Month: April 2012

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Robert Steele: Open Source Everything

Advanced Cyber/IO, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Hacking, Liberation Technology
Robert David STEELE Vivas

The “Open Source Everything” (OSE) meme is not new — I'm just the first person to put it into a strategic context and bring it all together in a book, THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth & Trust (2012).

Below are a few of the leading online posts in this area.  OSE is a cultural shift, and the primary attribute of Epoch B panarchic self- and hybrid-governance.

Drupal: Open Source Everything (24 Slides)

EVENT: Open Source Bridge (26-29 July 2012, Portland OR)

EVENT: Open World Forum (11-13 October 2012, Paris FR)

Open Source Everything (100 Free Open Courseware, 2008)

Open Source Everything (Doug Rushkoff, 2008)

Open Source Everything (BSL Blog, 2007)

Open Source Everything (Spiritual Link, 2006)

Open Source Everything (Electrical, Graphic, 2011)

OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING, EVEN PUNK ROCK (Heather Haley, 2012)

Open Source Everything – Including Cars (2009)

Open Source Everything Project

Open Source Everything (Public Sphere Project)

Open Source Everything Simulator- coders and artists (Physics, 2010)

Open Source Open World (Large Graphic, 2010)

Open Source University, Open Source Civilization (TED Blog, 2012)

The Next Paradigm Shift: Open Source Everything (A Wright, 2008)

VIDEO: Open Source Everything (CalTech, 2009)

Ben Fry, co-founder of Processing and director of Seed Phyllotaxis Lab and�Carlos Ulloa, founder and creator of Papervision3D and HelloEnjoy talk about their software as well as their views on the future of open source and collaboration.

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Robert Steele: Liberation Technology Update

Advanced Cyber/IO, Autonomous Internet, Liberation Technology
Robert David STEELE Vivas

Liberation Technology is much broader than Information Communications Technology (ICT) and is not synonymous (although it should be) with Open Source Everything (OSE).  It seemed like a good time to provide an update on this key term.   Within the ICT arena, we distinguish Autonomous Internet (OpenBTS to Open Specturm), and Advanced Information Operations (AIO), the latter rooted in OSE and permitting M4IS2* at machine speed.

M4IS2:  Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making.

Sites:

Stanford University Program on Liberation Technology

The Technology Liberation  Front

Resources:

Four Factors Needed To Make Technology A ‘Liberation' Technology (2011)

Liberation Technology and Digital Activism (2010)

Liberation Technology: Equal Access Via Computer Communication (1992)

Seminar on Liberation Technology (Stanford)

The Next Wave: Liberation Technology (2004)

The Technology Liberation Movement (2011)

Some Stories:

Bruce Schneier on the importance of trust in society

‘Internet in a suitcase': U.S. government's secret project to provide ‘liberation technology' for dissidents in rogue states

Liberation Technology & its Impact on the Struggle for Democracy

Liberation technology or full-spectrum dominance?

Mobiles, protests and pundits

Rebel with a Cause: Ira David Socol and Liberation Technologies for Education

Tudo Joya? Liberation Technologies and Brazil's Slumdog Entrepreneurs

 Books:

Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy (2012)

THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth & Trust (2012)

Technology and the Future (2008)

Technology for Liberation (1986)

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David Isenberg: Revolution at State? Or Lipstick on the Pig?

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Future-Oriented, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), International Aid, Key Players, Methods & Process, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Strategy, Technologies, Threats
David Isenberg

Revolution @State: The Spread of Ediplomacy

Executive summary

The US State Department has become the world’s leading user of ediplomacy. Ediplomacy now employs over 150 full-time personnel working in 25 different ediplomacy nodes at Headquarters. More than 900 people use it at US missions abroad.

Ediplomacy is now used across eight different program areas at State: Knowledge Management, Public Diplomacy and Internet Freedom dominate in terms of staffing and resources. However, it is also being used for Information Management, Consular, Disaster Response, harnessing External Resources and Policy Planning.

In some areas ediplomacy is changing the way State does business. In Public Diplomacy, State now operates what is effectively a global media empire, reaching a larger direct audience than the paid circulation of the ten largest US dailies and employing an army of diplomat-journalists to feed its 600-plus platforms. In other areas, like Knowledge Management, ediplomacy is finding solutions to problems that have plagued foreign ministries for centuries.

The slow pace of adaptation to ediplomacy by many foreign ministries suggests there is a degree of uncertainty over what ediplomacy is all about, what it can do and how pervasive its influence is going to be. This report – the result of a four-month research project in Washington DC – should help provide those answers.

