Collective Intelligence – Page 80 – Public Intelligence Blog

As the information age and big data colonize everything in life – expanding now into reality itself – we face an erosion not only of privacy but of choice. Even as we think we have greater choice and power, really important choices and power are being subtly stolen from us by folks who don't want us to know or do anything about it. We need to take back our lives while we still can.

“Dark Google”, privacy and power

Dear friends,

Sir Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes told us that “Knowledge is power.” We need to integrate their insight with Sir John Acton's observation that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

In this runaway Information Age we need to realize that one-way concentrations of knowledge power are dangerous when they are not answerable, not responsive to oversight and feedback. The article below, “Dark Google”, makes this point powerfully regarding Google and the NSA. The author, Harvard's Shoshana Zuboff, is eminently qualified to issue this warning.

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: “Dark Google,” privacy and power”

2014/04/282014/04/28

Berto Jongman: Citizens in Brazil Take Over Their Story

01 Brazil, 01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, IO Deeds of Peace, Media, Mobile

How social media gives new voice to Brazil's protests

Street protests continue to rock Brazil and, frustrated by mainstream media coverage, a new group of citizen journalists is using digital tools to tell a different side of the story

EXTRACT

But the battles are not just being waged on the street. Angered by what they see as a misrepresentation of the issues by traditional media, new independent media collectives and networks have emerged over the past year. Armed with smartphones, digital cameras, and apps such as Twitcasting and Twitcam that allow them to broadcast live online, they are presenting their own version of events. Some of them are reaching a huge audience across the country and are now looking to expand their reach internationally.

One such group is the Mídia Ninja, a self-styled loose collective of citizen journalists, which first emerged during last summer's protests. They are keen to present an alternative narrative to the mainstream media by reporting live from the frontline.

Read full article.

2014/04/272014/04/27

Percy Bysshe Shelley: Declaration of Rights (1880)

Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

Phi Beta Iota: As cited by Peter Linebaugh, STOP, THIEF! The Commons, Enclosures, and Resistance (PM Press, 2014)

DECLARATION OF RIGHTS
01 GOVERNMENT has no rights; it is a delegation from several individuals for the purpose of securing their own. It is therefore just, only so far as it exists by their consent, useful only so far as it operates to their well-being.

02 IF these individuals think that the form of government which they, or their forefathers constituted is ill adapted to produce their happiness, they have a right to change it.

03 Governmnent is devised for the security of rights. The rights of man are liberty, and all equal participation of the commonage of nature.

04 As the benefit of the governed, is, or ought to be the origin of government, no men can have any authority that does not expressly emanate from their will.

Continue reading “Percy Bysshe Shelley: Declaration of Rights (1880)”

2014/04/232014/04/23

Greg Newby on Cognitive Space & Exosomatic Memory

Advanced Cyber/IO, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

Why I'm an information scientist

I believe that information is one of the most powerful phenomena. The ability to access and utilize information can help to overcome obstacles and solve problems. I want to make information more readily available to all people.There are many ways of providing access to information:
- Through better information systems, including information retrieval systems. Thus, IR is one of my main research areas.
- By providing the means of accessing information. Computer & information literacy training is therefore a big part of my curriculum interests at UNC. I also worked to bring about better information access via Prairienet (a community computing system) and iBiblio.
- By actually creating information availability — authoring Web pages and articles and providing unrestricted access. I also work with Project Gutenberg to provide free electronic books (over 100 new [generally pre-1923] books per month).

Major themes in my research

Continue reading “Greg Newby on Cognitive Space & Exosomatic Memory”

2014/04/202014/04/20

Jean Lievens: A Most Revolutionary World — With No Revolution — Extraordinary Photo Essay

Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

Around the World in 843 Protests: Living the Most Revolutionary Times in History

Bernardo Gutierrez

Occupy.com, 19 April 23014

We sail in an unstable political ocean, surfing bursts of protests and unexpected revolts emerging across the globe: 843 large protests in the last eight years.

If Karl Marx raised his head, he would be absolutely baffled: Revolts are shaking the world, bursting in the most unexpected places, but they rarely take power. The conditions for rebellion are as sharp today as in the nineteenth century, but few protests lead to the literal meaning of revolution, that “violent change in political, economic or social institutions of a nation.”

Continue reading “Jean Lievens: A Most Revolutionary World — With No Revolution — Extraordinary Photo Essay”

2014/04/202014/04/20

SchwartzReport: Physics Revolution – Discovering Consciousness as Matter

Academia, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics

This report on the latest developments concerning consciousness research in physics is a wonderful illustration of a trend: the cutting edge of physicalist research is confronting consciousness. It is now one step away. Note two things: 1) the acknowledgement that the model is incomplete, missing a link, and a paradox: “why does the information content of our conscious experience appear to be vastly larger than 37 bi! ts of integrated information that can be stored in the human brain.”

Answering the paradox I predict will take physics into the nonlocal domain, and the matrix of information that is the all there is.

The German school of physics, referenced in is this report was made up of Planck, Pauli, Heisenberg, Einstein and others; the Olympiad of 20th century physics. All of them along with Jung, and Franz Boas, the founder of American anthropology, were strongly influenced by Adolf Bastian, a 19th century German polymath who posited the theory of Elementargedanke – literally ‘elementary thoughts of humankind.” It was an early attempt to recognize and try to study the nonlocal informational matrix, from which Jung developed the concept of the Collective Unconscious.

SOURCE: Consciousness as a State of Matter

Why Physicists Are Saying Consciousness Is A State Of Matter, Like a Solid, A Liquid Or A Gas
The Physics arXiv Blog

EXTRACT

Today, Max Tegmark, a theoretical physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, sets out the fundamental problems that this new way of thinking raises. He shows how these problems can be formulated in terms of quantum mechanics and information theory. And he explains how thinking about consciousness in this way leads to precise questions about the nature of reality that the scientific process of experiment might help to tease apart.

Tegmark’s approach is to think of consciousness as a state of matter, like a solid, a liquid or a gas. ‘I conjecture that consciousness can be understood as yet another state of matter. Just as there are many types of liquids, there are many types of consciousness,” he says.

2014/04/182014/04/18

BREAKING: Hold on Keystone – Fracking Next?

05 Energy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 11 Society, 12 Water, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Government

2.5 million outraged public comments and one honest state (Nebraska) — the Administration is, for the very first time, feeling the weight of collective intelligence both individual and state. Is fracking next?

US Puts off Decision on Keystone XL Pipeline

The Obama administration is putting off its decision on the Keystone XL oil pipeline, likely until after the November elections, by extending its review of the controversial project indefinitely.

In a surprise announcement Friday as Washington was winding down for Easter, the State Department said federal agencies will have more time to weigh in on the politically fraught decision — but declined to say how much longer. Officials said the decision will have to wait for the dust to settle in Nebraska, where a judge in February overturned a state law that allowed the pipeline's path through the state.

State Department Indefinitely Delays Keystone XL Pipeline Decision

“In addition, during this time we will review and appropriately consider the unprecedented number of new public comments, approximately 2.5 million, received during the public comment period that closed on March 7, 2014,” the State Department said.

Continue reading “BREAKING: Hold on Keystone – Fracking Next?”