November 30, 2010 – Treasures of Connecticut Libraries allows libraries to digitize, for free, up to 100 items in their collection, and then to upload their collection to a CONTENTdm site managed by the state library in Hartford. This collaboration is providing a relatively inexpensive model for libraries that want to expand awareness of their collections and demonstrate their value to a wider public.
We found this information on Library Journal in their article, “In Connecticut, a Small Model of Collaboration.” The project now has 26 participating libraries and their partners, and the searchable collection includes historical photographs, maps, postcards, videos and more.
Welfare states around the world will be forced by hard budgetary constraints to reconsider their current model of provision. The state needs to redefine its relationship with individuals and, crucially, with communities. It must find a way of re-endowing communities with independence and self-sufficiency, of giving them the wherewithal to transform themselves and their neighborhoods. The starting point is rethinking how it can leverage and direct not only its revenue budgets but – as this paper will discuss in detail – also its capital assets in a way that broadens and deepens social action and civic participation.
The opportunity for this new relationship in the UK has arrived sooner than expected or hoped. Given the extent of budgetary cuts, a large proportion of the public estate is no longer sustainable in its current form. We now face an unprecedented mass divestment of state assets, which among other things is likely to include: • Libraries. • Swimming pools. • Community centres. • Public spaces. • Council offices. • Courts. • Police stations. • Prison buildings. • The road network. • British Waterways. • RDA, MoD and Whitehall assets. • Ports.
In the years to come, a huge amount of this wealth will suddenly cease to be public and there is a real risk that such assets will not only be privatised (as during the 1980s) but privatised in such a way as to reinforce existing inequalities of wealth. There is a danger that the net result will be a rent seekers’ paradise, where vested interests triumph over communal need and wealth flows backwards to the already established and upwards to the already wealthy.
We believe that the opposite is possible. Public assets can – and, wherever desirable, should – become community assets, owned mutually or by individual shareholders or stakeholders in association with communities. These public goods can, if properly directed and organised, capitalise both civil society and the bottom 10 per cent of society which currently has negative net wealth.
Fascinating article, including leaks in the pipeline (banks), whistleblowers, censorship, his story, trying to stop leaks, spying, untrustful competitors, secrecy, war, field of intelligence, etc. … “our primary defense isn’t law, but technology…courage is contagious” (p.8) — JAS
Following is an excerpt from page 5 regarding moving in the direction of ethical business — JAS
Forbes Cover Story
What do you think WikiLeaks mean for business? How do businesses need to adjust to a world where WikiLeaks exists?
WikiLeaks means it’s easier to run a good business and harder to run a bad business, and all CEOs should be encouraged by this. I think about the case in China where milk powder companies started cutting the protein in milk powder with plastics. That happened at a number of separate manufacturers.
Let’s say you want to run a good company. It’s nice to have an ethical workplace. Your employees are much less likely to screw you over if they’re not screwing other people over.
Then one company starts cutting their milk powder with melamine, and becomes more profitable. You can follow suit, or slowly go bankrupt and the one that’s cutting its milk powder will take you over. That’s the worst of all possible outcomes.
The other possibility is that the first one to cut its milk powder is exposed. Then you don’t have to cut your milk powder. There’s a threat of regulation that produces self-regulation.
It just means that it’s easier for honest CEOs to run an honest business, if the dishonest businesses are more effected negatively by leaks than honest businesses. That’s the whole idea. In the struggle between open and honest companies and dishonest and closed companies, we’re creating a tremendous reputational tax on the unethical companies.
No one wants to have their own things leaked. It pains us when we have internal leaks. But across any given industry, it is both good for the whole industry to have those leaks and it’s especially good for the good players.
But aside from the market as a whole, how should companies change their behavior understanding that leaks will increase?
Do things to encourage leaks from dishonest competitors. Be as open and honest as possible. Treat your employees well.
I think it’s extremely positive. You end up with a situation where honest companies producing quality products are more competitive than dishonest companies producing bad products. And companies that treat their employees well do better than those that treat them badly.
Would you call yourself a free market proponent?
Absolutely. I have mixed attitudes towards capitalism, but I love markets. Having lived and worked in many countries, I can see the tremendous vibrancy in, say, the Malaysian telecom sector compared to U.S. sector. In the U.S. everything is vertically integrated and sewn up, so you don’t have a free market. In Malaysia, you have a broad spectrum of players, and you can see the benefits for all as a result.
How do your leaks fit into that?
To put it simply, in order for there to be a market, there has to be information. A perfect market requires perfect information.
