Change & Innovation – Page 4 – Public Intelligence Blog

2010/07/142010/07/14

Review: Building Social Business–The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity’s Most Pressing Needs

6 Star Top 10%, Associations & Foundations, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Economics, Environment (Solutions), Humanitarian Assistance, Information Society, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Justice (Failure, Reform), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Priorities, Public Administration, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, United Nations & NGOs, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

4 in isolation, beyond 6 in context–a cornerstone book

July 14, 2010

Muhammad Yunus and Karl Weber

While I sympathize with those who feel that the book lacks reference to prior art, that social business has been around for a very long time, and that much of the book is somewhat similar to his first book that I also reviewed, Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism, I am rating this book a five here and a “6 Star & Beyond” at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, for the simple reason that he is not just doing it, but doing it on a global scale, pushing the envelope across all boundaries, and setting the stage for realizing what Nobel-candidate C. K. Prahalad articulates in The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Revised and Updated 5th Anniversary Edition: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits.

The Nobel Prize to Yanus was a righteous one–unlike the political idiocy of awards to Al Gore and Barack Obama. I can only hope that the Norwegian public shames its overly political Nobel Committee into getting back on track with awards such as this one.

My friend Howard Bloom has a new book out that complements this one: The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism and of course there are others both recent and past, such as Capitalism at the Crossroads: Next Generation Business Strategies for a Post-Crisis World (3rd Edition).

Three things are changing that make this book a cornerstone book:

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2010/06/302011/10/22

Review: The Hidden Wealth of Nations

6 Star Top 10%, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Democracy, Education (General), Education (Universities), Games, Models, & Simulations, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Security (Including Immigration), Survival & Sustainment, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Beyond 5 Stars, a Cornerstone Book, Most Extraordinary Strategic Depth

June 30, 2010

David Halpern

Amazon has recently been allowing longer reviews by inserting a “Read More” line and I hope this entire review is allowed to stand. It will also be posted to Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, with links back to Amazon.

This is a Beyond Five Stars book. Although there is a fine literature emerging on collective intelligence and wealth of networks–and there is an increasingly robust Open Money movement that also includes local communities currencies that keep the wealth local–this book does something no other book has done–it connects economics to humanity and reality and the intangibles in all their forms.

This is not a book about underground economies, barter systems, alternative currencies, etcetera. It is one of the most profoundly relevant, erudite yet easy to read books I have ever read, with a direct bearing on every aspect of human life, and in particular the role of government as it should be.

The author specifically quantifies the financial and intangible value of “getting along” and being part of deep interconnections that define, drive, and develop (or not) the hidden wealth of nations.

The author has provided an extraordinarily well-organized book with a well-presented series of chapters that left me with so many flyleaf notes I fear I will not do the author and the intellectual tour de force he has provided, quite enough justice. Buy and read the book. Tell elected and appointed leaders about it–or send them a copy of this review. [I am stunned that there are no other reviews as this book was published in 2009.]

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2010/03/152010/03/16

Review: Unvaccinated, Homeschooled, and TV-Free–It’s Not Just for Fanatics and Zealots

6 Star Top 10%, Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Communications, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Disease & Health, Education (General), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Beyond Six Stars–a Game Changer, Pure Public Intelligence

March 15, 2010

Julie Cook

This book will join the Six Stars and Beyond group at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, where I can group my reviews in the 98 categories in which I read and you can do a whole lot of other things such as search all my reviews for specific terms.

This book is deeper than most will give it credit. The author has done a great deal of research, presents verifiable notes, and offers up 27 short section with adequate but not excessive white space. I especially like the quotes, several from Albert Einstein, used throughout the book to highlight a point. I also especially respect the reality that the author speaks to directly: when Western commerce and medicine have been so corrupted by the profit motive, it is very difficult to find research that upholds the truth of natural and alternative cures, or that presents the truth about the dangers of our peverted health system that ignores all but the “profitable” quarter of health, surgical and pharmaceutical remediation.

See for example:
Prescription for Natural Cures
Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health
The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster, and the Water We Drink

This is a revolutionary book, and it joins others that make the case for rejecting the big government – big banks – big business triumverate that commoditizes people, loots the treasury, and rapes the Earth for short-term gain by the few against the public interest.

Continue reading “Review: Unvaccinated, Homeschooled, and TV-Free–It's Not Just for Fanatics and Zealots”

2010/02/212010/02/21

Review : Global Shift–How A New Worldview Is Transforming Humanity

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Cosmos & Destiny, Culture, Research, Environment (Solutions), Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Priorities, Religion & Politics of Religion, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Phenomenal Integration of Ideas–Superb “Once Over”

February 10, 2010 [final review 21 February 2010]

Edmund J. Bourne

I have sent INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainaabilty to the printer and it is on that foundation that I highly recommend this book for a simple easy to understand overview of the fifteen converging forces that the author lists and then discusses in superbly-crafted very easy to read overviews. He covers:

01 A conscious universe

02 Multidimensional reality

03 Interconnection of all minds

04 Complementarity of science and spirituality

05 Radical empiricism [revalidation of intuition and visioning]

06 Consciousness has a causal influence

07 Natural ethics [I really like this, hugely beneficial for all]

08 Reverence for nature and earth [in my book, diversity rocks]

09 A sense of inclusiveness toward all humanity [diversity again]

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2010/02/212011/10/22

Review: Wiki Government–How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful

