Yoda: Patricia Martin on the Future of Libraries in the Digital Era

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society
Got Crowd? BE the Force!

The Future of Libraries in a Digital Culture

Patricia Martin

Huffington Post, 11 October 2012

EXTRACTS:

Until recently, public libraries had little reason to innovate. Then Google arrived. More disruptive technologies followed, causing an identity crisis for librarians. Now the profession is re-thinking its purpose — a quest that lured a gathering of 350 eager librarians to Telluride, Colorado recently for the R-Squared (Risk and Reward) Conference.

. . . . . . . .

Americans need help navigating a way forward — whether it's to find work or explore a new career path. It's no wonder people are rediscovering their local libraries as a place to begin. That's why libraries need to innovate. Otherwise, they risk becoming an object of nostalgia — the emotional step right before irrelevance. Deadly. Research shows that when taxpayers stop expecting public institutions to transform, they invite entrenchment. Consider the battle to reform public education in America. The same hollowing-out could happen to America's public libraries at a time when we need them most.

There's hope. It's heartening to think that there are more public libraries than McDonald's restaurants in America.

Imagine the impact of their re-animation.

Read full article.

Berto Jongman: Strategic IO – Earth’s Magnetic Field 150 Year Flip

Advanced Cyber/IO
Berto Jongman

The North Pole is moving towards Siberia! Imagine our compasses starting pointing south someday. This is not science fiction. A total reversal of Earth's Magnetic Fields actually happened over 740 thousand years ago. The Earth's Magnetic Field is weakening. Magnetic field strength is decreasing rapidly in certain areas of South America and South Atlantic; up to 12% in 30 years. The decay of Earth Magnetic Field will have serous effect on satellites in space and trains and electrical grids on the ground.

Phi Beta Iota:  As with the post-2012 flooding that has captured the informed public's interest, this is a 150 year evolution, not an imminent threat.  It is however, relevant, and least costly to address if everyone pays attention now.

NIGHTWATCH: A Brief History of Indicators Analysis

Advanced Cyber/IO

Special Comment: A Brief History of Indicators Analysis

Compilation, examination and analysis of indicators of a nation's war preparations, collectively, are the oldest structured analytical discipline in continuous use by elements of the intelligence agencies since 1947. The discipline began in World War II and British defense intelligence maintained it ever since.

After World War II

In the US, the files of the National Warning Staff contained a thin folder that contained a letter from 1949 from British intelligence to the new CIA, asking for a review of an attached “checklist” of the actions the Soviets would take to prepare to invade West Berlin. The file did not contain the US response, but it was sent to J.J. Hitchcock, the chairman of the Ad Hoc Warning Committee in 1949 and later the first Director of the National Indications Center.

This exchange was the precursor to NATO's Soviet/Warsaw Pact Indicators List, and a few others it spawned. The US had no comparable list but had engaged in an intelligence exchange on warning of war indicators with the British before it had an organized federation of intelligence agencies. Crises came that quick after World War II.

The next benchmark for indicators in the files of the Warning Staff was a purple ink mimeograph copy of the Far East Army G2 indicator list for a Chinese invasion of Korea. It was published in the summer  of 1950 and included such prescient indicators as an order from the authorities in Beijing that all contract shipments through Hong Kong must be completed before the end of September 1950, prior to the date of the first Chinese offensive on 5 October.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: A Brief History of Indicators Analysis”

Yoda: US Intelligence Turns to Crowd-Sourcing (Only in English, Only Online)

Advanced Cyber/IO, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Government
Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Intelligence agencies turn to crowdsourcing

Sharon Weinberger

BBC 10 October 2012

EXTRACTS:

Research firm Applied Research Associates, has just launched a website that invites the public—meaning anyone, anywhere—to sign up and try their hand at intelligence forecasting. The website is part of an effort, sponsored by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (Iarpa), to understand the potential benefits of so-called crowdsourcing for predicting future events. Crowdsourcing aims to use the “wisdom of crowds” and was popularised by projects like Wikipedia.

. . . . . . . .

There’s good reason for Iarpa’s interest in finding new ways to collect useful information: the intelligence community has often been blasted for its failure to forecast critical world events, from the fall of the Soviet Union to the Arab Spring that swept across North Africa and the Middle East.  It was also heavily criticized for its National Intelligence Estimate in 2002, which supported claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Those failures raised larger questions about how the intelligence agencies come up with forecasts, which is usually a deliberative process involving a large number of analysts.  The Iarpa project, known officially as Aggregative Contingent Estimation, is looking at whether crowdsourcing can result in more accurate forecasts about future events than those traditional forms of intelligence estimation.

Continue reading “Yoda: US Intelligence Turns to Crowd-Sourcing (Only in English, Only Online)”

Tom Atlee: Public Wisdom Practical Links

11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Links (Global Security)
Tom Atlee

21st Century Town Meetings

Appreciative Inquiry

Argument Mapping

Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD)

bCisiveOnline

Canada Maclean experiment

charrette

choice-creating

citizen consensus councils (CCCs)

citizen deliberative councils (CDCs)

citizen councilor forums

citizen panels [By Popular Demand]

citizen reflective councils

 

Amazon Page

Citizens’ Assembly

citizens juries

civic journalism

Community-Based Watershed Management Councils

community quality of life indicators

Commons Cafés

Community Forums Network

Community vision programs

Consensus Conferences aka Danish Technical Panels

Consensus Councils

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Public Wisdom Practical Links”

Tom Atlee: Public Wisdom Suggested Reading

11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Book Lists, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government
Tom Atlee

* Titles marked with an asterisk are particularly important to this topic.

Baldwin, Christina, Calling the Circle: The First and Future Culture (Bantam, 1998)

Briggs, John and F. David Peat, Seven Life Lessons of Chaos: Spiritual Wisdom from the Science of Change (Harper Perennial, 2000)

Briskin, Alan, Sheryl Erickson, Tom Callanan, and John Ott, The Power of Collective Wisdom: And the Trap of Collective Folly (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2009)

*Brown, Juanita with David Isaacs and The World Cafe, The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2005)

*Callenbach, Ernest, and Michael Phillips, A Citizen Legislature (Bookpeople, 1985)

Amazon Page

Capra, Fritjof, The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems (Anchor, 1997)

*Chickering, A. Lawrence and James S. Turner, Voice of the People: The Transpartisan Imperative in American Life (Da Vinci Press, 2008)

*Crosby, Ned, Healthy Democracy: Bringing Trustworthy Information to the Voters of America (Beaver's Pond Press, 2003)

Dahl, Robert A., Democracy and Its Critics (Yale University Press, 1991)

Dowd, Michael, Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World (Plume, 2009)

Ellinor, Linda and Glenna Gerard, Dialogue: Rediscover the Transforming Power of Conversation (Wiley, 1998)

*Fisher, Roger, William L. Ury, and Bruce Patton, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (Penguin Books, 2011)

*Fishkin, James S.,  When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation (Oxford University Press, 2011)

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Public Wisdom Suggested Reading”

noble gold