Reference: The Web as Epoch B Leadership

Advanced Cyber/IO, Autonomous Internet, Blog Wisdom
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Thursday, January 6, 2011

The Web Is a Customer Service Medium

By Paul Ford

I look forward to your feedback.

The Fundamental Question of the Web

One can spend a lot of time defining a medium in terms of how it looks, what it transmits, wavelengths used, typographic choices made, bandwidth available. I like to think about media in terms of questions answered.

. . . . . . .

But the web is not just some kind of magic all-absorbing meta-medium. It's its own thing. And like other media it has a question that it answers better than any other. That question is:

Why wasn't I consulted?

Why Wasn't I Consulted?

“Why wasn't I consulted,” which I abbreviate as WWIC, is the fundamental question of the web. It is the rule from which other rules are derived. Humans have a fundamental need to be consulted, engaged, to exercise their knowledge (and thus power), and no other medium that came before has been able to tap into that as effectively.

I first wrote about this in 2007, after 18 months of isolating and frustrating work on a website:

Brace yourself for the initial angry wave of criticism: How dare you, I hate it, it's ugly, you're stupid. The Internet runs on knee-jerk reactions. People will test your work against their pet theories: It is not free, and thus has no value; it lacks community features; I can't believe you don't use dotcaps, lampsheets, or pixel scrims; it is not written in Rusp or Erskell; my cat is displeased. The ultimate question lurks beneath these curses: why wasn't I consulted?

Read this long and very provocative–illuminating–article–relevant to all eight tribes.

Tip of the hat to Peter Morville, brilliant guru for “ambient findability,” at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: This is Epoch B leadership emergent.  Smart phones are stupid–they are walled gardens.  The Industrial Era “owners” including Microsoft are having real difficulty understanding that the information commons is now outside the wall, and cannot be owned or controlled, only shared and made sense-of.  The cloud is stupid as well–until someone “gets” the concept of call centers empowering the poor free, one cell call at a time, while harvesting the questions–Hackers in Silicon Valley understood this in 1994, but Silicon Valley–notably Oracle and Microsoft–are still focused on walled gardens.  5 billion poor, four times the annual economy of the one billion rich–really does not seem that complikcated, but evidently it is.

See Also:

Graphic: One Vision for the Future of Microsoft

Reference: Collaborative Technologies

Reference: Transparency Killer App Plus “Open Everything” RECAP (Back to 01/2007)

Reference: Cutting the Defense Budget + RECAP

10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Budgets & Funding, Military, Officers Call, Strategy, Threats, White Papers
Full Report Online

Phi Beta Iota: The author, Michael O'Hanlon, remains one of our most respected commentators on defense, and his suggestions within this document are entirely reasonable.  However, he does not go far enough.  A 10% reduction of a military-industrial complex budget that has nearly tripled in 30 years is not serious, nor is there innovation in this document.  The military-industrial complex must be reduced by 40% if not 50%: one third direct cuts; one third reallocation to Program 150 (diplomacy & development); and one third to thinkers and actual shooters–Cyber and Advanced Information Operations, Civil Affairs, Multinational Decision Support Centres, and long over-due investment in tactical intelligence, surveillance, & reconnaissance that is Of, By, and For the Strategic Sergeant, NOT Of, By, and For Lockheed, Harris, or the U.S. Air Force.

See Also:

2001 Threats, Strategy, and Force Structure: An Alternative Paradigm for National Security

2008 U.S. Naval Power in the 21st Century

2009 Perhaps We Should Have Shouted: A Twenty-Year Restrospective

Continue reading “Reference: Cutting the Defense Budget + RECAP”

NIGHTWATCH Extract: Trusted Bodyguard Executes Governor in Pakistan for Being a Blasphemer–Observations on Meaning for Church & State

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 04 Education, 06 Family, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, History, InfoOps (IO), Key Players, Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Peace Intelligence, Reform, Strategy

Pakistan: An elite police commando from the provincial police force who was assigned as a bodyguard for the governor of Punjab Province murdered the governor today in Islamabad. The commando dropped his weapon and surrendered to the police, bragging that he was proud he killed a blasphemer. With that, Pakistan's political crisis deepened.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH Extract: Trusted Bodyguard Executes Governor in Pakistan for Being a Blasphemer–Observations on Meaning for Church & State”

Journal: Afghanistan as a Failure of Imagination

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Corruption, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Military, Officers Call, Policy, Reform, Strategy, Threats
Who, Me?

