Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 1491 – Public Intelligence Blog

Comparing “Wisdom of the Crowds” to Real Collective Wisdom

The popular book “The Wisdom of Crowds” says a lot about the remarkable accuracy of thousands of people making guesses about something that has a real but unknown answer now or in the future. This phenomenon is fascinating but it doesn’t provide us with actual WISDOM to guide our collective future. What would real collective wisdom look like, and how might we find or co-create it?

A friend just sent me this essay from the BBC: “‘Wisdom of the crowd’: The myths and realities” by Philip Ball.

I feel a need to respond to it – publicly and urgently.

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Comparing “Wisdom of the Crowds” to Real Collective Wisdom”

2014/07/132014/07/11

Stephen E. Arnold: Big Data Stress at Both Ends of the Lens

IO Impotency

Big Data Stress at Both Ends of the Lens

An interesting article at the New Inquiry looks at the psychological effects of both surveying and being surveyed in the modern, data-driven world. It’s an interesting read, and I urge the curious to check out the whole piece. Writer Kate Crawford begins with ways intelligence agencies use big data and some of the stumbling blocks that come with it: No matter how much information they collect, the picture is incomplete. On the other hand, the more information they stockpile, the easier it is to miss important clues and fail to prevent a crisis. Agencies continue to search for frameworks that will help them put the pieces together faster.

Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: Big Data Stress at Both Ends of the Lens”

2014/07/122014/07/08

Nathan Schneider: Hacking the World – About Gabriella Coleman, Anthropologist and Aaron Swartz Among Others

Cultural Intelligence

Hacking the World

An anthropologist in the midst of a geek insurgency

The Chronicle Review, 1 April 2013

CONCLUSION

The success that Anonymous and WikiLeaks have had in spooking the powerful is surely part of what motivated the scare tactics used against Aaron Swartz. Such tactics won't necessarily work. Over the course of the memorial for Swartz in New York, the remembrances swelled into calls for action, and then standing ovations—against the power of corporations in the legal system, against the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, against mass incarceration. One cause led to another. The hackers were connecting the dots.

“If people experience a taste of what political action is,” Coleman said afterward, “whether it's the power of consensus, whether it's the power to change something, whether it's the power of getting media attention—they're hooked.”

Read full article.

Books by Nathan Schneider:

2013 Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse

2013 God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet

2014/07/122014/07/11

Berto Jongman: Pedophilia USA – NSA, Pentagon, Blackmail — Much More to Come…

07 Other Atrocities

The U.K. Political Pedophile Ring Scandal is Just The Tip of the Iceberg – The Full Story is Much More Disturbing

The full scope of the political pedophile ring scandal in the U.K. can't be fully appreciated without looking at the other side of the Atlantic

SGCNews, 8 July 2014

Full Story with Three YouTubes Below the Fold

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Pedophilia USA – NSA, Pentagon, Blackmail — Much More to Come…”

2014/07/122014/07/12

Stephen E. Arnold: Improving Government Data Access – Avoid PDF, Provide CSV, Simplify Search

IO Impotency

Steps Offered to Improve Government Data Sites

The article on FlowingData titled How to Make Government Data Sites Better uses the Center for Disease Control website to illustrate measures the government should take to make their data more accessible and manageable. The first suggestion is to provide files in a useable format. By avoiding PDFs and providing CSV files (or even raw data), the user will be in a much better position to work with the data. Another suggestion is simply losing or simplifying the multipart form that makes search nearly impossible. The author also proposes clearer and more consistent annotation, using the following scenario to illustrate the point,

Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: Improving Government Data Access – Avoid PDF, Provide CSV, Simplify Search”

2014/07/112014/07/09

Elisabet Sahtouris: Storytelling and Humanity

Cultural Intelligence

Storytelling

kosmosjournal, Spring/Summer 2014

The most exciting and beneficial things I believe happened to humanity in the past century were physicists’ recognition that “the universe is more like a great thought than like a great machine”¹ and astronauts lifting far enough from Earth to see, feel and show us how very much alive our planet is. Those events led to a wonderful sea change from the older—and rather depressing—scientific story of a non-living material universe accidentally giving rise to all within it, devoid of meaning or purpose.

The new view, revealing a conscious universe and a living Earth in which we are co-creators, takes us out of fatalistic victimhood to becoming consciously active agents of our destiny! It lifts the fog of our self-image as consumers of stuff, giving us awesome rights and responsibilities to live out our full co-creative humanity.

Read full article.

2014/07/112014/07/10

Owl: Political Cover-Up of Epidemic Potential of Illegal Aliens – Medical Staff at Immigration Camps Threatened with Arrest

07 Health

Medical Brown Shirts in America

“”A government-contracted security force threatened to arrest doctors and nurses if they divulged any information about the contagion threat at a refugee camp housing illegal alien children at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas,” reports Todd Starnes of Fox News.

The truth about the infectious diseases being carried by this wave of illegal immigrants is so politically distasteful, it seems, that medical staff are being ordered at gunpoint to keep their mouths shut or face arrest. Politics trumps medical science, in other words, when it comes to immigration.

Continue reading “Owl: Political Cover-Up of Epidemic Potential of Illegal Aliens – Medical Staff at Immigration Camps Threatened with Arrest”