2012-04-03 Hanson_Revolution-at-State (PDF 34 pages)

Robert Steele

ROBERT STEELE:  Fergus Hanson of Australia has done a truly superb job of describing the considerable efforts within the Department of State to achieve some semblance of electronic coherence and capacity.  What he misses–and this does not reduce the value of his effort in the slightest–is the complete absence of strategy or substance within State, or legitimacy in the eyes of those being addressed.  If the Department of State were to demand the pre-approved Open Source Agency for the South-Central Campus, and get serious about being the lead agency for public intelligence in the public interest, ediplomacy could become something more than lipstick on the pig.   The money is available.  What is lacking right now is intelligence with integrity in support of global Whole of Government strategy, operations, tactics, and technical advancement (i.e. Open Source Everything).

See Also:

2012 THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth & Trust

2012 PREPRINT FOR COMMENT: The Craft of Intelligence

Open Source Agency: Executive Access Point

Preparing America's Foreign Policy for the Twenty-first Century

Review (Guest): No More Secrets – Open Source Information and the Reshaping of U.S. Intelligence

Review: No More Secrets – Open Source Information and the Reshaping of U.S. Intelligence

Robert Steele: Citizen in Search of Integrity (Full Text Online for Google Translate)

Robert Steele: Itemization of Information Pathologies

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David Isenberg: US Taxes Funding Substantial Human Trafficking Schemes by DoD Contractors in War Zones

07 Other Atrocities, DoD
David Isenberg

Some Things Are Just Unacceptable

David Isenberg

Huffington Post,

On March 27 the Technology, Informational Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and Procurement Reform Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing, “Labor Abuses, Human Trafficking, and Government Contracts: Is the Government Doing Enough to Protect Vulnerable Workers?”

This is a subject of more than passing interest to me because last year I wrote a report, published June 14, and commissioned by the Project on Government Oversight, on the exploitation and abuse of the workers of a KBR subcontractor. I subsequently testified at a Nov. 2, 2011 hearing about that report before this very subcommittee.

That hearing, by the way, left me with a lingering sense of surrealism, even after five months, if only because it was revealed that the Pentagon official who had responsibility for this subject had never been to Iraq and Afghanistan.

And sadly, as was noted back then, there has virtually never been a prosecution on this charge, even though it was a widespread practice in both Iraq and Afghanistan with contractors, or subcontractor. And there have only been a very few debarments or suspensions of contractors even though it was well known as a widespread practice.

Continue reading “David Isenberg: US Taxes Funding Substantial Human Trafficking Schemes by DoD Contractors in War Zones”

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Sepp Hasslberger: Open Source Tricorder

Advanced Cyber/IO, Autonomous Internet, Collective Intelligence
Sepp Hasslberger

Open Source Tricorder

This is about a great project to make an open source, universal sensing instrument. The name was popularized in a science fiction series – Star Trek I believe it was – where they were never without one when visiting a new planet or some unfamiliar environment.

While this one starts out very modestly, it has the potential to become a real powerhouse of personal sensor, better than anything we have today.

“The Tricorder X-Prize aims to bring a diverse array of inexpensive sensors together in an accessible, easy to use, handheld design. On Jan 12, 2012, the contest was officially opened at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.”

“Dr. Jansen’s Mark 2 runs on Linux. The hardware includes an ARM Atmel microcontroller squeezed into a clam-shell with two OLED touchscreens. Schematics, board layouts, and the firmware is all available free and includes the initial proof-of-concept device.”

There is also a blog about how it's made, by the guy behind the project…

http://www.tricorderproject.org/

Phi Beta Iota:  Open Source Everything.  This is an imperative not subject to negotiation.  It begins now.

See Also:

THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth, & Trust

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Howard Rheingold: Media Literacy and the Challenge of New Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Advanced Cyber/IO, IO Impotency
Howard Rheingold

Media Literacy and the Challenge of New Information and Communication Technologies

The Communication Review

Volume 7, Issue 1, 2004, pages 3-14

“The article begins with a definition: media literacy is the ability to access, analyse, evaluate and create messages across a variety of contexts. This four-component model is then examined for its applicability to the internet. Having advocated this skills-based approach to media literacy in relation to the internet, the article identifies some outstanding issues for new media literacy crucial to any policy of promoting media literacy among the population. The outcome is to extend our understanding of media literacy so as to encompass the historically and culturally conditioned relationship among three processes: (i) the symbolic and material representation of knowledge, culture and values; (ii) the diffusion of interpretative skills and abilities across a (stratified) population; and (iii) the institutional, especially, the state management of the power that access to and skilled use of knowledge brings to those who are ‘literate’.”

Phi Beta Iota:  There are TWO new media / ICT literacies.  This deals with the second, access.  The first, Open Data Access, is still in a very retarded state for lack of standards, compliance, and commitment to actually making all information in all languages accessible via direct digital pathways or via human-enabled call centers.  Media literacy among the five billion poor (whose annual aggregate income is four time that of the one billion rich) will be of little relevance in the absence of media literacy among the eight communities of information and intelligence (academy, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, non-governmental / non-profit).