global Business Network and other initiatives. He is in brief, one of a dozen minds I consider “root” for whatever good we might muster in the USA in the near term, along with Tom Atlee and a handful of others.

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