Communities of Practice – Page 1200 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/04/142011/04/14

Next Net, Transitional Net, Autonomous Net

11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Autonomous Internet, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics

Transitional Internet

by jonl on April 13, 2011

I continue to be focused on the future of the Internet and aware of divergent paths. In the later 2000s, following a period of digital and media convergence and given broad adoption of evolving high speed (broadband) network connectivity, the Internet has become an environment for mixed media and marketing. The Internet is increasingly centralized as a platform that serves a global business engine. It’s a mashup of business to business services and business to consumer connections, a mashup of all the forms of audio, text, and video communication and media in a new, more social/participatory context: the faceless consumer now has an avatar, an email address, and a feedback loop.

The sense of the Internet as a decentralized free and open space has changed, but there are still many advocates and strong arguments for approaches that are bottom-up, network-centric, free as in freedom (and sometimes as in beer), open, collaborative, decentralized. It’s tempting to see top-down corporate approaches vs bottom-up “free culture” approaches as mutually exclusive, but I think they can and will coexist. Rather than make value judgements about the different approaches, I want to support education and thinking about ethics, something I should discuss later.

Right now I want to point to a collaboration forming around the work of Venessa Miemis, who’s been curating trends, models, and projects associated with the decentralized Internet model. Venessa and her colleagues (including myself) have been discussing how to build a decentralized network that is broadly and cheaply accessible and that is more of a cooperative, serving the public interest rather than a narrower set of economic interests.

I’ll be focusing on these sorts of projects here and in my talks on the future of the Internet. Meanwhile, here are pointers to a couple of Venessa’s posts that are good overviews for what I’m talking about. I appreciate her clarity and focus.

There’s also the work of Michel Bauwens and the P2P Foundation, which I’ve followed for several years. The P2P Wiki has relevant pages:

Phi Beta Iota: A great deal of the credit goes to Doug Rushkoff, the originator of ContactCon, for whom Venessa Miemis (also a contributing editor here at Phi Beta Iota) works. Using Doug Rushkoff's social capital, and Venessa Miemi's inspired scouting on emergence, they have quickly become a hub for innovation and information sharing about the needed Autonomous Internet.

Reference: Emergent Democracy

Reference: Internet Censorship Circumvention

Peter Thiel (PayPal) on Education Bubble

2011/04/142011/04/14

Peter Thiel (PayPal) on Education Bubble

04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, Academia, Corruption, IO Impotency, Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Standards, Waste (materials, food, etc)

JOURNAL: The Education Bubble

Peter Thiel (Paypal and other ventures) has been making some waves for his position that higher education in the US is the next bubble. In short, he's right. Given what we now have available in terms of tools, it should be possible to get an Ivy league education for $20 a month.

Instead we are getting a stagnant product that is so out of date that it doesn't deliver much social and economic value. Even worse: it's undergoing hyper-inflationary price increases.

. . . . . . .

The solution to this problem is to help create employment opportunities (like what we are doing with our open venture start-up) that don't use a degree as a gating mechanism. A solution that creates its own educational modules if needed (from scratch using modern tools and techniques). A solution that delivers something better than an Ivy league eduction and then backs it up with economic and social opportunities that exceed what you get in the global econonomic and social sprawl.

college bubble — Click on Image to Enlarge

Peter Thiel: We’re in a Bubble and It’s Not the Internet. It’s Higher Education.

Sarah Lacy Apr 10, 2011

TechCrunch

Image Source: Mark J. Perry (read article)

Fair warning: This article will piss off a lot of you.

I can say that with confidence because it’s about Peter Thiel. And Thiel – the PayPal co-founder, hedge fund manager and venture capitalist – not only has a special talent for making money, he has a special talent for making people furious.

. . . . . . .

Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is about security and insurance against the future. Both whisper a seductive promise into the ears of worried Americans: Do this and you will be safe. The excesses of both were always excused by a core national belief that no matter what happens in the world, these were the best investments you could make. Housing prices would always go up, and you will always make more money if you are college educated.

Like any good bubble, this belief– while rooted in truth– gets pushed to unhealthy levels.

