This book is available immediately from WHSmith. I recommend it without reservation, it is in my top dozen books on the World Brain – Global Brain -Global Mind – Collective Intellgence reading area.
Amazon seems to be deleting a lot of reviews from top reviewers, which I find quite annoying. Indeed, Amazon has become so unreliable, on top of being unresponsive to years of requests for simple changes (e.g. being able to access all reviews by a specific reviewer against a specific search such as “World Brain” that I finally created Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, where you can access all reviews in each each of 98 reading categories, all leading back to Amazon, but not dependent on Amazon.
This book is extraordinary in that is directly connects information to DNA and makes an absolutely fascinating case for how every single atom on the planet is an information element, and all of the atoms in the whole are the Global Mind.
There are no notes, and normally this would set me off, but I found the personal reflections of this author so utterly extraordinary that I can not find fault on this point.
The Original Surveyor of Distance Education and Virtual Learning
January 23, 2010
G. Parker Rossman
My original review of this book seems to have vanished into thin air here at Amazon.
G. Parker Rossman and his book came into my life just after I started the international conference on “National Security & National Competitiveness: Open Source Solutions,” and both the book and the World Brain discussion group that he co-founded were extremely influencial in my recognition that the ultimate outcome for a re-appreciation of open sources instead of secret sources was a global networked “world brain.”
From my point of view, he was the first serious scholar to comprehensively begin documenting what could be learned online, and the first–at a time when fewer than 10% of those who could afford a computer were actually online–to really begin outlining the possibilities for both distance education and virtual learning.
It was as a direct result of his influence through this book that Gottfried Mayer-Kress spoke to the conference in 1997 on the topic of the World Brain, and that was when the entire modern Open Source Intelligence movement took a decisive turn away from helping the US Government get a grip on reality, and toward connecting and empowering all multinational sources of information for the good of all.
I have listed both this author and Gottfried Mayer-Kress in the World Brain line-up that runs from H. G. Wells through Vannavar Bush to today's proponents for Collective Intelligence, the World Brain, and a Global Game in which we all play ourselves and all of us have access to “true cost” information in all languages all the time.
Here are ten other books I recommend with this one, I have reviewed and summarized all of them:
Strongly Recommended by BGen McMaster in Talk at ODNI
January 20, 2010
Paul Rexton Kan
This is one of two books strongly recommended, with deep admiration, by BGen McMaster, USA (Ret) speaking to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on 19 January. The four page trip report on his remarks about improving intelligence in support of the multinational mission in Afghanistan has been posted to Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog.
I have bought this book and will review it within two weeks. CIA got its start in drug running and money laundering in Viet-Nam, and has at best facilitated the expansion of the drug zone and at worst financed it–at least half of the billion dollars a year that were channeled into Afghanistan by CIA via the Pakistani Intelligence Service are assumed (by me) to have been stolen, and today Pakistan is the primary site for the processing of Afghan opium into #4 heroin for onward shipment to Europe and elsewhere.
General McMaster also recommended Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond. In my own review of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 From that review pending my doing a complete proper review of this book:
The most important point in the book is not one the author intended to make. He inadvertently but most helpfully points to the fact that at no time did the U.S. government, in lacking a policy on Afghanistan across several Administrations, think about the strategic implications of “big money movements.” I refer to Saudi Oil, Afghan Drugs, and CIA Cash.
The greatest failure of the CIA comes across throughout early in the book: the CIA missed the radicalization of Islam and its implications for global destabilization. It did so for three reasons: 1) CIA obsession with hard targets to the detriment of global coverage; 2) CIA obsession with technical secrets rather than human overt and covert information; and 3) CIA laziness and political naiveté in relying on foreign liaison, and especially on Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
My bottom line: the $75 billion a year for secret intelligence is not producing intelligence, only waste and profit. We are killing our troops in the field by being incompetent at intelligence. That breaks my heart.
Strongly Recommended by BGen McMaster in Talk at ODNI
January 20, 2010
Abdulkader H. Sinno
This is one of two books strongly recommended, with deep admiration, by BGen McMaster, USA (Ret) speaking to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on 19 January. The four page trip report on his remarks about improving intelligence in support of the multinational mission in Afghanistan has been posted to Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog.
I have bought this book and will review it within two weeks. The key point that General McMaster made in referencing the book is that the author of this book has it right, there is no such thing as a leaderless jihad, and it is vital to be able to identify, understand, and interdict the often obscure means by which a jihad “organization” is formed and operated.
The most important point in the book is not one the author intended to make. He inadvertently but most helpfully points to the fact that at no time did the U.S. government, in lacking a policy on Afghanistan across several Administrations, think about the strategic implications of “big money movements.” I refer to Saudi Oil, Afghan Drugs, and CIA Cash.
