PREPARE TO HAVE YOUR MIND BLOWN!,June 24, 2012
If there's a single Founding Father of the Open Source movement, Robert D. Steele is it. Everyone else has been playing catchup. And if you don't know what the Open Source revolution is, you need to read this book. You don't even need to know why! You need to buy it, read it, and then you'll *know* why. No other book on Open Source can open your eyes the way this one can. That's because there's no potential use of Open Source intelligence that Steele hasn't anticipated. Collective Intelligence is coming! It's an unstoppable force. And it will change everything. So if you like to know about things like that in advance, you need to buy this book.
The information age that was created by personal computers was just a kiddie car with a squeaky horn. By comparison, the open source revolution is a freight train. Its potential to change your world is orders of magnitude greater. This is not hyperbole. In fact superlatives can't begin to express the ground-shaking potential of this next wave of human evolution.
Collective Intelligence is a hybrid form of intelligence that's taking everyone by surprise. While researchers have been trying to create artificial intelligence, a new kind of intelligence has emerged and passed them by like they were standing still. The idea behind artificial intelligence was to create computers that can think like humans, but with all the advantages of a computer: lightning fast processing speeds and immense data bases. And although many valuable things have been learned in the process, it's becoming ever more clear that the original aims of the developers of artificial intelligence will probably never be realized.
The real revolution in intelligence has been of an entirely different variety. Open Source Systems turn individual human brains into Brain Networks. In a sense, each individual brain then becomes a cell within a much larger brain. And because human brains have skills of analysis, perception, and creative problem solving that computers will never have, this new hybrid form of intelligence is much more powerful than artificial intelligence will ever be. Open Source Intelligence is a new tool of problem solving *and* a new system of organization at the same time. And here's what you need to remember about all of this: when human brains are linked in a network that focuses on a common problem, the processing power of these multiple human brains is similar to a biological supercomputer! Artificial intelligence will never catch up to that. Ever.
Probably the best example is a recent open-source science project. Scientists had been trying to unlock the mysteries of a complex protein, but with little success. So they decided to create an open source project that anyone could participate in. They thought if they were lucky, the team of participants would solve the problem in two years. They solved it in two weeks! This is a demonstration of the extraordinary and unmeasurable power of this new form of collective, creative, human intelligence.
Ask yourself these questions:
What are the implications of this new hybrid form of intelligence? What can it be used for? How will this change human society? How will it change my life? How will it change human organization? How can I use it to my advantage? In how many different ways can it be applied? How can I invest in this new hybrid form of intelligence? How can I avoid missing the boat? How can I be a part of this coming revolution?
The Open Source Everything Manifesto answers these questions and more. But ultimately no one has all the answers, for one simple reason. Because you're a unique individual, your creativity may bring a set of skills to open source projects that no one else has. And there's no way of anticipating or predicting what you could add to such a project unless you plug yourself into it to see what you can do. So ultimately only *you* can answer that question.
Open Source is not only for computer people! That's the point. It's for *everyone*. This is not a “computer book.” Anyone can understand it. The best Open Source Software Systems are those that are designed so that anyone can figure out how to participate quickly and efficiently. That means that you don't have to be computer savvy in order to participate. That's why everyone needs to read this book! Open Source could very well hold the answers to your most vexing problems, right now! And reading this book is the quickest way to find out.
Ultimately, Open Source is open-ended in it's applications. Anyone who thinks they can predict all the innovations that might come from it is fooling themselves. The sky's the limit. That's what this book will help you understand. Open Source Everything has radically expanded our ability to DREAM!
We can now dare to dream bigger than our limited individual imaginations and be fairly confident that even those dreams are probably gross underestimations of what's actually possible. And that's perhaps the greatest gift of Open Source Everything:
It has restored our capacity to dream!
The American dream is NOT dead! There's a new dream on the horizon!
If someone came along and restored your optimism and your capacity to dream, and challenged you to dream in ways that you never dreamed possible, what value would you put on that message? The answer: it would be beyond any concept of value. And that's what this book can do for you and for all humankind. Words just don't suffice. You need to see it to understand, and this book will enable you to see it. Don't hesitate. It only costs nine dollars! It's the best gamble you'll ever make.
It's very readable. Pretty much anyone can understand it. It's not very long. The pages have a very low word count, and only 167 pages are text. The rest are footnotes. It's a pleasure to read. Trust me on this. This book is for everyone. This book is your chance to get in on the ground floor of the next big revolution. How many times have you missed things like that in the past? You don't have to miss it this time. Hop aboard the train. Don't sit on the sidelines and watch it whiz by. Or worse yet, don't be run over by it! If you're heavily invested in a system that's about to be made obsolete by the Open Source Everything revolution, you need to know about it as soon as possible so you can try to minimize your losses.
Also by this author:
On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political–Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time
THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest
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)
INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainaabilty
Other books I recommend close to this theme:
Open Source Intelligence in a Networked World (Continuum Intelligence Studies)
No More Secrets: Open Source Information and the Reshaping of U.S. Intelligence (Praeger Security International)
Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder
Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room