4 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Culture, Research, Democracy, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Information Society, Information Technology, Intelligence (Public), Public Administration, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Almost a Five–Making Wrong Things Righter

February 21, 2010

Beth Simone Noveck

I sat down intending to make this a five, but the two fluff reviews have to be off-set. Robert Ackoff would say this is a spectacular book about making the wrong things righter instead of the right things righter–too many lawyers and focused on improving a patent approval system that probably needs to be eradicated and the buildings and files plowed under with salt. It also lost one star because I was one of the 4,000 that actually participated in the Open Government experiment, where the legalization of marijuana triumphed and every time someone voted for my governance reform idea, a “monitor” from the partisan correctness office came in and voted against it moving it back down to zero. The author is naive to think this initiative is going anywhere without electoral reform that displaces the two-party tyranny and restores the Constitution, the Article 1 independence of an honest Congress, and integrity of the Executive at the political level. [See especially Chapter 21 in my new book that just went to the printer, INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainaabilty and is free online at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, and my earlier wire-bound book, also free online, Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography).

Having said that, I found this book to be spectacularly informative, thoughtful, useful, with extraordinary insights and suggestions that were over-shadowed by the focus on the patent system–suggestions about the-redesign of government, for example. I recommend reading my reviews of SMS Uprising: Mobile Activism in Africa and of The Myth of Digital Democracy along with this review, the three books were read together as a set. Below are some quotes and my fly-leaf notes. This book is a foundation stone for righteous change into the future, but only that first stone.

QUOTE (xvi): Done right, it is possible now to achieve greater competence by making good information available for better governance, improve effectiveness by leveraging the available tools to engender new forms of collective action, and strengthen and deepen democracy by creating government by the people, of the people, and *with* the people.

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2010/02/202011/02/21

Review: SMS Uprising: Mobile Activism in Africa

6 Star Top 10%, Associations & Foundations, Autonomous Internet, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Communications, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Environment (Solutions), Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology, Intelligence (Public), Media, Mobile, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Priorities, Public Administration, Security (Including Immigration), Stabilization & Reconstruction, Survival & Sustainment, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Beyond Six Stars–Hugely Important Useful Collection

February 20, 2010

Edited by Sokari Ekine

Contributing authors include Redante Asuncion-Reed, Amanda Atwood, Ken Banks, Chrstinia Charles-Iyoha, Nathan Eagle, Sokari Ekine, Becky Faith, Joshua Goldstein, Christian Kreutz, Anil Naidoo, Berna Ngolobe, Tanya Notley, Juliana Rotich, and Bukeni Wazuri

This book will be rated 6 Stars and Beyond at Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, where we can do things Amazon refuses to implement here, such as sort useful non-fiction into 98 categories, many of the categories focused on stabilization & reconstruction, pushing back against predatory immoral capitalism, and so on.

When the book was first brought to my attention it was with concern over the price. The price is fair. Indeed, the content in this book is so valuable that I would pay $45 without a second thought. I am especially pleased that the African publishers have been so very professional and assured “Look Inside the Book”–please do click on the book cover above to read the table of contents and other materials.

This is the first collection I have seen on this topic, and although I have been following cell phone and SMS activism every since I and 23 others created the Earth Intelligence Network and put forth the need for a campaign to give the five billion poor free cell phones and educate them “one cell call at a time,” other than UNICEF and Rapid SMS I was not really conscious of bottom-up initiatives and especially so those in Africa where the greatest benefits are to be found.

I strongly recommend this book as a gift for ANYONE. This is potentially a game-changing book, and since I know the depth of ignorance among government policy makers, corporate chief executives, and larger non-governmental and internaitonal organization officials, I can say with assurance that 99% of them simply do not have a clue, and this one little precious book that gives me goose-bumps as I type this, could change the world by providing “higher education” to leaders who might then do more to further the brilliant first steps documented in this book.
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2010/02/202010/02/20

Review: A New World Order

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Democracy, Diplomacy, Information Operations, Information Society, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Priorities, Security (Including Immigration), Survival & Sustainment, United Nations & NGOs, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

For a Serving Elite, Genius–Out of Touch with Non-Elites

February 20, 2010

Anne-Marie Slaughter

Now that my own book INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability is at the printer am back into reading and really looking forward to catching up with the 25 books on my “to do” shelf. This one jumped to the top of the list at the recommendation of James Fallows, recently back from China and author of Blind Into Baghdad: America's War in Iraq among many other extraordinary books.

This might have been a four because despite the gifted genius of the author–I use the term with admiration–the book is out of touch with two thirds or more of the relevant literature and all the non-elite movements that are doing precisely what she advocates but DISPLACING governments.

HOWEVER, the recurring theme of multinational information-sharing and information-driven harmonization grabbed me by the throat. A handful of quoted phrases, generally citing others properly end-noted:

+ European agencies “are best described as ‘information agencies.' Their job is to collect, coordination, and disseminate information needed by policymakers.

+ “Modes of regulation based on information and persuasion…”

+ “Debousee also sees the European information agencies as network creators and coordinators.”

+ “In short, the ability to provide credible information and an accompanying reputation for credibility become sources of soft power.” She acknowledged here that non-governmental organization networks are doing this now, and that government networks need to do more of this.
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