Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 2042 – Public Intelligence Blog

An award-winning author explores how the world works in our age of “continuous now”

Back in the 1970s, futurism was all the rage. But looking forward is becoming a thing of the past. According to Douglas Rushkoff, “presentism” is the new ethos of a society that’s always on, in real time, updating live. Guided by neither history nor long term goals, we navigate a sea of media that blend the past and future into a mash-up of instantaneous experience.

Rushkoff shows how this trend is both disorienting and exhilarating. Without linear narrative we get both the humiliations of reality TV and the associative brilliance of The Simpsons. With no time for long term investing, we invent dangerously compressed derivatives yet also revive sustainable local businesses. In politics, presentism drives both the Tea Party and the Occupy movement.

In many ways, this was the goal of digital technology—outsourcing our memory was supposed to free us up to focus on the present. But we are in danger of squandering this cognitive surplus on trivia. Rushkoff shows how we can instead ground ourselves in the reality of the present tense.

Chapters on Narrative Collapse, Digiphrenia – Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, Overwinding, Fractalnoia – Finding Patterns in the Feedback, Apocalypto.

About the Author

Winner of the first Neil Postman award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity, Douglas Rushkoff is an author, teacher, and documentarian who focuses on the ways people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influence each other's values. He sees “media” as the landscape where this interaction takes place, and “literacy” as the ability to participate consciously in it.His ten best-selling books on new media and popular culture have been translated to over thirty languages. They include Cyberia, Media Virus, Playing the Future, Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism, and Coercion, winner of the Marshall Mcluhan Award for best media book. Rushkoff also wrote the acclaimed novels Ecstasy Club and Exit Strategy and graphic novel, Club Zero-G. He has just finished a book for HarperBusiness, applying renaissance principles to today's complex economic landscape, Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out. He's now writing a monthly comic book for Vertigo called Testament.

Phi Beta Iota: Doug is a genius with a gift for perception combined with a gift for articulation. Book will be released 21 March 2013 — can be pre-ordered at reduced price at Amazon now, click on cover above.

2013/02/19

Berto Jongman: Web Sites Connected by 19 Clicks or Less

Advanced Cyber/IO

The web's “Kevin Bacon effect” sees sites connected by 19 clicks or less

Like the myth that every Hollywood actor is somehow linked to Kevin Bacon by no more than six people, websites are also limited in how far they are apart.

A Hungarian physicist has found that every website on the internet is connected by 19 clicks or less.

Like the myth that every working actor is connected somehow to the Hollywood star Kevin Bacon by no more than six people, websites are also limited in how far they are apart.

Smithsonian reported that the findings by Albert-László Barabási were based on a computer model that mapped out 14 billion websites with about one trillion pages (see image).

Most of those pages are ill-connected according to the research.

Read rest of article with additional links.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Web Sites Connected by 19 Clicks or Less”

2013/02/192013/02/19

Reference: Top-Notch Report on Chinese Exploitation of US Idiocy & Incompetence

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Military

2013 Mandiant_PRC Cyber APT1_Report

Phi Beta Iota: The naive and the unscrupulous emphasis external threats and internal vulnerabilities while glossing over the FACT that this threat was clearly articulated by Winn Schwartau, among others, in 1990, and clearly articulated, in a letter delivered in 1994 to Marty Harris at the National Information Infratructure (NII) reporting to Al Gore, that put together in one place the best possible starting point for securing the entire US cyber-infrastructure with a starting budget of $1 billion a year.

Continue reading “Reference: Top-Notch Report on Chinese Exploitation of US Idiocy & Incompetence”

2013/02/19

Eagle: 1989 Trading Cards — 36 Friendly Dictators “Best Pals” of the US Government Acting In Our Name

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

Friendly Dictators

Back in 1989 Bill Sienkiewicz illustrated a deck of cards designed to bring to light some of the sleazier folks that the U.S. government had done deals with. The text on each card was written by Dennis Bernstein and Laura Sydell. I wish there was an updated version covering the last 17 years, but in the meantime I’ve prepared a giant post with the images and text from the pack of cards. (This is an egregious copyright violation, but since these cards have been out of print for more than 15 years, I’m hoping no one will call me on it. If they did, I would–of course–take this down.) This will be a very image-intensive post–as usual, the little pictures are links to the bigger versions.

Here’s the cover from the box:

And this is the “about the creators” text (looking at the current bios for the creators, there has been some interesting career progression since they did this):

DENNIS BERNSTEIN is the Executive Producer of “Undercurrents,” heard daily on WBAI in New York, and nationally on the Pacifica Radio Network. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, New York Newsday, Spin Magazine, In These Times, Extra!, and others.

LAURA SYDELL has a law degree and is a phi beta kappa graduate of William Smith College. She has reported for National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered”, “Crossroads”, and for the Pacifica Radio Network.