Flawed projects prove costly for Afghanistan, U.S.

Contractor leaves Afghan police stations half-complete

Phi Beta Iota: Our political, policy, and military leaders simply do not know what they do not know.  Assuming–desiring–that they have the best of intentions–the reality is that they are not receiving the intelligence (decision-support) that they require to make intelligent decisions.  In both Iraq and Afghanistan, because there was political will, trillions have been wasted on “security” instead of sustenance.  Haiti, because there were no political will, was a microcosm–20,000 troops with a huge logistics tail when what was really needed were CAB 21 Peace Jumpers able to call in a Reverse TPFID….  Advanced Cyber/IO starts with imagination & intelligence.

Journal: American Decline in Zero-Sum World?

Advanced Cyber/IO, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), International Aid, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Key Players, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Policies, Reform, Strategy, Threats
DefDog Recommends...

“We've Heard All This About American Decline Before.”

This time it's different. It's certainly true that America has been through cycles of declinism in the past. Campaigning for the presidency in 1960, John F. Kennedy complained, “American strength relative to that of the Soviet Union has been slipping, and communism has been advancing steadily in every area of the world.” Ezra Vogel's Japan as Number One was published in 1979, heralding a decade of steadily rising paranoia about Japanese manufacturing techniques and trade policies.

In the end, of course, the Soviet and Japanese threats to American supremacy proved chimerical. So Americans can be forgiven if they greet talk of a new challenge from China as just another case of the boy who cried wolf. But a frequently overlooked fact about that fable is that the boy was eventually proved right. The wolf did arrive — and China is the wolf.

Read full article….

Gideon Rachman is chief foreign-affairs commentator for the Financial Times and author of Zero-Sum Future: American Power in an Age of Anxiety.

Phi Beta Iota: The problem with the “status quo” actors and thinkers–however good their intentions–is that they simply do not know what they do not know.  The world can indeed be zero-sum.  It can also be non-zero sum, a case made by Robert Wright and summarized in Review: Nonzero–The Logic of Human Destiny.  We know how to do this and want to do this.  Those in power do not know how to do this and do not want to do this.  Therein lies the challenge–all it takes is ONE leader–Cynthia McKinney comes to mind–willing to stand up, demand Electoral Reform (1 Page, 9 Points), and the rest will be history–a very good history of the Second American Republic, how it came to its senses, and created a prosperous world at peace through intelligence as design.  Now THAT is Advanced Cyber/IO!

See Also:

Graphic: Intelligence Maturity Scale

Review: Evolutionary Activism by Tom Atlee

Review: Ideas and Integrities–A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure

Preconditions of Revolution in the USA Today

Reference: Electoral Reform (Huffington Post Version)

Reference: Electoral Reform–1 Page 9 Points 2.2 (Document Only)

Journal: Eradicating Poverty One Micro-Job at a Time

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Geospatial, Historic Contributions, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), International Aid, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Key Players, Maps, Methods & Process, microfinancing, Open Government, Policies, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Reform, Research resources, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools, Videos/Movies/Documentaries

Working for change: Samasource redefines international aid

December 10, 2010

On Need to Know, we do a lot of reporting about the world’s problems. But we’re premiering a new series about people coming up with creative solutions — it’s called “Agents of Change.”

Click on title to read short intro and option to view video….

9 minutes — summary

Social entrepreneur challenging conventional wisdom

Samasource–microwork (small digital tasks that can be done on an inexpensive computers).

Building 21st Century assembly line that can break down massive tasks (e.g. updating addresses for Google maps, or translating emergency messages from Creole to English).  Won contracts with Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft.

