Here we are. A system in perpetual crisis. Less and less able to accomplish basic functions.
A system being led by an economic and political leadership increasingly divorced from reality.
A self-aggrandizing leadership unable to do anything but engage in exercise of complex futility (political – healthcare/national insecurity) or fantasy (economic – the shadow banking system). A complexity made worse by applying technological patches/fixes/solutions to a system in decline.
However, that isn’t where it ends. Humanity has more in store for it than bureaucracy and markets can make possible.
Something new is coming and its arrival distorts the current system.
Here is a potentially revolutionary development in gene-based medicine. When I read this I wondered, does the lack of funding, in fact the suppression of gene research, by the Bush Administation — done to placate the Theocratic Right — help explain why the major breakthroughs in this area of medicine are happening outside of the U.S.?
Stem Cell ‘Major Discovery' Claimed
JAMES GALLAGHER, Health and Science Reporter – BBC News (U.K.)
“Co-intelligence is the capacity to call forth the wisdom and resources of the whole and its members to enhance the longterm vitality of the whole and its members.” Collectively, a community has more – and more diverse – information, perspective, and resources than any individual has. A wise community, a wise leader, and a wise democracy will use that rich diversity creatively and interactively. The diversity will then be mutually enhancing rather than mutually problematic. The appropriate role of the state is to create enabling conditions for that to happen at all levels and in all sectors and facets of society.
Co-intelligence is the capacity to call forth the wisdom and resources of the whole and its members to enhance the longterm vitality of the whole and its members.
. — Tom Atlee
The appropriate role of the state is to create enabling conditions for civil society to manage the public affairs of the community.
. — Rajesh Tandon
The Man Who Stopped the Desert is a full HD, one hour feature documentary telling the story of Yacouba Sawadogo, an illiterate African peasant farmer who has transformed the lives of thousands of people across the Sahel.
Soil is essential to life on earth. But much of the world's soil has become degraded and useless. As the global demand for food grows, millions of pounds and the latest technological advances have been invested in attempts to improve soil quality. Leading scientists and agriculturalists from around the world strive against growing world hunger to find the means to bring exhausted soils back into production, but it seems that a peasant farmer from one of the poorest countries on earth has finally achieved what these experts dreamt of; halting the desert.
Val Swisher has written yet another excellent article that gets to the heart of content. Just today, in fact, I was questioning this very topic, and not understanding why more people don't understand these basics. Read this throughly if you write or manage any content, because this article will help to boil it all down for you and get you in the right (or “write”) mentality. Must, must, MUST read!
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak on a panel at TC Camp. The topic for the panel was “What is Quality Content?” The first thing I noticed is that we have a difficult time defining the term quality when it comes to content. We all have ideas about the characteristics of quality, but we have a difficult time taking a broad view of the term itself. Here is how the Oxford Dictionaries defines quality:
qual·i·ty noun \ˈkwä-lə-tē\
the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind;
the degree of excellence of something
Joan Lasselle, one of the other panel members, was the first to point out that, as a discipline, technical communications (and marketing communications I might add) has no standard of excellence. I agree completely. We do not have a bar that has been set, a number, a grade, or any set of common standards that we can use for an objective measure of overall quality content.
Our measurements of quality are based largely on a subjective declaration of characteristics that we agree on. For example, Content Science has a Content Quality Checklist that contains a number of attributes, including:
