As I was reading through the projects coming to our upcoming Contact Summit in NYC next month, I was inspired by a few people who are reimagining what a library could be.
Library Turns Hackerspace
Perhaps you’ve heard the term hackerspace, or something along a similar vein, like makerspace, makerlab, or fab lab. Wikipedia defines it as
Phi Beta Iota: Note the Weberian centralized Dewey system on the left, and the chaordic vivaciousness on the right. This is what digital freedom and cultural freedom make possible.
It's no longer about ‘need to know.' Our guiding principle is ‘responsibility to share.'
By James R. Clapper
It has been a decade since our nation suffered the greatest strategic surprise on American soil since the attack on Pearl Harbor. In the aftermath of September 11, as the country sought to understand how such a complex attack could go undetected, much attention was focused on the intelligence community. Pundits, scholars, commentators and others quickly labeled 9/11 an intelligence failure.
Phi Beta Iota: General Clapper means well, but his Op Ed is utterly disingenous and completely out of touch with reality. Below the line is a safety copy of his Op Ed with inserted commentary.
The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team’s (HOT) response to Haiti remains one of the most remarkable examples of what’s possible when volunteers, open source software and open data intersect. When the 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck on January 12th, 2010, the Google Map of downtown Port-au-Prince was simply too incomplete to be used for humanitarian response. Within days, however, several hundred volunteers from the OpenStreetMap (OSM) commu-nity used satellite imagery to trace roads, shelters, and other features to create the most detailed map of Haiti ever created.
Koko Signs: Secrecy–when it is pervasive–cannot be micro-managed. As governments decline in legitimacy, and personal technologies become more pervasive than the instruments of secrecy, a tipping point is reached. We're there.
A remarkable YouTube video shows how hard it is to maintain control in a wired world.
By David WiseLos Angeles Times, September 6, 2011
Maj. Gen. Jin Yinan of the People's Liberation Army, in what he apparently thought was an internal briefing, revealed half a dozen cases of Chinese officials who had spied for Britain, the United States and other countries. Somehow, the video of his sensational disclosures leaked out. Clips of his hours-long talk appeared on at least two Chinese websites, Youku.com and Tudou.com, but were quickly removed by government censors.
Phi Beta Iota: Colin Gray teaches us in Modern Strategy that time is the one thing that cannot be purchased nor replaced. The USA has blown a quarter century in its continuing corrupt quest for secrecy and its exploitation of secrecy and other information pathologies to further programs that are neither needed nor affordable. America, like China, is at a tipping point. The ability of the few to impose secrecy against the interests of the many is now done–expanding the Open Source revolution must be our highest priority, to include a year of paid retraining for every person now unemployed and every contractor about to become unemployed.
It looks increasingly likely that President Obama is going to cave into the oil interests promoting the pipeline to move oil mine in tar sands of Canada to the Port Arthur Free Trade Zone in Texas.
One of the prime selling points of this scheme, which has environmentalists all in uproar will no doubt be that the pipeline is needed for energy security. So what is going on? My good friend Pierre Sprey's answer may surprise you. He has graciously given me permission to distribute it.
Peak Oil or Peak Profits?
email from Pierre Sprey, 5 September 2005
A new Oil Change International report has injected a breath of fresh air into the endless stream of media BS about peak oil, declining US oil production, disastrous dependence on foreign oil, need for new offshore drilling, blah, blah , blah, blah…. The report's charts show that our domestic oil production has been rising markedly since 2008. The excess domestic oil and the new Keystone pipeline oil are unneeded for the domestic market and will go largely to exports to fatten Big Oil's bottom line.
The most interesting conclusions are:
“Gasoline demand is declining due to increasing vehicle efficiency and slow economic growth;
Meanwhile the surge in new shale oil production in North Dakota and Texas has led to the first rise in U.S. oil production since 1970 and is forecast to continue for some time;
As a result of stagnant demand and the rise in both domestic and Canadian oil production, there is a glut of oil in the U.S. market.
Refiners have therefore identified export markets as their primary hope for growth and maximum profits.
A hundred and fifty years ago, adults were incensed about child labor. Low-wage kids were taking jobs away from hard-working adults.
Sure, there was some moral outrage at seven-year olds losing fingers and being abused at work, but the economic rationale was paramount. Factory owners insisted that losing child workers would be catastrophic to their industries and fought hard to keep the kids at work–they said they couldn't afford to hire adults. It wasn't until 1918 that nationwide compulsory education was in place.
Part of the rationale to sell this major transformation to industrialists was that educated kids would actually become more compliant and productive workers. Our current system of teaching kids to sit in straight rows and obey instructions isn't a coincidence–it was an investment in our economic future. The plan: trade short-term child labor wages for longer-term productivity by giving kids a head start in doing what they're told.
Large-scale education was never about teaching kids or creating scholars. It was invented to churn out adults who worked well within the system.
Of course, it worked. Several generations of productive, fully employed workers followed. But now?
Phi Beta Iota: US education, like the rest of government-dominated programs, is totally broken. Apart from the 22% now unemployed, another 22% can expect to be unemployed when the security state collapses and secret intelligence, defense, and homeland security are cut back to a quarter of their current inflated and dysfunctional numbers. An intelligent president with integrity would not leave those people handing–needed is an emergency Public Education program that gives all of those people (44% of the working public) a one year sabattical with structured online and face to face re-training–a PAID year of education funded by the huge cost savings that an intelligent President with integrity can quickly achieve. Howard Rheingold is the gold standard in this arena. Every university across America should be gearing up to offer a massive community-focused 21st Century retraining program.
