Category: Collective Intelligence

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Michael Ostrolenk: Public Voting on Federal Budget

Advanced Cyber/IO, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Office of Management and Budget, Policies, Threats
Michael Ostrolenk Recommends...

Two public voting  options have emerged.  Their results will be ignored, but it is a start.

FEDERAL BUDGET
PREFERENCE POLL

Let your voice be heard
in the federal budget debate!

Click here to vote.

And here the same idea but different network….

Let your voice be heard in the federal budget debate!

Three very different federal budget choices are being proposed for fiscal year 2012:

  • President Obama's Budget Framework
  • The “People's Budget” proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC)
  • The GOP Budget proposed by House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI)

Click here to vote.

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Koko: Oil Prices & Human Ingenuity

03 Economy, Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence
Koko the Reflexive

Published 23 August 2005, the Ludwig von Mises Institute article by Pierre Lemieux discusses the actual decline of resource prices–including “scarce” resources–and the reason: advances in human ingenuity.  This supports our basic proposition on this web site, that the single best investment that could be made to create a prosperous world at peace is to give the five billion poor free access to the Internet so as to nurture and harvest their brainpower.

The Oil Price Mirage

Mises Daily: Tuesday, August 23, 2005 by

EXTRACT

Until his death in 1997, economist Julian Simon predicted a continuous decline in resource prices. In 1980, he made a famous bet with environmentalist Paul Ehrlich. Simon’s bet was that a $1,000 basket of any five metals chosen by Ehrlich would be worth less (in constant dollars) 10 years later. Ehrlich lost. In 1990, the value of the basket at current market prices was down more than 50%. Ehrlich had to send a $576.07 check to Simon, representing the drop in the basket value. In fact, the prices of all the metals chosen by Ehrlich had fallen.[5]

In his challenging 1981 book The Ultimate Resource, Simon showed that resource prices had generally decreased over time. The relative price of oil (in terms of other goods) has fallen by perhaps as much as two-thirds between the 1860s and today. During the same period, the price of oil in terms of salaries has decreased by more than 90%.

 

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John Steiner: Angry Moms & Active Shareholders Rebel

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corporations, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth
John Steiner

How Angry Moms Toppled the ‘World'

Influential British parenting website Mumsnet was instrumental in bringing down scandal-ridden News of the World. Bill Coles reports from London on the remarkable grassroots campaign.

Bill Coles, The Daily Beast, 10 July 2011

Curb the Corporate Agenda of Activist CEOs

Tell Your Members of Congress to Cosponsor the Shareholder Protection Act

The Shareholder Protection Act proposed by Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) would empower shareholders to vote on whether to allow corporate executives to spend corporate money on political campaigns. Shareholders — not the CEO and not the board of directors — are the real owners of any publicly traded corporation, and the decision should be theirs.

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Tom Atlee: Global Interdependence Movements Et Al

Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Gift Intelligence, Peace Intelligence
Tom Atlee

GLOBAL INTERDEPENDENCE MOVEMENTS, DECLARATIONS AND DAYS

by Tom Atlee

It is so good to celebrate INdependence Days in the United States and the many other countries that have successfully gained and defended their independence from colonial rule.

For countries as well as individuals, independence is a dramatic move from dependence into a more self-defined, self-created life.

The next developmental step takes us into greater INTERdependence – bringing ourselves into increasingly mutual, peer, give-and-take relationships with others.

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Global Interdependence Movements Et Al”

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Network Learning to Team/Autonomous Learning

04 Education, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Strategy
Howard Rheingold

Harold Jarche » Network Learning: Working Smarter

At its core, network learning is a way to deal with an ever-increasing amount of digital information. It requires an open attitude toward learning and finding new things. Each worker needs to develop individualized processes of filing, classifying and annotating information for later retrieval.

Source: www.jarche.com

Network Learning: Working Smarter

Posted on October 22nd, 2010 by Harold Jarche

Click on Image to Enlarge

“In the period ahead of us, more important than advances in computer design will be the advances we can make in our understanding of human information processing – of thinking, problem solving, and decision making…” ~ Herbert Simon, Economics Nobel-prize winner (1968)

The World Wide Web is changing how many of us do our work as we become more connected to information and each other. In California, Ray Prock, Jr. (2010) uses a Web-based note system to store messages, manage his financial risk and stay on top of the multiple factors necessary to run a successful dairy farm. He is constantly learning as he works and has found a method to keep up, thanks to the Internet.

Continue reading “Network Learning to Team/Autonomous Learning”

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Twitter Volunteers Helping NATO Bomb Libya…

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Military
Who, Me?

Believe it or not….NATO appears to be attentive to and leveraging the “intellectual capital” outside the confines of its Member state intelligence services.

How social media users are helping NATO fight Gadhafi in Libya

GRAEME SMITH

Globe and Mail, Tuesday, Jun. 14, 2011

EXTRACT:

Robert Rowley, 48, supervisor of a Dairy Queen in Arizona, said he has already seen results from his Twitter activism. He was among the first to notice fuel tankers slipping past NATO warships and docking at ports controlled by Col. Gadhafi, which led to NATO interdictions.

He also wonders whether his tweets might be connected to the bombing of a Gadhafi communications centre in Tripoli. Combing through satellite images, he noticed that a property listed as a commercial warehouse had a yard containing what appeared to be military vehicles. He published his observations; 10 hours later, the spot was hit by a NATO air strike.

“I’m 5,000 miles away,” he said, in an interview before his shift at the ice-cream parlour. “It’s a very weird feeling.”

Read full article….

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GroupOn as a Ponzi Scheme–Collapse Soon?

Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

Why Groupon Is Poised For Collapse

Rocky Agrawal Jun 13, 2011

TechCrunch

EXTRACT:

Businesses are being sold incredibly expensive advertising campaigns that are disguised as “no risk” ways to acquire new customers. In reality, there’s a lot of risk. With a newspaper ad, the maximum you can lose is the amount you paid for the ad. With Groupon, your potential losses can increase with every Groupon customer who walks through the door and put the existence of your business at risk.

Groupon is not an Internet marketing business so much as it is the equivalent of a loan sharking business. The $21,000 that the business in this example gets for running a Groupon is essentially a very, very expensive loan.  They get the cash up front, but pay for it with deep discounts over time.  (This post applies to Groupon operations in the United States and Canada; it’s different in other parts of the world.)

In many cases, running a Groupon can be a terrible financial decision for merchants. Groupon’s financials also raise questions about its ongoing viability. Buying Groupon stock could be as bad a deal for investors as running a Groupon offer is for merchants.