5.0 out of 5.0 Stars One visionary's way out of the Corporate Feudalism/International Conflict trap
By Herbert L Calhoun on April 1, 2014
In this book, the author, drawing extensively on his intelligence and military background, has cleanly written an easy to follow book, that outlines a careful course of action for developing a new kind of global information sharing infrastructure. To be headquartered at the UN, this new infrastructure would make it possible for every organization (and through them, everyone) on the globe to share open-source intelligence equally as a free public resource. If it is successful, this new global brain could transform our world from its current insecurity-driven and corrupt corporate dominated lose-lose, economic and conflict trap, into a much revived win-win strategy for bottom-up collective survival in a peaceful and sustainable world economy.
At least that is the theoretical hope and vision. On paper, and in principle, it is a stunningly sexy and attractive vision, one that, should it prove operationally testable and feasible, could indeed have the important side benefit and advantage of creating new bottom-up wealth, energizing the world economy and easing world tensions by reducing mistrust and fear back down to the noise level.
Needless to say this is a tall order, and in the end, as always, the proof must be in the pudding. To repeat the well-known cliche: the devil is in the details. Or to use an even more apt metaphor, the difference between the “real world” and our “imagined worlds” is always in between the lines in the “fine print.”
And given that most of my own experiences have occurred across the author's seven tribes, from this unenviable vantage point, I am not sanguine. For what I see is a world dystopia rapidly emerging over the horizon, one huffing and puffing as conservative politics around the world backed up by a jealous 1% of feudal gods who are so deeply entrenched in their own feudalistic but suicidal ways, rather than yield to a new healthy paradigm leaning towards more equity in any direction, they will surely prefer to drive the world full speed ahead right over the proverbial cliff.
Thus even if Mr. Steele's new visionary paradigm should prove to be a viable one, history teaches that the modern-day corporate feudal hierarchy has proven to be durable, adaptive and maximally self-protective against any outside threats — even if in the long run, it knows it's own dying paradigm, is unsustainable.
That said, if I had to choose a tough marine to skipper our ever-sinking global Titanic, Robert (don't call me Bob) David Steele would be the man I would want at the helm. He's got guts, nerves of steel (excuse the pun), an out-sized brain and does not mind speaking truth to power, or culling the best ideas from wherever he may find them. Plus, he has comprehensively read and reviewed more books on amazon.com than I have. Ten stars.
