Briefing as Presented 31 March 2012 to the Washington Academy of Sciences 22 Slides PDF 1MB words in Notes format, as delivered.
Steele at WAS on Reflexivity 1 MB
SHORT URL for This Post: http://tinyurl.com/WAS-Steele
Abstract & Full Text Brief Online Below
UPDATED 23 April 2014 to add new references with analytic and technical thrust.
ABSTRACT
Reflexivity as Integrity: Toward Earth/Life 4.0
Robert David Steele
Earth Intelligence Network (501c3) – Oakton, Virginia 22124
Science – both hard science and social science – has lost its way in a descending spiral of sub-disciplinary isolation. It is time to begin working toward the goal of restoring integrity by applying holistic analytics, an emerging science of its own that fully integrates all relevant disciplines and all relevant information about “true costs”. By combining Cognitive Science and Collective Intelligence using Reflexivity as the over-arching cognitive, intuitive, and philosophical frame, we can achieve Science and Web 4.0.
Reflexivity, rooted in the ideas and integrities of Buckminster Fuller and the design science of Russell Ackoff, is recognized as the critical mental tool-kit necessary to begin this reconstruction of science and society. The practical means of achieving reflexivity across all boundaries can be found in The Open Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth, & Trust (Evolver Editions Random House, June 2012). It requires Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making (M4IS2), in turn resting on open access by all minds to all information all the time.
This presentation, from a humanities perspective rather than from a cybernetics perspective, will present the key figures from the forthcoming book, and offer an opportunity for interactive dialog about the meaning of Reflexivity in a local to global context where intelligence (decision-support) and integrity are required if humanity is to avoid doing further damage to the biosphere within which it exists.
Ultimately Reflexivity appears to be a cultural phenomenon, one that demands a valuation of all human minds as being priceless, all human beings as deserving of the dignity of being heard, and human society as the means by which Reflexivity can design for sustainability. We are entering Epoch B. All governments, corporations, and organizations are organized for Epoch A. The purpose of Reflexivity is to flip the tortilla and return all of us to holistic integral consciousness.
BRIEFING
My name is Robert David Steele, you can reach me via electronic mail at robert.david.steele.vivas@gmail.com. This is my next book, coming out in June with distribution by Random House. It is the foundation for my brief presentation here today. Please note the Tiny URL short-cut to this briefing, WAS-Steele.
I have been learning from Stuart and Kent and others these past few years, and agree that reflexivity is the desired end state of human consciousness. Reflexivity in my view is another way of saying “integral consciousness.” Integral consciousness cannot be achieved without absolute integrity. I will pause here so you can read the ten points being made in this presentation.
This is the scientific world today, a map based on actual citations created by Maps of Science founder Dick Klavans and a few others. Proprietary and other forms of closed systems do not scale. We are at the end of a period of academic deconstructions—now is the time to begin convergence toward integrated holistic education, intelligence as decision-support, and research in the context of the whole.
I believe that the failure of the academy to maintain its integrity has allowed ideologies to rule, and corruption to be the primary trait of most governments and most private sector organizations. What we spend on war instead of peace is reprehensibly ignorant, and it happens because we are all—as a collective—abdicating our reflexive responsibilities. These numbers are from Medard Gabel, and consistent with those of E. O. Wilson and Lester Brown.
Each of these information pathologies is also the title of a book, with the cover shown. The academy is not alone in its loss of integrity—everyone else has lost theirs as well. There are also information hazards; these have been explored by Professor Nick Bostrom at Oxford. His paper “Information Hazards: A Typology of Potential Harms from Knowledge“ is easily found online.
Integrity is our starting point. By integrity I mean the quality or condition of being whole. Buckminster Fuller and Russell Ackoff are two of the pioneers I particularly admire. Integrity is the most searched word on my website, Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog. Of my several posts, I especially recommend Politics & Intelligence–Partners Only When Integrity is Central to Both, easily found by searching for the title.
Reflexivity demands the human in the loop, and not only demands the human in the loop but demands as well that the human be conscious. Charles Hampden-Turner, writing in the 1980’s, made the business case for why humans have to act at their fullest potential if we are to achieve a prosperous world at peace. Treating humans as expendible commodities—-a characteristic of the Agricultural and Industrial eras—-is the equivalent of eating your seed corn if you are taking a long view.
This is easier to read if you access the file. Created by Purin Phanichphant, and flagged by Michel Bauwens of the PfP Foundation, this is the chart that inspired my newest book.
