Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 2322 – Public Intelligence Blog

Original Post 10 June 2010. Hot now.

I was asked a question by @mollsiebee from Fierce Government IT at the InformationWeek GovernmentIT Leadership Forum a couple weeks ago, that I didn’t do a good job of responding to. The question — as I recall — was why developers matter if people aren’t paying attention anyhow. Ordinary citizens need access to government data — isn’t that the point? And if nobody’s asking for it, then who cares?

Thankfully, my hairline (and other evolutionary traits) helps people to avoid confusing me with Steve Ballmer even though my message is similar. Though there’s probably a little less profit motive to it. I’ll explain.

Since the first information technology boom around 50,000 years ago with the invention of speech, there have always been information gatekeepers. Around 6,000 years ago at the dawn of writing, these gatekeepers were called scribes. Writing was a trade secret of professional scribes and understanding this technology led to great power in society. Some of the really good ones were eventually revered like gods. Check out what they have to say about Imhotep over in Egypt.

Fast forward a few thousand years and printers become the new scribes. While knowledge gets further democratized with the invention of the printing press, it still takes some capital to get your hands on a printing press. You needed not only to get your hands on a press, but even Johannes Gutenberg had to partner up with a paper mill to print his bibles. Printers become powerful folk and as literacy rates changed, the printers replaced the scribes as the gatekeepers of information.

Continue reading “Clay Johnson: Developers as New Information Gatekeepers”

2012/02/162012/02/16

Howard Rheingold: Clay Johnson on Information Diet

Advanced Cyber/IO, Cultural Intelligence

VIDEO (1:03) The Information Diet – Introduction

Introduction to the concepts behind The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption, a new book by Clay Johnson. The Information Diet makes the case that it's time we started being as selective with the information we consume as we are the food that we eat, then describes what a healthy diet and healthy habits look like.

EXTRACT from one Review:

Johnson* makes a strong case that content farms are the media industry's equivalent of factory farms: producing cheap, low quality information to maximize profit. And if we don't educate ourselves as consumers, then we're basically doing the brain equivalent of eating at McDonalds every day… destroying our mental health and driving serious journalists, the organic family farmers of the media industry, out of business.

If the premise sounds a little depressing, it is. But a strong dose of humor and charming anecdotes make the medicine go down. And just like factory farms are depressing, the response — farmers markets, grass-fed beef, and HGH-free milk — can be empowering and delicious.

2012/02/162012/02/16

NIGHTWATCH: China Builds…and Builds…While US …?

Blog Wisdom

China-North Korea: China announced it will invest US$3 billion in the Rason special economic zone in northeastern North Korea. Under the deal, by 2020 China would build an airport, a power plant, a cross-border railway and improve the port facilities in the North's Rason economic zone bordering China and Russia. The 55-kilometre cross-border railway track will connect Rason with the Chinese city of Tumen. In return, China secured the right to use the Rason port for 50 years.

Comment: The development of the Rajin-Sonbong (aka, Rason) special economic zone was a Kim Chong-il experiment 20 years ago The location is ideal for trade because proximity to Russian and Chinese railroads would significantly reduce the costs and time of Japanese shipping to Europe. It never attracted investors because the area has almost no infrastructure. Plus, the North wanted investors to build the infrastructure as well as invest in the project. Thus it languished.

Chinese companies are prepared to make the extra investment as part of the national plan to develop northeastern China. They are undertaking projects of this nature in Afghanistan and Indonesia, among other countries. The aim in the Rason project is to pass on the costs ultimately to the Japanese shippers and consumers.

The timing of the latest update to the project obviously was calculated to coincide with the birthday of Kim Chong-il. China now has large economic projects on both ends of the North Korean border. The other is near Sinuiju in northwestern North Korea. North Korea's border areas are being developed as extensions of the Chinese economic system. North Korea has no other benefactor since relations with the South remain strained. That is tonight's good news on many levels.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

2012/02/152012/02/15

Koko: 22% US Children in Poverty… + Poverty RECAP

01 Poverty, 06 Family, 09 Justice, 11 Society

Koko sign: Sad.