The greatest failure of the CIA comes across throughout early in the book: the CIA missed the radicalization of Islam and its implications for global destabilization. It did so for three reasons: 1) CIA obsession with hard targets to the detriment of global coverage; 2) CIA obsession with technical secrets rather than human overt and covert information; and 3) CIA laziness and political naiveté in relying on foreign liaison, and especially on Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Design Revolution: 100 Products That Empower People
Featuring more than 100 contemporary design products and systems–safer baby bottles, a high-tech waterless washing machine, low-cost prosthetics for landmine victims, Braille-based Lego-style building blocks for blind children, wheelchairs for rugged conditions, sugarcane charcoal, universal composting systems, DIY soccer balls–that are as fascinating as they are revolutionary, this exceptionally smart, friendly and well-designed volume makes the case for design as a tool to solve some of the world's biggest social problems in beautiful, sustainable and engaging ways–for global citizens in the developing world and in more developed economies alike. Particularly at a time when the weight of climate change, global poverty and population growth are impossible to ignore, Pilloton challenges designers to be changemakers instead of “stuff creators.” Urgent and optimistic, a compendium and a call to action,
Amazon Page
Design for the Other 90%
Of the world s total population of 6.5 billion, 90%, have little or no access to most of the products and services many of us take for granted; in fact, nearly half do not have regular access to food, clean water, or shelter. Design for the Other 90% explores more than thirty projects which reflect the growing movement among designers, engineers, students and professors, architects, and social entrepreneurs to design low-cost solutions for this other 90%. Published in conjunction with a major exhibition on view at the Smithsonian s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Design for the Other 90% highlights a wide variety of design innovations that address the basic challenges of survival and progress faced by the world s poor and marginalized.
Amazon Page
Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises
The greatest humanitarian challenge we face today is that of providing shelter. Currently one in seven people lives in a slum or refugee camp, and more than 3,000,000,000 people–nearly half the world's population–do not have access to clean water or adequate sanitation. The physical design of our homes, neighborhoods and communities shapes every aspect of our lives. Yet too often architects are desperately needed in the places where they can least be afforded. Edited by Architecture for Humanity and now in its third printing, Design Like You Give a Damn is a compendium of innovative projects from around the world that demonstrate the power of design to improve lives. The first book to bring the best of humanitarian architecture and design to the printed page, Design Like You Give a Damn offers a history of the movement toward socially conscious design, and showcases more than 80 contemporary solutions to such urgent needs as basic shelter, healthcare, education and access to clean water, energy and sanitation.
Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful
“A sweeping visionary yet highly pragmatic book! Beth Noveck concretely shows how to leverage the participatory nature of web 2.0 technologies to build a new kind of participatory democracy and a smart, lean government. She speaks from experience. A must read not just for policy folks and the digerati but for any of us wanting to understand how to tap the collective and diverse wisdom of the America to create a better, more connected style of democracy.”
Phi Beta Iota: Focuses on the patent process–use Look Inside to study contents before making a purchase decisioin. We have ordered the book and will review it within the week.
Amazon Page
The Myth of Digital Democracy
Both utopian and dystopian interpretations have been made of the Internet's influence on many spheres of life–and democracy is no exception. . . . Absent from much of this debate is evidence-based analysis of the effects of the Internet on the business of politics. Many theories have been built on nothing more than anecdote, inference and assertion. In The Myth of Digital Democracy, political scientist Matthew Hindman fills important gaps in the evidence base, and does so accessibly.
This is a magnum opus from a very specific point of view that overlooks both major consciousness figures and major biosphere figures. Herman Daly gets one note, Tom Atlee, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Steve McIntosh are not in this book. Buckminster Fuller, Paul Hawken, the Meadows, E. O. Wilson on Consilience, J. F Rischard on HIGH NOON, etcetera, are not in this book. My review begins after the Table of Contents, which the publisher failed to provide using standard Amazon tools for publishers.
Table of Contents
I The Hidden Paradox of Human History
HOMO EMPATHICUS
2 The New View of Human Nature
3 A Sentient Interpretation of Biological Evolution
4 Becoming Human
5 Rethinking the Meaning of the Human Journey
EMPATHY AND CIVILIZATION
6 The Ancient Theological Brain and Patriarchal Economy
7 Cosmopolitan Rome and the Rise of Urban Christianity
8 The Soft Industrial Revolution of the Late Medieval era and the Birth of Humanism
9 Ideological Thinking in a Modern Market Economy
10 Psychological Consciousness in a postmodern Existential world
THE AGE OF EMPATHY
11 The Climb to Global Peak Empathy
12 The Planetary Entropic Abyss
13 The Emerging Era of Distributed Capitalism
14 The Theatrical Self in an Improvisational Society
15 Biosphere Consciousness in a Climax Economy
– – – – – – – –
If this book is reprinted, it should be single-spaced. The massive bulk (675 pages) is pretentious and not necessary, especially for those of us that read when traveling, and for students having to carry books around. As noted earlier the author leaves out a great deal and I will offer ten links below (and over 300 links at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog where I have posted “Worth a Look: Book Review Lists”). This review focuses on the righteous theme the author has pursued across multiple literatures.
The book's bottom line is well summarized in the jacket flaps and comes at the very end as the author aspires for a combination of biosphere consciousness and distributed capitalism, the latter made possible by a combination of backyard energy and global information and communications technologies (ICT). Early in the book the author discusses how the wealthy dominated water power in the Medieval Period, but the poor were able to use windmills anywhere–this makes an impression on me as it did on the author.