BILL SIENKIEWICZ’s work in Brought to Light has garnered rave reviews from Publisher’s Weekly, The American Library Association Booklist, and The Village Voice. His award-winning artwork can be seen in such comics as Moon Knight, Elektra Assassin, Stray Toasters, and Real War Stories.

And now, the cards themselves:

See 36 color cards with full text.

Continue reading “Eagle: 1989 Trading Cards — 36 Friendly Dictators “Best Pals” of the US Government Acting In Our Name”

2013/02/19

Yoda: Psychiatry goes (criminally) insane

Cultural Intelligence

Dark, the American force is.

Psychiatry goes insane: Every human emotion now classified as a mental disorder in new psychiatric manual DSM-5

(NaturalNews) The industry of modern psychiatry has officially gone insane. Virtually every emotion experienced by a human being — sadness, grief, anxiety, frustration, impatience, excitement — is now being classified as a “mental disorder” demanding chemical treatment (with prescription medications, of course).

The new, upcoming DSM-5 “psychiatry bible,” expected to be released in a few months, has transformed itself from a medical reference manual to a testament to the insanity of the industry itself.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: In a country where one-third of the citizsens are now officially qualified as “idiots,” it should not surprise us to learn that psychiatrists are themselves idiots. This manual is a travesty.

2013/02/19

DefDog: Gun Grabbers Want Annual Home Searches

Idiocy, Law Enforcement

Of all places — what was once the last bastion of sanity, now suffering from retarded legislators.

Washington State gun grabbers go for searching your home once a year to confirm gun storage compliance

[Editors note: They got caught trying to put this in a new bill and then claimed it was a ‘mistake'. They really do think we are that stupid. Now we have to show them what the cost is…Jim W. Dean]

… from Tim Brown at Freedom Outpost

Washington State Democrats have sponsored Senate Bill 5737, which has a little provision that apparently was to go unnoticed that would have said that police have a right to search a private citizen’s home once per year if they own certain types of firearms.

According to the legislation:

In order to continue to possess an assault weapon that was legally possessed on the effective date of this section, the person possessing shall … safely and securely store the assault weapon. The sheriff of the county may, no more than once per year, conduct an inspection to ensure compliance with this subsection.

Yes, that means liberal Democrats pushed forward this legislation in open and defiance of the Fourth Amendment. But that’s not all. When they were caught with their hands in the cookie jar, they exclaimed it wasn’t their fault and that they made mistake.

Read full article.

2013/02/192013/02/19

Owl: CamOver Counter Attack Against the Global Surveillance State

IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency

CamOver: Counter Attack Against the Global Surveillance State

“It started in Berlin: Anarchists, donning black bloc attire, hit the streets at night in pairs, small groups or alone to smash and dismantle the CCTV surveillance cameras adorning the city streets. They posted videos and photos of their exploits online and called the guerrilla project Camover. The German collective gave a playful interview to Vice U.K. in which they explained that they are “a diverse group of people: Shoplifters eluding capitalism who don’t want to be monitored, passengers who don’t want to followed step by step and anarchists fighting everything that wants to control us.” Vice noted that the Berlin-based anarchists then laid down the gauntlet: Camover have also recently announced a competition encouraging others to get involved. All you have to do to enter is think of a name that begins with the words “Brigade…” or “Command…” and that ends with the name of a historical personality, recruit a mob and smash up cameras. Then you send pictures and video evidence to their website, and they declare the winning footage. The anti-surveillance project quickly spread throughout Germany, to Finland, Greece and hit the U.S. West Coast this month. A group identifying itself as “the Barefoot Bandit Brigade” released a statement claiming to have “removed and destroyed 17 security cameras throughout the Puget Sound region,” with ostensible photo evidence published alongside. “This act is concrete sabotage against the system of surveillance and control,” wrote the group’s statement, adding that the Camover contribution was also intended in solidarity with anarchists in the Pacific Northwest currently in federal custody without charges for refusing to cooperate with a federal grand jury.”

Check out the videos of CamOver at work:

Guerrilla surveillance camera destruction hits the U.S.

It started in Germany with masked anarchists dismantling CCTV cameras, now Camover is a global game

Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

Worth a Look: Present Shock – When Everything Happens Now

Berto Jongman: Web Sites Connected by 19 Clicks or Less

Reference: Top-Notch Report on Chinese Exploitation of US Idiocy & Incompetence

Eagle: 1989 Trading Cards — 36 Friendly Dictators “Best Pals” of the US Government Acting In Our Name

Yoda: Psychiatry goes (criminally) insane

DefDog: Gun Grabbers Want Annual Home Searches

Owl: CamOver Counter Attack Against the Global Surveillance State