Category: Communities of Practice

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Burning Man Fires Up North Africa…

07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Officers Call, Reform

Tunisia: ‘I have lost my son, but I am proud of what he did'

The mother of the street vendor who set himself on fire, and triggered protests across North Africa, talks to Kim Sengupta

The street vendor who set himself alight, sparking an uprising which swept away 23 years of dictatorship in Tunisia and triggered protests across North Africa, had been beaten down by years of poverty and oppression by the authorities, his family told The Independent last night.

Mohamed Bouazizi – whose desperate act, copied in countries including Algeria and Egypt, has become a symbol of injustice and oppression – had lost his land, his living and had been humiliated by local officials.

Read rest of article….

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DARPA as Poster Child for Out of Control Budget

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Corruption, Government, Military, Officers Call, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Chuck Spinney Sounds Off...

From the inventors of McNamara's electronic line (which failed spectacularly in Vietnam) comes the Electronic Coup/Revolution Predictor (EC/RP)!  This is explained below in the attached Wired report.

The EC/RP is merely the latest effort in DARPA's continuing campaign to overthrow Boyd's Law* (i.e., Machines don't fight war wars, people do, and they use their minds) by taking the mind out of the military's Observation – Orientation – Decision – Action (OODA)  loop, and hardwiring what little is left of it with a automated predict-decide-act computer algorithm — the goal, apparently, being to make stupid decisions faster.

This particular DARPA boondoggle is bizarre even by DARPA's tolerant standards for lunacy.  That is because the EC/RP is aimed predicting discontinuities in order to remove uncertainty from the future.

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Who’s Who in Collective Intelligence: Michel Bauwens

Advanced Cyber/IO, Alpha A-D, Articles & Chapters, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Gift Intelligence, Gift Intelligence, Mobile, Open Government, Standards, Tools
Michel Bauwens

Michel Bauwens (born 21 March 1958) is a Belgian Peer-to-Peer theorist and an active writer, researcher and conference speaker on the subject of technology, culture and business innovation.

Bauwens is founder of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives and works in collaboration with a global group of researchers in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property.

With Frank Theys, Bauwens is the co-creator of a 3 hour documentary TechnoCalyps, an examination of the ‘metaphysics of technology'. He taught and, with Salvino Salvaggio, co-edited a two-volume French language anthologies on the Anthropology of Digital Society.

Bauwens is the author of a number of on-line essays, including the seminal thesis Peer to Peer and Human Evolution, and The Political Economy of Peer Production. He was also editor of the email Pluralities-Integration newsletter (until 2007, when it ceased production).

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=Douglas+Johnson+faith+religion
Structured Web Hits

Personal Biography at P2P Foundation

P2P in a Nutshell [See especially The State of It All]

P2P Theory Core Works

Peer Governance as a third mode of governance

Cognitive Capitalism

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Chuck Spinny on George Will: Pusillanimous Mush

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Media, Military
Chuck Spinney Sounds Off...

In a 13 February 2011 op-ed column [also attached below], George Will, a self-proclaimed conservative, who by definition must favor adherence to the Accountability and Appropriations Clauses of the Constitution, not to mention the rule of law (for example, the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990), announced that he has discovered the Pentagon's bookkeeping shambles!  He ends his op-ed by saying … “To govern is to choose, always on the basis of imperfect information. If, however, the strong language of [Congressman Randy] Forbes and [Senator Tom] Coburn is apposite, Congress cannot make adequately informed choices about the uniquely important matters that come to McKeon's committee. This fact will fuel the fires of controversy that will rage within the ranks of Republicans as they come to terms with the fact that current defense spending cannot be defended until it is understood.”

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OpenBTS GSM Simplified — Freeing Humanity

Advanced Cyber/IO, Autonomous Internet, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Hacking, Mobile, Real Time, Tools
OpenBTS at BurningMan

OpenBTS is an open-source Unix application that uses the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) to present a GSM air interface (“Um”) to standard GSM handset and uses the Asterisk® software PBX to connect calls. The combination of the ubiquitous GSM air interface with VoIP backhaul could form the basis of a new type of cellular network that could be deployed and operated at substantially lower cost than existing technologies in greenfields in the developing world.

In plain language, we are working on a new kind of cellular network that can be installed and operated at about 1/10 the cost of current technologies, but that will still be compatible with most of the handsets that are already in the market. This technology can also be used in private network applications (wireless PBX, rapid deployment, etc.) at much lower cost and complexity than conventional cellular.

OpenBTS Official Photo

Project News (Last Updated 17 January 2011)

Kestrel Signal Processing OpenBTS Page with Links

OpenBTS YouTube Short Videos (Just Over 30)

Phi Beta Iota: This is as close to “world-changing” as it gets.  Neither Microsoft nor the cellular providers–nor the governments whose people stand to gain the most (but whose corrupt politicians prefer the status quo)–want to surf this wave, they would rather fight it.  If there were ONE social networking initiative that is guaranteed to change the world for the better, this is the one.  In our always humble opinion.

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Disagree, but Engage–Free and Fair Elections in USA?

Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence

Disagree, but engage: That's civility

On issues ranging from abortion to guns, it is possible for adversaries to find common ground

February 10, 2011|By Robert Fersh and Andrew L. Yarrow

EXTRACT:  These processes are most successful when participants have strong, informed opinions and can make a difference if they reach agreement. This was the case in the U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project, where 34 diverse American leaders joined in an influential consensus report in 2008 to show a way forward for the United States in its relations with Muslim majority countries. The group included a former Clinton administration secretary of state, former Republican members of Congress, high-ranking former officials of the George W. Bush administration, 11 Muslim-American leaders, a former director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, clergy of differing faiths, and others. Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota, said: “This report provides clear-headed ideas and analysis that the American public and bipartisan leaders can get behind in working to improve U.S.-Muslim relations. The process by which the group reached consensus is a good model for dialogue for the tough issues our country faces.”

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