Ethics – Page 274 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/06/25

Van Jones Ascendant: Rebuild the Dream

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Methods & Process, Policies, Strategy, Waste (materials, food, etc)

VAN JONES:

We are not broke.

Taxing the super-rich will not kill the economy.

Most patriotic thing we can do is NOT taking down the US Government.

All three of those are big lies.

Let's rebuild the dream.

In the coming weeks, people all across the country will come together for American Dream house meetings. Let's talk about what a new American Dream looks like and commit to stand together to make it happen.

Find an American Dream house meeting near you. We want YOU to be part of this movement, from the very beginning.

Rebuild the Dream

2011/06/24

Digital Currency for Environmental Sustainability

03 Economy, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Gift Intelligence, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth

Ven: A Digital Currency Designed for Environmental Sustainability

Hub Culture is a global collaboration network with over 25,000+ members distributed across 110 countries. Their stated mission to expand collective consciousness is driven by the blend of online workspaces for knowledge sharing with offline Pavilions for meeting and connecting – all powered by their digital currency, Ven. Below is an interview with Hub Culture’s Founding Director, Stan Stalnaker.

What compelled you to create Ven?

For us it was a matter of practicality – with a global, diverse community, we found that no single currency could offer a single pricing structure for global inventory in Hub Culture. Our members needed a global wallet – as simple to use in Rio as Shanghai. As a social network, we thought linking this system to the social profile of our users would help them share and create value. We needed a simple, transparent way for our members to exchange value and favors, and the answer was Ven. It has been a learning experience for us. The currency has evolved and grown since its debut in the summer of 2007, and we have discovered ways to make it more useful for our members and the planet at large.

You’ve said Ven can be thought of as ‘green money’? Why?

Today Ven is the only digital currency to be priced from a basket of currencies, commodities and carbon futures. These components give the Ven advantages of other currencies: the basket encourages price stability on a forward basis, and the link to commodities grounds value in hard assets. The introduction of carbon to the basket is helping us think about how money can serve better social purposes – in this case to support and stimulate demand for carbon credits and social impact development, driving offsets for every transaction used with Ven. This is how the idea of ‘green money’ developed with Ven – because its carbon linkages are able to play a role in this area. I really like the idea that Ven is green, social and efficient, with a mission to improve the lives of its users and the communities that use it.

Read full interview….

2011/06/242011/06/24

Changing the World Takes All Kinds…

Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics

Dear friends:

What is the relationship between transforming ourselves and transforming the world?

In my previous essay, I described seven forms of leverage for deep transformation. When I wrote it, I was thinking of social transformation. The seven forms of leverage, in increasing potency, were:

1. Ameliorate the pain
2. Slow the damage.
3. Create alternatives.
4. Catalyze connections.
5. Understand the big picture.
6. Change the story.
7. Transform the systems.

Hearing this list, a close colleague was surprised that I did not include personal transformation. His view comes close to two related views held by many transformational agents: (1) Social change cannot be adequate without serious efforts by change agents to transform themselves and (2) transformation of individual consciousness is a (if not the) primary driver of systemic transformation.

I agree that both these dynamics are important and helpful, but I consider neither essential for social transformation. Nor do I see them as distinct forms of transformational leverage.

Continue reading “Changing the World Takes All Kinds…”

2011/06/23

Jon Lebkowsky: The Tree of Life

11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics

The Tree of Life may be the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (or not); in his film called “The Tree of Life,” Terence Malick plays with the universals – grace and nature parallel good and evil. Nature is will, ego; grace is nurturing. The film’s narrative plays out in Waco, Texas and in the vast cosmos, infinite space and time, surrounding it; it places one very human story in a vast transhuman context. In one primeval scene, one dinosaur, a predator, chooses not to kill and consume another… this establishes grace as something that precedes the human; I think the point is that nature and grace always coexisted, and always will, and grace seeps into nature. “Good” and “evil” are complex and intertwingled.

I thought the film was magnificent; in it I saw scenes familiar from my own life growing up in a Texas town in the 50s and 60s, though I wasn’t in that family, and I was far more innocent. And Malick’s family has no television set in the living room… imagine what a difference that would make.

The vision of the “tree of life” represents a sense that all life on earth is related… and there’s a tree of life web project that shows that connectedness. The planet is teeming with life, but all species are endangered by the actions and operations of one – is this nature acting without grace? Last night Oliver Markley spoke to the Central Texas World Future Society on the subject of risk and resilience – is civilization at a tipping point toward collapse?

Continue reading “Jon Lebkowsky: The Tree of Life”

2011/06/232011/06/23

Event: 27 June NYC Anti-War Anti-Government March

Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, IO Deeds of War, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Threats

No to the US/NATO War on Libya!

Stop Funding War – Start Funding Jobs & People’s Needs!

June 27 is the end date for NATO’s 90 day no-fly zone in Libya.

But NATO has extended it and expanded it: 10,000 bombing sorties attacking and killing civilians and destroying a country.

The destruction hits here at home when the bombs drop overseas.

No to $trillions for war, & destruction of jobs & services!

Join the United National Antiwar Committee at an:

Emergency Protest
Monday, June 27 4:30 to 6pm
From City Hall (Broadway & Park Place) to Wall Street & Back.

Continue reading “Event: 27 June NYC Anti-War Anti-Government March”

2011/06/222011/06/22

Venessa Miemis: People-Powered Markets– 60 Resources

03 Economy, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Gift Intelligence

People-Powered Markets — 60 Resources

There is a growing movement towards peer-to-peer value exchange and production, prompted by a variety of things, like economic conditions, shifting cultural values, exploration into collective intelligence, and further enabled by social technologies.

I've been tracking the online marketplaces that have been cropping up for sharing, swapping, gifting and renting, as well as sites that give people different kinds of opportunity to share skills and knowledge, innovate, and work collaboratively both on and offline. Below are a few sites I've come across, please add any I've missed.

Below the line: Sharing Cars, Rides, Bikes, Space, Land; Gifting, P2P Rentals; Swap Trading, Goods and Money Sharing/Borrowing/Lending; Co-Working, Co-Production, Distributed Work, Skill Sharing, Barter Networks, Idea/Innovation Marketplace.

Continue reading “Venessa Miemis: People-Powered Markets– 60 Resources”

2011/06/212011/06/21

Social Media Information Forensics

Advanced Cyber/IO, Ethics

How to Verifying Social Media Content: Some Tips and Tricks on Information Forensics

Patrick Meier | June 21, 2011 at 8:36 am |

I get this question all the time: “How do you verify social media data?” This question drives many of the conversations on crowdsourcing and crisis mapping these days. It's high time that we start compiling our tips and tricks into an online how-to-guide so that we don't have to start from square one every time the question comes up. We need to build and accumulate our shared knowledge in information forensics. So here is the Google Doc version of this blog post, please feel free to add your best practices and ask others to contribute. Feel free to also add links to other studies on verifying social media content.

If every source we monitored in the social media space was known and trusted, then the need for verification would not be as pronounced. In other words, it is the plethora and virtual anonymity of sources that makes us skeptical of the content they deliver. The process of verifying social media data thus requires a two-step process: the authentication of the source as reliable and the triangulation of the content as valid. If we can authenticate the source and find it trustworthy, this may be sufficient to trust the content and mark is a verified depending on context. If source authentication is difficult to ascertain, then we need to triangulate the content itself.

Continue reading “Social Media Information Forensics”