There’s the famous lemon example in the used car market. It’s hard for buyers to tell lemons from good cars, and sellers can’t get a good price, even when they have a good car.
By making it easier to see where the problems are inside of companies, we identify the lemons. That means there’s a better market for good companies. For a market to be free, people have to know who they’re dealing with.
You’ve developed a reputation as anti-establishment and anti-institution.
Not at all. Creating a well-run establishment is a difficult thing to do, and I’ve been in countries where institutions are in a state of collapse, so I understand the difficulty of running a company. Institutions don’t come from nowhere.
It’s not correct to put me in any one philosophical or economic camp, because I’ve learned from many. But one is American libertarianism, market libertarianism. So as far as markets are concerned I’m a libertarian, but I have enough expertise in politics and history to understand that a free market ends up as monopoly unless you force them to be free.
WikiLeaks is designed to make capitalism more free and ethical.
But in the meantime, there could be a lot of pain from these scandals, obviously.
Pain for the guilty.
Do you derive pleasure from these scandals that you expose and the companies you shame?
It’s tremendously satisfying work to see reforms being engaged in and stimulating those reforms. To see opportunists and abusers brought to account.
By John Robb at Global Guerrillas (Networked tribes, systems disruption, and the emerging bazaar of violence. Resilient Communities, decentralized platforms, and self-organizing futures)
Wikileaks and Al Qaeda's Open Source Jihad are both open source insurgencies. While there are obvious differences between the two, what's more interesting is how they are similar. Namely: as open source insurgencies both groups use systems disruption (the ability…
Phi Beta Iota: The deeper interpretation of the similarity of Al Qaeda and WikiLeaks is that they are both finding huge audiences for what they are offering, and they are both playing off of a massive public distaste for Open Veins of Latin America, Killing Hope, Rule by Secrecy, Sorrows of Empire, Web of Deceit, The Fifty Year Wound, etc. The USA has created its enemies because of its hubris and the corruption inherent in how it has supported dictators and predatory immoral capitalism, imposing virtual colonialism and unilateral militarism, all without regard to either the rights of the indigenous parties treated as “collateral damage” or the interests of the American citizen-voter-taxpayer whose blood, treasure, and spirit have been consumed by an elite class that comprises an “Other Atrocity” on a global scale. It troubles us that there is no one in the Administration with the intellectual breadth of mind and the intestinal fortitude to point out to President Barack Obama that he has a game-changing choice in front of him. We (the 800 contributors, 80 active, 8 frequent) of Phi Beta Iota have always been open, honest, and loyal–these insurgencies are occurring because the US Government failed to heed the early warnings that began in the 1970's and reached a crecsendo in the 1990's. There is still time for Barack Obama to Change the Game!
For a look into the vaccine conflict, see Frontline's “The Vaccine War“. For counter-vaccine viewpoints, Vaccineinitiative.org hosts white papers, articles, opinion pieces, scholarly reports from scientists, physicians, activists, who are offering constructive challenges to the belief of the safety and efficacy of vaccines.
Gary Null Speaking Out at the NYS Assembly Hearing | 10-13-2009 | (part 1 of 3)
Phi Beta Iota: Our hope for the round after banks would be massive leakage from the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee. This “open everything” meme is way cool. Think of it as tough love.
Facebook Question and Answer
Jonathan Kan So, do WikiLeaks make your Open Source Intelligence dream comes true?
The short answer is no–WikiLeaks is the lowest form of open source raw sewage–BUT WikiLeaks is serving an enormous purpose in demonstrating without equivocation that “rule by secrecy” is unethical, inept, and not in the public interest. It is a catalyst for change, not change itself. For change the game, see Tom Atlee on politics (search Tom Atlee Change the Game) and for substance see my M4IS2 Briefing to South America, at www.tinyurl.com/SteeleCHILE. Pass it on. The revolution has started without a single politician being involved.
Not on the site, but always appreciated as a lead, the event has taken place so it will not be placed in Events.
Rule one with Word Press is to do short simple searches.
Global Challenges Forum does NOT produce the sought after conference but see the interesting results in related hits by clicking on the bold active search set.
Similarly Carol Dumaine does NOT produce the sought after conference (which our network did not notice beforehand) but produces very important hits on Carol Dumaine, who has been, like Carmen Medina, Janet Platt, Dennis McCormick, Diane Webb, and Andy Shepard and a handful of others in DoD such as Dr. Dr. Dave Warner, Eric Rasmussen, Chris Rasmussen, disciplined in accepting the system's inability to change or even notice the need to change. Click on her name as highlighted for those results.