As seniors climb from poverty, young fall in

By Marisol Bello

USA TODAY, 15 February 2012

EXTRACT:

Nationally, official Census numbers show 9% of seniors in poverty. Among children, 22% — 15.6 million — live in poverty.

. . . . . . .

A 2011 analysis by the Urban Institute, a public policy and research center, found public spending per child was $11,300 over the course of a year. The spending included federal and state programs for education, health such as Medicaid and nutrition, social services and housing. The report said some of those programs are being cut as states wrestle with dwindling budgets. By comparison, public spending on seniors was about $24,800 per person, mostly in federal funding for Social Security and Medicare.

Read full story.

Phi Beta Iota: The US Budget is not based on a coherent strategic model, on a national strategy, or even on any fundamentals such as save the children, preserve the water. How a nation treats its children can be a reasonable predictor of the future of that nation.

2012/02/152012/02/15

Marcus Aurelius: Special Forces Bypass Department of State?

02 Diplomacy, 10 Security, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius

Do Special Ops Forces Have Too Much Autonomy?

By ANDREW ROSENTHAL

New York Times, 15 February 2012

Special Operations forces have long enjoyed an elite position in the United States military, and achieved something like folk-hero status when Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan last May. The admiration is well-deserved, but an article in Monday’s Times drew attention to the power they’ve accrued of late, and raised questions about just how much independence they should have.

Carol Giacomo, who covers foreign affairs for the editorial board, says that the Obama administration has increasingly made Special Operations Forces its military tool of choice to handle threats overseas. It plans to rely on them even more widely as it draws down conventional troops from Afghanistan.

Eventually, Special Ops Forces will make up the bulk of any residual force left in Afghanistan, hunting down militants and helping train Afghan security forces. Administration and military officials are also talking about using them in regions where they have not operated in large numbers for the past decade, including Asia (the Philippines, specifically), Africa and Latin America.

The article on the front page of Monday’s Times reported that the top Special Operations officer, Adm. William H. McRaven, is now seeking authority to move his forces faster and outside of normal Pentagon deployment channels. The proposal has not been fully explained publicly but The Times reported that it would give him more autonomy to position his forces and their equipment where intelligence and global events indicate they are most needed.

Among congressional, staff—who have not yet been briefed on the proposal—there are questions about how such new authority might affect operations. “What problem are they trying to solve?” one aide asked. A Pentagon official, who spoke on background, insisted that Admiral McRaven “is not trying to fix something that’s broken. The proposal is anticipating what the future will be for these guys and getting ahead of it.”

The Pentagon official stressed that Admiral McRaven “is not looking for complete autonomy unanswerable to anybody” and that Special Operations Forces would still be ordered on specific missions by the regional four-star commander. But one concern is that the new plan would cut out the State Department. In the past, some ambassadors in crisis zones have opposed increased deployments of Special Operations teams, and they have demanded assurances that diplomatic chiefs of missions will be fully involved in their plans and missions.

The “global war on terror” has been used to justify a lot of things. But not everything changed on Sept. 11, 2001. Civilian control of the military is one thing that did not change. I can’t imagine a circumstance under which it should.

2012/02/15

New Occupy Documentary “Rise Like Lions”

Videos/Movies/Documentaries

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you –
Ye are many – they are few.

2012/02/142012/02/14

Reference: Big Data, Big Impact – New Possibilities

World Economic Forum

Big Data, Big Impact:
New Possibilities for International Development

Executive Summary

A flood of data is created every day by the interactions of billions of people using computers, GPS devices, cell phones, and medical devices. Many of these interactions occur through the use of mobile devices being used by people in the developing world, people whose needs and habits have been poorly understood until now. Researchers and policymakers are beginning to realise the potential for channelling these torrents of data into actionable information that can be used to identify needs, provide services, and predict and prevent crises for the benefit of low-income populations. Concerted action is needed by governments, development organisations, and companies to ensure that this data helps the individuals and communities who create it.

PDF 10 Pages

Phi Beta Iota: What is interesting is the absence of any concept of call centers or geospatial plotting. These people are on to something, but they are approaching it from an Industrial Era mind-set, using the big data to monitor and anticipate rather than to nurture and educate.