Category: Collaboration Zones

Posted on

Seth Godin: Share Your Confusions

Blog Wisdom, Collective Intelligence
Seth Godin Home

Share your confusions

If you're building for digital, for a place where you can't possibly be present to guide or to answer questions, I think it's vital you have someone who can review your work. Same for instruction manuals, secret ballots and road signs.

Not to make suggestions to make it better (what do they know?) but to share their confusions.

I don't think that's a phrase, but it should be. Share your confusions is a way of asking someone to dissect your work and point out what's not totally clear.

Phi Beta Iota: This is an incredibly important observation by Brother Seth.  Complexity today can only be addressed on the fly by all of us working in a transparent fashion.  “Rule by Secrecy” is over but the vestiges, including large numbers of morally and intellectually challenged citizens, will take a decade or more to rehabilitate.   “Let it all hang out” is the twin to “It's all connected.”

See Also:

Review: Everything Is Miscellaneous–The Power of the New Digital Disorder

My Talk With Tom Atlee: Primer on Citizen Intelligence

Journal: “Expert Judgement” vs. Public Intelligence

2008 COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

Posted on

USA Blocks Informed Dissent To Its Own Demise

07 Other Atrocities, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, IO Impotency, IO Sense-Making, Policies

Protesters could have learned something at lecture

By Jennifer McErlean

Published 12:01 a.m., Saturday, May 7, 2011

Deborah Austin-Ford (letter, April 9) asks what Martin Luther King‘s family would think of the choice of Van Jones as the annual King lecturer at Siena College. While the family's opinion would be of interest, we could turn to what King scholars might say and, even better, to King's own words.

Austin-Ford writes that Jones signed a 911truth.org petition and focuses attention on why communities of color are more likely to suffer environmental degradation and harm than white communities.

On Jones' alleged “socialism,” to this day, some accuse or disparage King for having been a “communist,” largely because he spoke out against U.S. foreign policy on Vietnam and Latin America. King gave many speeches in which he criticized America for its hypocrisy of supporting undemocratic regimes and its seeming pursuit of profit.

Continue reading “USA Blocks Informed Dissent To Its Own Demise”

Posted on

Arturo Valenzuela Quits–US Ignoring South

01 Brazil, 07 Venezuela, 08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy, Threats
Arturo Valenzuela

The head of the U.S. State Department’s Latin American and Caribbean will resign this summer.

Arturo Valenzuela announced he will leave his post of Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs to return to Georgetown University, where he taught before his appointment by Barack Obama in 2009.

The United States currently doesn’t have ambassadors in Mexico, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. There are only rudimentary diplomatic relations with Cuba.

No Difference

Phi Beta Iota: As with Anne Marie Slaughter, he no doubt has a two-year limit or he loses tenure.   It does not really matter who is in the office.   Those of us who care about the Caribbean, Central, and South America have known since 2008 that there is no difference between the policies or lack thereof of the Bush-Cheney Administration, and those of the Obama-Clinton Administration.  When Huge Chavez handed Barack Obama a copy of Open Veins of Latin America–Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent it became the duty of every person of integrity to read that book.  Evidently Barack Obama chose not to read it, and just as he misled all US citizens into thinking that he represented change, so also has he failed the entire Southern Hemisphere.

See Also:

Reference: Empire of Lies & Secrecy

Guest Post: Analysis of the Global Insurrection Against Neo-Liberal Economic Domination and the Coming American Rebellion

Review: SAVAGE CAPITALISM AND THE MYTH OF DEMOCRACY–Latin America in the Third Millennium

Posted on

Seth Godin: How Long Is Your Run?

Cultural Intelligence

Seth Godin Home

How long is your long run?

The bank robber may have a long run of just thirty minutes. Stealing money today appears worth it because tomorrow is just too far away to consider.

There are organizations and nations that have been around for hundreds of years and expect to be around for another thousand. They have a long run a little longer than yours.

I think we can agree on what the short run is. The question worth asking your brand, your boss or your family is: what's the long run? Most of the time, we err on the side of short.

Posted on

Decentralized Web Standard by W3C

Advanced Cyber/IO, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Standards, Technologies
Sepp Hasslberger

When times are right, things do start to move…

ReadWriteWeb

This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

By Marshall Kirkpatrick / May 5, 2011

Imagine a web where our browsers connected directly to each other to do voice, video, media sharing and run applications, using P2P and real-time APIs, rather than going through centralized servers that controlled traffic and permissions. That's a potent idea and if implemented properly could future-proof a part of the web from authoritarian crack-downs, disruptions by disasters and more. It could also establish a permanent lawless zone of connected devices with no central place to stop anyone from doing anything in particular.

It just so happens that something like that may now be under development in the most official of venues. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced today the formation of a new Web Real-Time Communications Working Group to define client-side APIs to enable Real-Time Communications in Web browsers, without the need for server-side implementation. The Group is chaired by engineers from Google and Ericsson. It sounds like Opera Unite to me (see video below), but democratized across all browsers. It sounds like it could be a very big deal.

Posted on

David Brin on Plausibility & Paranoia

Analysis, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics
David Brin

Thursday, May 05, 2011

Seven Rules of Plausibility by Roy Latham

Rule 1. Don’t call the theory ridiculous

Rule 2. Don’t casually accept factual premises that are offered.

Rule 3. Consider the relevance of the expertise of a claimed expert

Rule 4. Consider Claims One-by-One

Rule 5. Keep a Running Tally of the Number of Conspirators

Rule 6. Acknowledge Valid Points

Rule 7. Ask for Direct Evidence of Conspiracy

Read full discussion of all seven rules….

See Also (by David Brin):

Conspiracies and Wishful Thinking (2010/12/06)

WHEN IS A CONSPIRACY THEORY NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORY? (2005)

Paranoia has many roots and levels

As one who nurses a few conspiracy theories of his own — but only ones that fit the Seven Secret Rules of Plausibility 😉 — I actually find most of the run-of-the-mill-kneejerk stories, concocted by modern loonies (not only on the far right, but also plenty on the far-left and even far-out) to be just plain dumb. They are nearly always based on several self-flattering premises:

Continue reading “David Brin on Plausibility & Paranoia”

Posted on

Definitions of Fear and Tyranny in Context

Cultural Intelligence, Definitions
DefDog Recommends....

“When even one American – who has done nothing wrong – is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril. ”  – Harry S. Truman

“Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one”  – Thomas Jefferson

“When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny.”  – Thomas Jefferson

“The only good is knowledge, the only evil is ignorance.” -Diogenes

See Also:

Joe Bageant Lives — His Light, Our Brains