IO Sense-Making – Page 29 – Public Intelligence Blog

2010/12/052010/12/05

Journal: Brooks on Assange, Others on Brooks

04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Sense-Making, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Privacy, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

EDIT of 5 Dec 2010 to add commentaries by various others.

Op-Ed Columnist

The Fragile Community

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: November 29, 2010

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, had moved 37 times by the time he reached his 14th birthday. His mother didn’t enroll him in the local schools because, as Raffi Khatchadourian wrote in a New Yorker profile, she feared “that formal education would inculcate an unhealthy respect for authority.”

. . . . . . .

She needn’t have worried. As a young computer hacker, he formed a group called International Subversives. As an adult, he wrote “Conspiracy as Governance,” a pseudo-intellectual online diatribe. He talks of vast “patronage networks” that constrain the human spirit.

Far from respecting authority, Assange seems to be an old-fashioned anarchist who believes that all ruling institutions are corrupt and public pronouncements are lies.

Read the rest of this revealing assessment….

Phi Beta Iota: We like David Brooks. He's less submissive than David Ignatius, less pretentious than Fareed Zakaria, and generally has something interesting to say. In this piece, most revealingly, he displays his limitations to the fullest. We are quite certain that David Brooks means well, but the depth of his naivete in this piece is nothing short of astonishing. The below lists of lists of book reviews will suffice to demonstrate that David Brooks is not as well-read as he needs to be, not as intellectual as he pretends to be, and not at all accurate in his assessment of Julian Assange. We share with Steven Aftergood of Federation of American Scientists (FAS) concerns about Assange's judgment in releasing some materials that are gratuitous invasions of rightful privacy, but we also believe that Assange is finding his groove, and the recent cover story in Forbes captures that essence. WikiLeaks is an antidote to corporate fascism and elective Empire run amok. It meets a need.

Other Commentaries on the Same Article:

Continue reading “Journal: Brooks on Assange, Others on Brooks”

2010/12/032010/12/03

Journal: Groupon’s Missed Opportunity

11 Society, About the Idea, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Earth Intelligence, IO Mapping, IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process

Groupon's Missed Opportunity

The tech industry has a total crush on Groupon, that darling of the start-up scene that emails you huge discounts on everything from Gap jeans to gym memberships. Now that Google is about to acquire the Chicago-based start-up for billions of dollars, it’s like the tech blogs are all competing to see who can gush the most about how great Groupon is and how smart Google is for wanting to acquire them. It’s really not that big of a deal – how many times have we seen this kind of Cinderella story before?

Though I don’t find the acquisition all that interesting, I’m fascinated by the concept of Groupon, mainly for the incredible opportunity they missed. On the surface, Groupon seems to be about killer deals. They negotiate huge discounts with national and local businesses in exchange for the promise of thousands of new customers – pay $25 and get $50 worth of Thai food, for example, or pay $60 for a normally $250 dental exam. It’s a classic loss-leader tactic – gain new customers at a loss in hopes that they return and generate more business later.

When you take a closer look at Groupon’s phenomenal success, though, there’s a lot more going on than just bargains. Groupon was one of the first companies to successfully harness the power of group behavior across the social web in the name of a common purpose. That’s incredibly powerful! Think of the potential – for the first time in history, the physical barriers to collective, powerful action have been torn down, and Groupon figured out how to focus that power into a single, common goal. That’s huge!

Continue reading “Journal: Groupon's Missed Opportunity”

2010/12/032010/12/03

Reference: The Walk from “No” to “Yes” (William Ury)

Cultural Intelligence, IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Peace Intelligence

William Ury

Finding the 18th camel….

15,000 tribes in touch with one another

The secret to peace is not easy, not new, but it is simple: We are the secret to peace, Us acting as a surrounding community.

The circle revisited…

The third side of any conflict is those not party to the conflict.

TEDX Presentation on Abraham's Walk (Unity & Respect)

William Ury is a mediator, writer and speaker, working with conflicts ranging from family feuds to boardroom battles to ethnic wars. He's the author of “Getting to Yes.” Full bio and more links

Tip of the Hat to John Steiner.

Phi Beta Iota: This is kum-ba-ya hand-holding at a world-class level. Utterly brilliant on the process, totally lacking on the facts and how to use them, pooling of resources and how to use them, etcetera.

2010/12/012010/12/01

Journal: What is the Nature of the Shia-Sunni/Persian-Arab Confrontation?

08 Wild Cards, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, IO Sense-Making

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends....

Much ado is being made of the “revelation” in the Wikileaks data dump that some Sunni Arab leaders were quietly in favor of an American and/or Israeli strike on Iran to terminate Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program with extreme prejudice. Implicit in this war-mongering hysteria is an acceptance of an implacable Shia-Sunni conflict threatening the stability of the Islamic world and perhaps the belief on the part of the neocon Judeo-Christian great gamesters that this divide offers an opportunity to exploit the divisions in Islam. The attached article by Arshin Adib-Moghaddam is important in this regard, because he aims to debunk popular assertions about the nature of the Shia-Sunni conflict and/or the Arab-Persian conflict. If Moghaddam is right, the game to remake the Islamic world in our image may be a little too complex for the neatly compartmented minds of the great-game wannabees in Versailles on the Potomac.