I created an earlier version of this graphic for my keytone presentation to Gnomedex in Seattle in January 2007. Entitled “Open Everything,” the video of that presentation appears to have gone viral and is easily found on the Internet. India is now rejecting Microsoft and going open source; the Netherlands has made Open Data Access the law of the land. It is time we all get serious about open everything.
Of continuing concern to me is the lack of a strategic analytic model within the academy, one that focuses all disciplines on real-world problems and on the true cost of each good, service, or practice. T-Shirts get to market today because the true costs are ignored by all concerned – the true cost of water, of toxins, of fuel, of child labor, of tax avoidance, etcetera. Making true costs integral to all decision making is how we get the experts, the decision-makers, and the public to converge on reflexive informed thinking for all.
The Academy cannot know the world in isolation from the other seven major communities of information and intelligence: Civil Society, Commerce, Government, Law Enforcement, Media, Military, and Non-Governmental/Non-Profit. Nor can the Academy get a grip on reality without factoring in both religion and philosophy—integral consciousness lies at the intersection of all three and cannot be claimed by any one of the three in isolation.
Reflexive thinking, in my view, requires multiple analytic models, one each for the strategic, operational, tactical, and technical levels. It also requires tools for thinking that we lack today. Here are eighteen functionalities that we knew in 1986 were required. They do not exist as an integrated whole today because of the corruption of our government and our industry and our academy.
At the operational level, we are all mired in Quadrant I and nowhere near getting much out of Quadrants II and III. The last Quadrant, named by Harold Wilensky in the 1960’s, is unachievable with today’s mind-sets, databases, and tool-kits.
At the strategic level, we are long overdue for creating the World Brain Institute and the Global Game that I have been championing since the 1990’s. We do this in part by using cognitive sciences to channel the scientific disciplines, and collective intelligence – now a discipline in its own right despite many naysayers – to channel the humanities.
We are entering the third era of intelligence. The proven process of intelligence – of decision-support—when done in M4IS2 fashion and mindful of the actual true costs of every product, service, and practice, is revolutionary. It eradicates corruption. It ends fraud, waste, and abuse. This is about infinite feedback loops among all humans in all languages all the time.
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is the application of the proven process of intelligence (decision-support) using only open sources and methods. M4IS2 is Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making. Our relatively retarded governments, corporations, and international organizations are bogged down, are very immature. What we do today serves the few at the expense of the many. We can mature quickly—all it takes is one government or one great university, to set the example.
Although I developed this strategy close to a decade ago, I have never found anyone anywhere willing to embrace it. In my view, this is how we achieve what Robert Wright calls Non-Zero, The Logic of Human Destiny. Win-Win is the only sustainable win. Conscious Evolution, Evolutionary Activism, Integral Consciousness—all book titles—is where we can and must be going as a species.
We have arrived at our current crisis by adhering to an old model for decision-making, one that allowed the few to dominate the many. That model is no longer sustainable. The new model—actually the oldest model, the model of our indigenous forebearers—-is the only sustainable model for governance. Think of this in terms of feedback loops – instead of the few, the many.
Reflexivity, and integrity, place the human in the loop. The human brain can do petaflop calculations per second, weighs almost nothing, consumes virtually no energy. There are five billion human brains lying fallow. Embracing their potential, connecting them to an autonomous internet that cannot be shut down by any actor, is our next challenge, in my view.
Winston Churchill liked to say that “Americans always do the right thing – they just try everything else first.” Russell Ackoff teaches us to not do the wrong thing righter, do the right thing. Buckminster Fuller recommends that we not try to repair all that is broken, but instead displace it. My next two—and my last—slides outline what I want to build to create a reflexive global environment for us all.
Since this is the Washington Academy of Sciences, I include this one slide that has been delivered toward Hillary Clinton three times, and each time I believe it has been blocked by the CIA and others who greatly fear the ideas in this briefing. The JFK Center came up with the idea of the Potomac Plaza, I and Joe Markowitz and others came up with the idea of an Open Source Agency, and the Saudi Embassy may or may not come up with the money for the Plaza.
I know how to build this. I have led others in doing the homework. What I cannot find is one university provost or one university president with the gravitas to “get” this and champion what should be a hub for creating a Smart Nation and a prosperous world at peace. Have brain, will travel. Thank you.