15% premium for socially-conscious companies, AND competitive on cost, quality, and turnaround time.

Small scale digital tasks did not exist before.

Transforming lives, especially women, young men, and refugees.  $5 a day is very much better than local norms, and buys an active English-speaking brain with hands able to do quality work.

IMPORTANT:  Developing world is out-pacing USA and West generally in extending Internet infrastructure to the poor–centers created, humans come in, also doing viewing (Gorgon Stare, take note!), creating logs of store videos on shopper buying habits, anything that can be noticed and logged by a human–$5 a day.

Phi Beta Iota: We could not, in a million years, have found a better “off-set” to the USAF Gorgon Stare program.  This micro-tasking, combining human brains and hands with Internet access, is one of  the most profoundly intelligent and socio-economically useful ideas we have seen in our lifetimes (there are 800 of us here).  BRAVO.

Journal: Gorgon Stare (All Eyes, No Brain)

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, Advanced Cyber/IO, Corruption, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Richard Wright

BELOW REFERS TO PREVIOUS POST:

Reference: Gorgon Stare–USAF Goes Nuts (Again)

Another Technical Showboat

Chuck Spinney and Robert Steele have pretty well identified the new U.S. Air Force (USAF) drone program for what it is, but here are some ancillary remarks on the subject.

The Gorgon Stare, a new UAV built presumably to USAF specifications is a technological marvel and does indeed multiply not only surveillance capabilities, but store and forwarding capabilities as well. In the excitement over this new collection platform several essential questions are being ignored.

The most important is how much help is this device going to be in actually fighting enemy forces in Afghanistan. Is it going to help the U.S. or Coalition High Commands understand that what they call the “Taliban” is not a monolithic force with an elaborate hierarchy using a Soviet era command and control systems? But is actually a rubric for disparate tribes, groups, and gangs that engage the foreigners when they fell like it or to protect their opium trade or home village or to up grade their armament. I don’t think so.

Perhaps it will help the actual U.S. and Coalition fighters (boots on the ground) by providing heads up warnings of impending attacks or dangerous stretches of road. Perhaps but this will depend not simply on enhanced surveillance, but as Robert Steele has observed enhanced processing as well.

Thus the second important question is how will all the extra data being down linked from the Gorgon be processed, analyzed, and disseminated in a timely manner?  It may not be, but it can be certain with all the extra data coming in the USAF will argue for greatly increased processing staffing along with new information handling systems with impressive, if expensive, bells and whistles. This of course will be a hidden, but real addition to the cost of the Gorgon. So will enhanced processing and analytic capabilities  mean that Gorgon data may actually get to the war fighters in time to save lives and materially aid in defeating enemy forces? My guess is it won’t make a bit difference.

Unfortunately the whole Gorgon Stare Program is one more example the increasing tendency to use technology as a substitute for target knowledge and analysis (what Chuck Spinney calls synthetic as opposed to analytic thinking).  As one who designed my share of ‘Gold Plated Shovels with Rope Handles’, I suspect the Gorgon falls into that category.

Phi Beta Iota: See the three graphics below.  Historically the excess profit is in collection with few humans, and both government managers and contractor carpet-baggers shy away from the processing challenge–the contractors don't do processing well (a major problem with single-point of sale snake oil salesmen) and humans are “messy” and there are not enough of them to go around if you insist they have clearances.  The future is HUMAN, Multinational, Ezight-Tribe Sharing, and THINKING.  Gorgon Stare has no brain and neither does the US Air Force. This web site contains all of the information the US Government refuses to take seriously.  Until at least one element of the US Government gets serious about creating intelligence for every level of command across all mission areas, Gorgon Stare will continue to be the norm: expensive, useless, and harmful to the infantry that take 80% of the casualties because 96% of the Pentagon's budget continues to be spent irresponsibly (and without being accounted for in a responsible manner either).

Graphic: OSINT and Lack of Processing

Graphic: OSINT, We Went Wrong, Leaping Forward

Graphic: OSINT and Missing Information