Month: October 2011

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Event: Oct 15-Jan 9, UN, Design with the Other 90% Cities

01 Poverty, Technologies

Design with the Other 90%: CITIES features sixty projects, proposals, and solutions that address the complex issues arising from the unprecedented rise of informal settlements in emerging and developing economies. Divided into six themes—Exchange, Reveal, Adapt, Include, Prosper and Access—to help orient the visitor, the exhibition shines the spotlight on communities, designers, architects, and private, civic, and public organizations that are working together to formulate innovative approaches to urban planning, affordable housing, entrepreneurship, nonformal education, public health, and more.

Comment: Design for the other 90% is a great ‘movement' but the sponsorship of this event (Citi & Rockefeller Foundation) + UN makes for an unsettling partnership when considering the divide between “the 1%” & “the 99%” and the questions behind the intentions of having their names affiliated with “helping the poor.” I would hope that those within those organizations who can genuinely make a difference are not trumped by those looking to exploit those in poverty.

Also see:
Design for the Other 90% Exhibit + “Micro-Giving” Global Needs Index to Connect Rich to Poor/Fullfill Global-to-Local Requests

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DefDog: Elizabeth Warren Spooks the Extreme Right

03 Economy, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government
DefDog

Warren Takes Credit for Occupy Wall Street

Samuel Jacobs

The Daily Beast, Oct 24, 2011

The Harvard professor has spooked the right. As she begins her high-profile Senate campaign against GOP star Scott Brown in Massachusetts, the consumer advocate tells Samuel P. Jacobs how she created ‘much of the intellectual foundation' for the Occupy Wall Street movement. She also talks about her past life as a Republican and the challenges of being a woman on the campaign trail—and says she's no ‘guileless Marxist.'

Read full story.

Phi Beta Iota:  The implied claim is a real stretch.  Ethics has been around for a very long time, as has populism.  The Internet is new.  An awakening engaged and modestly enraged public is new.  At best Warren is – like most of us – a modest catalyst for convergence.

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Eliot Spitzer: Conversation on Democracy & Occupy

Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Methods & Process
Eliot Spitzer

The Coffee Summit

Eliot Spitzer talks capitalism with one of the 99 percent

New York Magazine,21 October 2011

Last week, New York’s Mattathias Schwartz invited Occupy Wall Street protester Manissa Maharawal, a CUNY graduate student in anthropology, to discuss the movement and its impact over coffee with former New York governor and attorney general Eliot Spitzer. An extended transcript of their conversation is below.

FOUR EXTRACTS:

MM: Oh, okay. So we’re in the same system. As I was saying, one of the reasons this movement has been without demands is because without demands we can shift. The moment you have a list of demands, you have politicians take all of those demands and explain to you why they aren’t going to work.

ES: But in order to turn this into something other than a visceral cry of despair, you need to figure out how to confront the actual problems and issues. You need to think about all of this more rigorously. If you’re down in Zuccotti Park six months from now, having made it through a cold winter, I’m not sure whether you would deem that success. Trust me, the media won’t be paying as much attention six months from now if it’s just the same couple hundred people, right?

. . . . .

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John Robb: China Bans “Occupy” as Search Term

02 China, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, IO Impotency
John Robb

‘Occupy' Now a Banned Search Term in China

A good rule of thumb for life is that if the Chinese government is against it, you're probably doing something right. The latest evidence to support this axiom is the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has spread from lower Manhattan to cities around the globe, including London, Auckland, Toronto, and Rome, among many others. Terrified by OWS' viral growth, the oppressive regime controlling China is taking measures to ensure the protests don't happen there. And it's starting with the internet.

Read full story.

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Worth a Look: Skype, YouTube & VodBurner

Tools, Worth A Look

As an aid to all the old people who are well-removed from the reality that the young communicate (and ingest information) in multi-media rather than two-dimensional static communications, here are two essentials for old people who want to get with the program:

Skype

Start with free one to one video teleconferencing, then upgrade to video group conference calls.

FREE Skype (audio only, XP only)

YouTube Broadcast Yourself

Create account, then go to YouTube Broadcast Yourself

VodBurner for Skype Call Recording & Posting

Free for 14 days excluding calls to PCs already having VodBurner, $99.50 to purchase with three month escape period.

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Review: How People Harness Their Collective Wisdom and Power to Construct the Future

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Communications, Complexity & Resilience, Democracy, Education (Universities), Environment (Solutions), Information Operations, Intelligence (Public), Leadership, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Science & Politics of Science, True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
Amazon Page

Alexander Christakis, Kenneth Bausch

5.0 out of 5 stars 5 for Original, 4 For Density, October 25, 2011

The primary author of this book was closely associated with Dr. Jan Warfield, one of the giants of reflexive practice and cybernetic coherence, along with Dr. Russell Ackoff, and that alone makes this book a special read for me.

Warfield never got the recognition he merited, and George Mason University blew a decade long lead in this area, and today they are still failing to create the integrative and pro-active inter-disciplinary programs that reflect the the wisdom of Buckminster Fuller, Jan Warfield, and Russell Ackoff, among others. I know from personal experience that GMU refused to consider the World Brain Institute and EarthGame, both of which would have made them unique in the world, so I can appreciate to a personal degree how lonely Jan Warfield must have felt there.

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