According to a bio in the Guardian, “Arshin Adib-Moghaddam is a lecturer in the comparative and international politics of western Asia at the prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He was born in the Taksim area of Istanbul to Iranian parents and raised in Hamburg/Germany. He studied at the University of Hamburg, American University and Cambridge. He is the author of The International Politics of the Persian Gulf: A Cultural Genealogy, Iran in World Politics: The question of the Islamic Republic and A metahistory of the Clash of Civilisations (forthcoming)”

This Sunni-Shia relations is an area I do not know much about, so I asked a friend of mine, a retired colonel, with extensive experience living and working in the Middle East, for his evaluation of Moghaddam's thesis. My friend responded as follows:

Colonel's response:

Continue reading “Journal: What is the Nature of the Shia-Sunni/Persian-Arab Confrontation?”

2010/12/012013/02/09

Reference: Crash Course on Reality

07 Other Atrocities, Blog Wisdom, Briefings (Core), Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), IO Mapping, IO Sense-Making, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Movies, Officers Call, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Strategy, True Cost

cmartenson-20100730 — Chris Martenson Home

Chris Martenson not only paid attention to all of the early warning signals, but acted upon them, leaving a Fortune 50 job, selling his Connecticut home, getting out of the stock market, and buying gold and silver. Now he has produced the single best, down-to-earth, detailed free video (38 minutes), inexpensive video (208 minutes), forthcoming book, and a 50 hour week-end course for concerned citizens. This is essential education for all–it also demonstrates the fraud, waste, and abuse inherent in the continued support by the two-party tyranny of Wall Street. Wall Street STILL OWES twice the capital it actually has–the bail-out was a flim-flam to perpetuate the short-term bonuses and positions of the criminals who have looted America and the rest of the world.

Short Free Video

Crash Course by Chris Martenson – 38 minute condensed version
DVD Release Date: March 5, 2009
Run Time: 203 minutes

Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (March 22, 2011)

Phi Beta Iota: In a perfect demonstration of the Hacker Principle that for every piece of information you share, you get back 100 pieces of which 10 are priceless (10:1 noise to signal and 10:1 return on investment), the below was brought to our attention by Dr. James C. Spohrer, Director, IBM University Programs World-Wide (IBM UP), IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA 95120 USA. We like IBM, we like it even more after seeing that this kind of thinking is well-understood by IBM. Bottom line: a number of others have sounded the alarm, Chris Martenson does it better than everyone else, in the most concise non-partisan manner possible. He is the Paul Revere of the Republic, the Commonwealth.

2010/12/012010/12/01

Worth a Look: Jumo Connections Beta

IO Mapping, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Worth A Look

Home Page

We connect individuals and organizations working to change the world– Find issues and projects you care about

– Follow the latest news and updates

– Support their work with your time, money, and skills

Phi Beta Iota: This is worth a look because it is backed by a co-founder of Facebook who has also been an advisor to President Barack Obama on social networking; because it is a variant rip-off of WISER Earth: The Social Network for Sustainability; and because it represents the beginning of the World Brain & Global Game in which all individuals are connected to all information in all languages all the time. It lacks a strategic analytic model and a “true cost” and policy-budget engagement tool, but it is a milestone in some ways, largely because of WHO is behind it. When combined with the Google purchase of GroupOn for six billion dollars (which Google will screw up big-time, but that gives Eric Lefkofsky, a Chicago-based social networking entrepreneur, more money to experiment with–that is a good thing. This is BIG PICTURE stuff that will scale rapidly.

2008 COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

2006 THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest

2006 INFORMATION OPERATIONS: All Information, All Languages, All the Time

2002 THE NEW CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE: Personal, Public, & Political

2010/12/012010/12/01

Journal: Taking a WikiLeak

Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Sense-Making, Law Enforcement, Military, Peace Intelligence

Taking a Wikileak

In my obligatory post about Wikileaks as the story du jour, I point to the great set of questions Dan Gillmor has posted in his column at Salon. These are especially lucid. I like especially Dan’s point about the character of the communications that were leaked, that many of the messages are gossip. Journalists are dutifully reporting “facts” gleaned from the leaked material without necessarily digging deeper, verifying and analyzing. Of course, they don’t have time – the information environment moves too quickly, he who hesitates is lost, accuracy be damned.

Then again, journalism is so often about facts, not truth. Facts are always suspect, personal interpretations are often incorrect, memories are often wildly inaccurate. History is, no doubt, filled with wrong facts and bad interpretations that, regardless, are accepted as somehow “true.”

The high-minded interpretation of this and other leaks, that people need to know what is being said and done by their representatives in government, especially in a “democratic society,” is worth examining. We’re not really a democracy; government by rule or consensus of a majority of the people doesn’t scale, and it would be difficult for the average citizen to commit the time required to be conversant in depth with all the issues that a complex government must consider.

Do we benefit by sharing more facts with more people? (Dan notes that 3 million or so in government have the clearance to read most of the documents leaked – this seems like a lot of people to be keeping secrets… is the “secret” designation really all that meaningful, in this case?) But to my question – I think there’s a benefit in knowing more about government operations, but I’m less clear that this sort of leak increases knowledge vs. noise.

I’m certain about one thing: we shouldn’t assume that the leaked documents alone reveal secrets that are accurate and true. They’re just more pieces of a very complex puzzle.

See Also:

Graphic: Information Pathologies