Announcing a new Rheingold U course: Toward a New Literacy of Cooperation
For the past ten years, I've worked with Institute for the Future to track the emergence of a new story about how humans get things done together. The old story of survival of the fittest, competition, rational self-interest is changing as new knowledge comes to light about cooperative arrangements and complex interdependencies in cells, ecosystems, economies, and humans. In 2005, I delivered a TED talk about this subject; the video has been viewed more than 182,000 times. In the same year, I co-taught a seminar at Stanford with Andrea Saveri of Institute for the Future, “Toward a Literacy of Cooperation.” This six week Rheingold U course builds on the texts, videos, and other materials developed over the past ten years. Under my direction, co-learners will inquire, collaborate, discuss, co-construct knowledge about the building blocks and conceptual frames of a new literacy of cooperation. The course will run September 30 – November 11
Members of the the Standby Volunteer Task Force (SBTF) Satellite Team are currently tagging the location of hundreds of Syrian tanks and other heavy mili-tary equipment on the Tomnod micro-tasking platform using very recent high-resolution satellite imagery provided by Digital Globe.
The White House reiterated its support for open government in a new report issued Friday afternoon. But curiously, the 33-page document on “The Obama Administration's Commitment to Open Government” (pdf) downplays or overlooks many of the Administration's principal achievements in reducing inappropriate secrecy. At the same time, it fails to acknowledge the major defects of the openness program to date. And so it presents a muddled picture of the state of open government, while providing a poor guide to future policy.
“At the President's direction, federal agencies have promoted greater transparency, participation, and collaboration through a number of major initiatives,” the new report says. “The results of those efforts are measurable, and they are substantial. Agencies have disclosed more information in response to FOIA requests; developed and begun to implement comprehensive Open Government plans; made thousands of government data sets publically available; promoted partnerships and leveraged private innovation to improve citizens' lives; increased federal spending transparency; and declassified information and limited the proliferation of classified information.”
Most of that is true, in varying degrees. (However, there is no evidence that the proliferation of classified information has in fact been limited; the opposite is the case.)
This statement is ours, and for anyone who will get behind it. Representing ourselves, we bring this call for revolution.
We want freedom for all, without regards for identity, because we are all people, and because no other reason should be needed. However, this freedom has been largely taken from the people, and slowly made to trickle down, whenever we get angry.
Money, it has been said, has taken over politics. In truth, we say, money has always been part of the capitalist political system. A system based on the existence of have and have nots, where inequality is inherent to the system, will inevitably lead to a situation where the haves find a way to rule, whether by the sword or by the dollar.
We agree that we need to see election reform. However, the election reform proposed ignores the causes which allowed such a system to happen. Some will readily blame the federal reserve, but the political system has been beholden to political machinations of the wealthy well before its founding.
We need to address the core facts: these corporations, even if they were unable to compete in the electoral arena, would still remain control of society. They would retain economic control, which would allow them to retain political control. Term limits would, again, not solve this, as many in the political class already leave politics to find themselves as part of the corporate elites.
We need to retake the freedom that has been stolen from the people, altogether.
If you agree that freedom is the right to communicate, to live, to be, to go, to love, to do what you will without the impositions of others, then you might be one of us.
If you agree that a person is entitled to the sweat of their brows, that being talented at management should not entitle others to act like overseers and overlords, that all workers should have the right to engage in decisions, democratically, then you might be one of us.
If you agree that freedom for some is not the same as freedom for all, and that freedom for all is the only true freedom, then you might be one of us.
If you agree that power is not right, that life trumps property, then you might be one of us.
If you agree that state and corporation are merely two sides of the same oppressive power structure, if you realize how media distorts things to preserve it, how it pits the people against the people to remain in power, then you might be one of us.
And so we call on people to act
We call for protests to remain active in the cities. Those already there, to grow, to organize, to raise consciousnesses, for those cities where there are no protests, for protests to organize and disrupt the system.
We call for workers to not only strike, but seize their workplaces collectively, and to organize them democratically. We call for students and teachers to act together, to teach democracy, not merely the teachers to the students, but the students to the teachers. To seize the classrooms and free minds together.
We call for the unemployed to volunteer, to learn, to teach, to use what skills they have to support themselves as part of the revolting people as a community.
We call for the organization of people's assemblies in every city, every public square, every township.
We call for the seizure and use of abandoned buildings, of abandoned land, of every property seized and abandoned by speculators, for the people, for every group that will organize them.
We call for a revolution of the mind as well as the body politic.
Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson isn’t going to be the next president of the United States … but the fact that he’s polling in the low single digits among the 2012 GOP field doesn’t mean his candidacy should be ignored.
That’s exactly what’s happening, though … despite the fact that Johnson is out-performing several of his better-known rivals.
In a CNN/ORC poll released in late August, Johnson out-polled former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman – and was tied with former Godfathers’ Pizza CEO Herman Cain. Nonetheless, Johnson was not allowed to participate in a CNN debate held earlier this week that featured … you guessed it … Santorum, Huntsman and Cain.
Adding insult to injury, the most recent CNN/ORC survey – released earlier this week – didn’t even list Johnson’s name among the candidates being polled.
Phi Beta Iota: We disagree with the view that Gary Johnson cannot be President. Right now he is the only Republican who is a) telling the truth and nothing but the truth; b) open to legalizing marijuana, the #1 demand of the young left; c) electable. Keep an eye on New Hampshire. We are.
And here are a film and a book that expand and deepen the view that economics can and should be about generating good lives in a good society in a good world – in ways that speak to the cultures, realities and daily lives that most of us live in.
The film is the upcoming movie “Money and Life” – see especially the “extended trailer”, clip #2 at the bottom of the page
Phi Beta Iota: Tom Atlee and the Co-Intelligence Institute are the ONLY cause we endorse on a recurring basis. Tom Atlee himself is a national asset of the most precious sort–the people, the knowledge, and the spirit that are embodied in the Co-Intelligence Institute represent the ideals of America–and of the great religions and philosophies–in active practice.
SAN MATEO, Calif. — Chad Hurley and Steve Chen have some experience with turning a small Web site into Internet gold. In 2006 they sold their scrappy start-up YouTube to Google for $1.65 billion.
More recently they picked an unlikely candidate to be their next Web sensation: a Yahoo castoff.
The men are trying to inject new life into Delicious, a social bookmarking service that, in its time, was popular among the technorati, but failed to catch on with a broader audience.
. . . . . . .
“Google is still the utility for quickly finding things, like the capital of Texas,” Mr. Chen said. “But when people aren’t doing search for a simple question, we want to capture the results of that idea, that browsing, and showcase the results for the next guy.”