. . . . . . .

But Thiel’s issues with education run even deeper. He thinks it’s fundamentally wrong for a society to pin people’s best hope for a better life on something that is by definition exclusionary.

. . . . . . .

Thiel’s solution to opening the minds of those who can’t easily go to Harvard? Poke a small but solid hole in this Ivy League bubble by convincing some of the most talented kids to stop out of school and try another path. The idea of the successful drop out has been well documented in technology entrepreneurship circles. But Thiel and Founders Fund managing partner Luke Nosek wanted to fund something less one-off, so they came up with the idea of the “20 Under 20″ program last September, announcing it just days later at San Francisco Disrupt. The idea was simple: Pick the best twenty kids he could find under 20 years of age and pay them $100,000 over two years to leave school and start a company instead.

Read entire article by Sarah Lacy….

Web Stack

Phi Beta Iota: Read the chapter “Paradigms of Failure” in ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (EIN, 2008) to understand that the depth and breadth of the integrity failure in the USA. “Credentialling” is a form of top-down sub-prime scam, selling a credential instead of an education. As Thiel suggests, time for change at the top is long over-due.

2011/04/132011/04/13

Liberation Technology Snap-Shot

02 Diplomacy, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Multinational, IO Technologies, Technologies

Liberation technology: dreams, politics, history

Armine Ishkanian, 5 April 2011

openDemocracy

The doctrinal commitment to new cyber and social technologies as a means of solving political problems needs to learn from the past and take a more realistic view, says Armine Ishkanian.

Read full article with many links.

From Google Group The Next Net:

I just finished a conference call on the minimal mandatory requirements for liberation technology for a specific area (there are at least another 50 that would need the same stuff–a generic capability–but in 50 other languages).

1. $169 cell phone to satellite communications converters, but structured to look like some other popular digital music device, along with a turnkey solar-powered Internet hotspot.

2. Open satellite channel over the area in question that can receive collect calls from anyone in the area of interest using an announced number and one of the devices.

3. Downloadable encryption for any cell phone on a use and delete basis from the satellite channel…like digital one time pads with no residue.

3. Satellite radio into the area of interest with real news relevant to that population including news of the diaspora and exile leadership.

4. Internet steganography.

I thought CIA, BBG, and JSOG were supposed to be able to do all that. Evidently not. I am being told that a fund-raising campaign is starting up to provide these capabilities to no fewer than three areas, possibly expanding to sixteen, all privately funded because the USG is not doing it.

– – – – – –

Here is a sample headline that sums up the current state of US Government attention to “liberation technology.”

Bureau of International Information Programs Coordinator Dawn L. McCall Travels to Los Angeles and San Francisco, California April 11 – April 15

Phi Beta Iota: Ms. McCall is a very accomplished Discovery Channel executive with remarkable achievements in one to many broadcasting. She has been in her current position since 27 July 2010 and does not appear to be headed for Assistant Secretary status anytime soon. The Undersecretary of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs is Ms. Judith A. McHale, formerly President and CEO of Discovery Communications, parent of the Discovery Channel.

2011/04/13

Creating a Healthy Society

Government, IO Multinational, Non-Governmental

Shaping the conditions to build a healthy society, a healthy nation consisting of healthy people who are motivated to look ahead..

To shape such conditions the international community should create a comprehensive approach.

It would be beneficial for the country, in this case South-Sudan (GoSS), if the UN / EU would deploy civil servants from crucial workplaces and from several levels of “our” own governmental management into South Sudan, to work as a coach for their fellow civil servants.