The author has a story to tell and as I go through the book I am constantly reminded of books and points not in this book, but I abandoned my first draft of my review because it focused too much on work by others and not enough on the enormous task this author has taken on. In a nutshell, the author believes that the same revolutions in energy and communications that lead to a growth in human consciousness also lead to a commensurate crisis in earth or biosphere viability. In today's era the potential crisis (widely anticipated in the 1970's and deliberately ignored by the White House and the Senate for selfish corrupt reasons) is playing a forcing function, potentially catalyzing the rethinking of philosophy, economics, and our social models.
There are three negatives to this book that for any other author or theme would have dropped the book to a four, but I feel a five is still warranted for both the heroic personal effort of the author, and the importance of the theme.
#1. There is no appreciation that I can see of the fact that we are returning to the wisdom of the indigenous cultures that we have genocided since 1941, not only in the USA but in Australia, Africa, and elsewhere. This is not new wisdom that the author is bringing to bear, but old wisdom that is being rediscovered.
#2. The author fell prey to the Climate Change manipulation of data and hyperbole as well as nine documented errors in the British law suit against Al Gore, who has been asked to return his Academy Award. I won't belabor this now that the fraud of Climate Change has been adequately exposed, I will just say this: the UN High Level Panel on Threats, Challenge, and Change is the more honest and substantive endeavor, and Environmental Degradation, #3 of 10 after Poverty and Infectious Disease, is properly ranked. Climate Change is less than 10% of that, and within Climate Change carbon emissions are 10% at most, and much less important than sulfur or mercury. Carbon trades are fraud–a form of phantom wealth engineered by Maurice Strong and shilled by Al Gore, with the International Panel on Climate Change director–a railway engineer, not a scientist–happily lining his pockets by making the science fit. Learn more at the ClimateGate Rolling Update at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog.
#3. This is a book for the one billion rich, and it does not really address the five billion poor, and so I felt a continuing sense of annoyance as I read, recognizing this as a “salon” work for funders and the well-off, rather than a grass roots books focused on bottom-up social change. For that, see the books I list below.
Having disclosed those three “nits,” I am hugely positive on this book and its theme. The author observes that historians tend to document the negatives–the wars and the conflicts–and gloss over the periods of peace and prosperity and I buy into that. We don't do enough to isolate and extend the “good news.”
Here are other fly-leaf notes:
+ Empathy is rooted in selfhood, enables dialog that in turn allows reconciliation.
+ Today transparency and cooperation are displacing secrecy and competition.
+ Importance of touch, of reversing the isolation of the individual as a cog in the machine.
+ Herding of humans began in 4000 BC with hydraulic civilizations, not with the Industrial Revolution as some have suggested
+ Energy advances appear to stimulate changes in communications (including computing and intelligence)
+ Mothers and mothering matter, root of selfhood and stability that enables exploring and innovation
+ Darwin's later work looked at empathy among animals and between different species
+ Faith and emotion are an important part of “humanity” and of “intelligence”
+ Religions are NOT inherently empathetic, tend to both focus on the other worldly and to exclude those not of the same religion
+ The author does well as a single individual researcher but there is a lot in this book that is simplistic for lack of access to deeper works by others
+ Soil salinity has collapsed civilizations before ours including the Romans
+ Nice discussion of the Gnostics who felt that the real sin of man was in not understanding self and the human potential for divinity (Barbara Marx Hubbard and Buckminster Fuller have focused on this in more recent times)
+ Medieval Period ran out of wood the way we are running out of oil
+ Interesting discussion of print as a facilitator for both individuality and the scientific method
+ Light discussion of schools, not connected with the broader literature on pedagogy and mass instruction.
+ Energy changes impact on space and time perceptions. Electricity and Morse code took global communications and connectivity to a whole new level
+ Child development runs throughout this book in an interesting manner
+ Disconcerting notes include English as the universal language (Chinese over-taking fast followed by Hindi); everyone is a tourist (this would be news to the five billion poor); no more aliens, decline of religion (not from where I sit).
+ Author is excessively dependent on Climate Change as a stimulus, I totally agree with the author's sense of urgency, but all ClimateGate has done is set science back in the public esteem by at least a decade.
+ The author provides an engaging discussion of the coming 3rd Industrial Revolution in which we will further embrace new indices of immaterial wealth and move from property to access and from co-optation to cooperation.
+ The book closes with a discussion of how social skills are changing and now half theater and half authentic, which may not be as odd as it sounds, as individuals must master both deep multi-cultural empathy and the ability to project open authenticity despite violent disagreement with “the other.”
This book is absolutely worth buying and reading–it would be better if it were single spaced and much less bulky. I hope the paperback version goes to single space; there is no justification for doubling the bulk of this content.
See all my other reviews relevant to this specific books and its focus at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, but specifically the “good news” books visible through Worth a Look: Book Review Lists.
Extraordinary Book
