Berto Jongman: Stewart Brand and Big Ideas

Cultural Intelligence
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog, the book that changed the world

Stewart Brand was at the heart of 60s counterculture and is now widely revered as the tech visionary whose book anticipated the web. We meet the man for whom big ideas are a way of life

The Observer,

Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand

Stewart Brand didn't just happen to be around when the personal computer came into being; he's the one who put “personal” and “computer” together in the same sentence and introduced the concept to the world. He wasn't just a member of the world's first open online community, the Well; he co-founded it. And he wasn't just another of those 60s acid casualties; he was the definitive 60s acid casualty. Well, not casualty exactly, but he was there taking LSD in the days when it was still legal, with the most famous hipster of them all, Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters.

For nearly five decades, Stewart Brand has been hanging around the cutting edge of whatever is the most cutting thing of the day. Largely because he's discovered it and become fascinated with it long before anyone else has even noticed it but, in retrospect, it does make him seem like the west coast's answer to Zelig, the Woody Allen character who just happens to pop up at key moments in history. Because no one pops up like Stewart Brand pops up, right there, just on the cusp of something momentous.

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Way of the Truth — Quotations

About the Idea

I am the way of the truth gandhi way of truthand the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.  John 14:6

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.  George Orwell

A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.  Albert Camus

The graceful pride of truth knows no extremes, and preserves, in every latitude of life, the right-angled character of man. Thomas Paine

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.  Mark Twain

The only people mad at you for speaking the truth are those living a lie.  Keep speaking it.  Gaskina Jr.

The way of truth is along the path of intellectual sincerity.  Henry Smith Pritchett

I think track records are very important. If you start early trying to have a perfect one in some simple thing like honesty, you're well on your way to success in this world. Charlie Munger, Vice Chaiman, Berkshire & Hathaway

When things are not going well, until you get the truth out on the table, no matter how ugly, you are not in a position to deal with it.  Bob Seelert, Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide (New York)

All truth passes through three stages.  First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident.  Arthur Schopenhauer

The truth at any cost reduces all other costsRobert Steele

Graphic Source

Other Quotations Representative of Our Perspective:

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.  Alexis de Tocqueville

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.  Buckminster Fuller

A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry.  Thomas Jefferson

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.  Thomas Jefferson

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of Constitutional power.  Thomas Jefferson

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.  James Madison

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.  James Madison

When a nation begins to think, it is impossible to hold it back.  Voltaire

The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice.  Ironically, their virftues make them vulnerable: they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.  Ernest Hemingway

A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else.  Fedor Dostoevsky

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.  Margaret Mead

Top managers’ information is invariably either biased, subjecive, filtered or late. . . . Using intelligence correctly requires a fundamental change in the way top executives make decisions.  Ben Gilad

The danger is, you’ll become like a moron. You’ll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours” [because of your blind faith in the value of your narrow and often incorrect secret information].  Daniel Ellsberg speaking to Henry Kissinger

The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community.  Carl Jung

When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.  Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Information is a substitute for time, space, capital, and labor.  Alvin Toffler

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.  Martin Luther King II

Berto Jongman: YouTube (1:52) Jeremy Scahill on Significance of Wikileaks as Source on US Dirty Wars and Department of State Being Over-Ruled

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, Corruption, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence, YouTube
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Published on Apr 24, 2013

Watch the full interview with Jeremy Scahill on Democracy Now! at http://owl.li/knEmh. Jeremy Scahill, author of the new book, Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield, has spent years covering secret U.S. warfare through drone strikes, targeted killings, and enlisting foreign militias in countries from Somalia to Pakistan. Speaking to Democracy Now!, Scahill says U.S. diplomatic cables released WikiLeaks were instrumental in researching the book. “In terms of understanding how the covert apparatus works, WikiLeaks was indispensable,” he says. “We're going to look back decades from now and realize that because of the release of those documents, there was a huge shift in how we understand some of the more hidden aspects of U.S. policy.”

Watch the 50-minute Part 1 of our interview with Jeremy Scahill at http://owl.li/klnWN.

Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs weekdays on 1,100+ TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Check out our vast news archive and stream live 8-9am ET at http://www.democracynow.org.

Berto Jongman: Existential Risk to Humanity

Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

How are humans going to become extinct?

By Sean Coughlan

EXTRACT

Dr Bostrom believes we've entered a new kind of technological era with the capacity to threaten our future as never before. These are “threats we have no track record of surviving”.

Lack of control

Likening it to a dangerous weapon in the hands of a child, he says the advance of technology has overtaken our capacity to control the possible consequences.

Experiments in areas such as synthetic biology, nanotechnology and machine intelligence are hurtling forward into the territory of the unintended and unpredictable.

Synthetic biology, where biology meets engineering, promises great medical benefits. But Dr Bostrom is concerned about unforeseen consequences in manipulating the boundaries of human biology.

Nanotechnology, working at a molecular or atomic level, could also become highly destructive if used for warfare, he argues. He has written that future governments will have a major challenge to control and restrict misuses.

There are also fears about how artificial or machine intelligence interact with the external world.

Such computer-driven “intelligence” might be a powerful tool in industry, medicine, agriculture or managing the economy.

But it also can be completely indifferent to any incidental damage.

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Berto Jongman: Boston False Flag Video (19:31) Ties in Fed, Gold, States Not Getting Their Gold Back, Bomb Drill Specifics, White House versus Military — Coup Possible? Indictment of Bush & Obama Underway?

05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement

Being watched in Europe.

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Berto Jongman: 25 Things to Know About the Future

Commercial Intelligence
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

25 Things You Need to Know About the Future

Watch video      Buy Kindle

How will we live in the future? And what will the human race become? Will we nurture designer babies, be served by intelligent robots, have personal 3D printers, and grow products on-the-vine using synthetic biology? Or will shortages of oil, fresh water and other natural resources constrain our lifestyles and lead to industrial decline?

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

In this fascinating guide, futurist Christopher Barnatt examines 25 known challenges and technologies that will help shape the next few decades. From Peak Water to vertical farms, nanotechnology to augmented reality, and electric cars to space travel, a startling picture is painted of future possibilities that no individual or business will be able to ignore.

Highlighting life-changing research and innovation from over 250 companies, universities and non-profit organizations around the globe, 25 Things You Need to Know About the Future is a startling, frightening and powerful blueprint for anybody who wants to future gaze and future shape.

Published on 19th January 2012 by Constable & Robinson in paperback and e-book formats. 416 pages. A Korean translation was published on 21st November 2012.

Click any part or chapter below for more information and online references.

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Berto Jongman: Lord Martin Rees on New Technological Threats — Heaven Forbid, Elites Are Losing Power to the Public and Individuals

Collective Intelligence
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Lord Martin Rees on New Technological Threats

By

Lawfare, Thursday, April 18, 2013

In this short video, Lord Martin Rees—the British astrophysicist and cosmologist–gives a brief and elegant statement of the problem Gabriella Blum and I have been writing a book about: the dissemination of radically-empowering technologies to small groups and individuals. Highly recommended—particularly if you want to spend the day scared:

Visit article page to see video (9:47)

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