Continue reading “Creating a Healthy Society”

2011/04/122011/04/13

UN Secretary General and Ambassador Susan Rice Violate Public Intelligence–We Stand with Richard Falk

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, 9/11 research, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Government, Intelligence (government), IO Impotency, Law Enforcement, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Non-Governmental, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Waste (materials, food, etc)

Willful Ignorance

April 12th, 2011

By Paul Carline

thepeoplesvoice.org

Cards on the table. I’ve been a “truther” since early 2002 when I came across the first major challenge to the official 9/11 story in the shape of the wonderful “Hunt the Boeing” site created by French researcher Thierry Meyssan. Until then I’d accepted the standard “Left” version of the government account – that a group of daring Muslims acting on behalf of the victims of US foreign policy had struck back at the great tyrant. The photographic and other evidence presented by Meyssan demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that whatever it was that had caused the damage to the Pentagon, it certainly wasn’t a large Boeing jet. If the government’s story was a lie on that major point, then the whole story was brought into question. I knew at once that I had to find out as much as I could about the event which everyone was saying had “changed the world”.

. . . . . .

Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian Territories, hit the headlines just recently. He’d committed the cardinal sin of expressing doubts about the official story of 9/11 in a personal blog. The US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, rushed to condemn him and demanded he be sacked. UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, joined in, saying that Falk’s remarks were “an affront to the memory of the more than 3000 people who died in that tragic attack”. Someone needs to remind the Secretary-General of the affront which gullible acceptance and repetition of the official lie of 9/11 causes to the memory of the more than 3 million dead and mutilated Afghan, Iraqi and now Pakistani men, women and children sacrificed on the altar of neo-imperialism as a direct consequence of the phoney ‘war on terror’ – based on the lie of 9/11 and the other false-flag crimes perpetrated for and/or by agencies of western governments.

Read entire article….

SHORT URL This Post: http://tinyurl.com/PBI-911-Falk

Strong Comments and Multiple References Below the Line

Continue reading “UN Secretary General and Ambassador Susan Rice Violate Public Intelligence–We Stand with Richard Falk”

2011/04/122011/04/12

EFF Rates Digital Services on Privacy–ALL FAIL

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement

FROM Electronic Frontier Foundation: On Monday, April 11, 2011, we launched a petition to the largest Internet companies asking them to stand with their users and be transparent in their practices. Here's a chart showing how we think each of the companies is doing right now — a gold star indicates that the company is doing a stellar job, a half-star indicates they are taking steps in the right direction. This page will be updated as companies change their practices in response to public demand.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Phi Beta Iota: Visit the EFF page to view a rather extraordinary chart that shows NONE of the major digital service providers to be anywhere near an acceptable standard of privacy before a government that has used the false war on terrorism as an excuse to both grow in unwarranted size and corporate vapor ware services, and to set aside centuries of legal protections rooted in the Constitution. We recommend regular visits to the EFF page to see how, if at all, these services of common concern respond to public interest. This could be a dry run for Electoral Reform!

2011/04/122011/04/12

New Army Chief of Staff: Out of Touch? NEW: Blistering Bullshit Flag Waved from Afghanistan

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Military, Officers Call, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Standards, Tools

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius Recommends

For information.

Army COS New — Click on Image to Enlarge

Source of Letter

From Afghanistan for ACOS: I have not seen so much BS in a while. The 10th Mountain deployed to Afghanistan without the proper equipment to operate in the mountains. They lacked adequate cold weather gear and our lift capability does not fly well here either. With the exception of 40 year old Chinooks, most can't climb over the lofty peaks that permeate this country.

I attended a farewell for a friend of mine, there were 33 people there, 11 of them in the rank of 06, two in the rank of 08. What these guys did everyday is beyond me, but little work gets done in the palace of King David I can assure you. There are Green Berets out in villages that depend on their families to help them with the Hearts and Minds that Petraeus so often says he is trying to win, but doesn't support. That type of warfare does little to increase the coffers of the MICC….

Chuck Spinney–we read all your stuff and his–has it right: this guy lives in a palace, Versailles on the Potomac, and is totally out of touch with reality.

Phi Beta Iota: It is not at all clear that the new Army Chief of Staff (ACOS) understands that the standard issue weapon is worthless beyond 300 meters, or that his force in combat (4% of the total force) takes 80% of the casualties while receiving 1% of the total military budget. We know what our troops are fighting for–what is this guy fighting for on behalf of his troops?

Continue reading “New Army Chief of Staff: Out of Touch? NEW: Blistering Bullshit Flag Waved from Afghanistan”