2014-04-22 See analytic and technical references:
2015 Steele's New Book
2014 Beyond OSA
2014 Steele's Open Letter
2013 Intelligence Future
2012 Academy Briefing
1989+ Intelligence Reform
1976+ Intelligence Models 2.1
1957+ Decision Support Story
Articles (Directory)
Related published work:
1992 E3i: Ethics, Ecology, Evolution, & intelligence (Full Text Online for Google Translate)
1995 GIQ 13/2 Creating a Smart Nation: Strategy, Policy, Intelligence, and Information
2008: World Brain as EarthGame (Full Text Online for Google Translate)
2010 The Ultimate Hack Re-Inventing Intelligence to Re-Engineer Earth (As Published)
2012 Reality Sandwich: The Open Source Everything Manifesto
2013 The Evolving Craft of Intelligence [As Published]
See Also:
See Open Source Manifesto TOC & Slides
See 2011 Presentations on Reflexivity
References
2010 PhD Author Dissects Intelligence Reformer Robert Steele
Buckminster Fuller, Ideas and Integrities: A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure
E. O. Wilson, The Future of Life
Journal: Politics & Intelligence–Partners Only When Integrity is Central to Both
Journal: Reflections on Integrity UPDATED + Integrity RECAP
Kent Myers, Reflexive Practice: Professional Thinking for a Turbulent World
Lester Brown, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (Substantially Revised)
Robert Wright, Non-Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny
Russell Ackoff, Redesigning Society
Will Durant, Philosophy and the Social Problem: The Annotated Edition
Robert David Steele, or for Latinos Roberto David de Steele y Vivas, is presenting “Reflexivity as Integrity: Toward Science & Web 4.0.” Robert, today Chief Executive Officer (pro bono) of Earth Intelligence Network, a 501c3 chartered in the Commonwealth of Virginia, has been engaged in multi-cultural integrative analytics for over 50 years. He was raised in Latin America and Asia as the son of a petroleum engineer. His education includes an AB from Muhlenberg College with a senior thesis on Multinational Corporations: Home and Host Country Issues. He went on to a research fellowship at Lehigh University, earning an MA in International Relations, with a graduate thesis on predicting revolution, for which he created an original and comprehensive analytic model across the political-legal, socio-economic, ideo-cultural, techno-demographic, and natural-geographic domains, with full operationalization of all relevant data elements. While serving the US Government he earned a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Oklahoma, with a thesis on strategic information (mis) management for Whole of Government operations, and also earned a diploma from the Naval War College, focusing on defense economics.
Joining the United States Marine Corps as an infantry officer, he was selected on his first tour, while still as second lieutenant, to be the S-1/Adjutant of Battalion Landing Team 3/4, a position normally filled by a field grade officer. During four years active duty he served as S-1/Adjutant for regiments and divisions (Marine Corps Recruit Depot), and then joined the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as a clandestine operations officer. He remained active in the Marine Corps reserve, serving on active duty at the Service level where he helped write the Marine Corps Master Intelligence Plan (MCMIP). Within the CIA he served three back to back tours overseas, and was one of the first case officers assigned the terrorist target full-time. Returning to Washington DC he served in positions dealing with global counterintelligence and collection against a denied area target, in a rotational assignment addressing the most advanced information technology applications for analytics, and in the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) vault responsible for advanced programs and evaluations (all technical programs outside CIA proper).
He resigned from CIA to accept an offer from the Marine Corps to return as the second-ranking civilian (GM-14) and help create the Marine Corps Intelligence Center (today a global Command). While there he discovered the gap between what secret sources and methods can provide at great expense, and what open sources of information in all languages – still neglected today – can provide.
He resigned from the Marine Corps in 1993 to spend the next seventeen years as an evangelist for Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), managing an international conference, publishing books and training manuals, and ultimately influencing 90 countries that today have OSINT units in being. Determining that OSINT had been captured and corrupted by secret bureaucracies, he shifted his attention to promoting public intelligence in the public interest, and holistic analytics that accurately represented “true cost” information now externalized to the public by corporations and ignored by governments. Earth Intelligence Network was founded in 2006 to design and create the World Brain and Global Game. While unsuccessful to date, the homework has been done and if Occupy is any indication, the global public is beginning to realize that governments and corporations are not intelligent and lack integrity—a global practice of reflexivity, a commitment to open source everything rooted in transparency and truth that creates trust, is now emergent.
He is an invited recurring participant in the Silicon Valley Hackers Conference started by Stewart Brand, and also an invited recurring speaker to Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE). In passing, he is the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, reading in 98 categories. Everything he has written is available free online, via Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog (www.phibetaiota.net). His newest book, The Open Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth, & Trust, will be released by Random House / Evolver Editions in June 2012. Learn more.
