Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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Event: 15-16 Oct NYC Singularity Summit

Academia, Advanced Cyber/IO, Augmented Reality, Commerce, Cultural Intelligence, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Technologies

SINGULARITY SUMMIT 2011 IN NEW YORK CITY 15-16 OCTOBER 2011

The Singularity Summit 2011 will be a TED-style two-day event at the historic 92nd Street Y in New York City. The confirmed speakers include futurist Ray Kurzweil, neuroscientist Christof Koch, PayPal founder Peter Thiel, MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark, AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky, MIT polymath Alexander Wissner-Gross, DARPA challenge winner Riley Crane, Skype founder Jaan Tallinn, Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings, economist Tyler Cowen, television personalities Jason Silva and Casey Pieretti, and robotics professors James McLurnkin and Robin Murphy.

To stay informed about the coming Summit, you can subscribe to the Singularity newsletter on their website.

RELATED LINKS:

• Pulse on The Singularity• NHNE Singularity Resource Page• Singularity University• NHNE Ray Kurzweil Resource Page• Transcendent Man (movie)• The Singularity Is Near (movie)

SINGULARITY AT PHI BETA IOTA:

Review: Radical Evolution–The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies — and What It Means to Be Human (Hardcover)

Review: The Singularity Is Near–When Humans Transcend Biology (Hardcover)

Worth a Look: Singularity Summit & Building a Brain

Worth a Look: Singularity University

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on the War on Science

 

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Worth a Look: Program for Public Consultation

Worth A Look
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About

The Program for Public Consultation (PPC) is a newly-established joint program of the Center on Policy Attitudes (COPA) and the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.  PPC has been established to develop the methods and theory of public consultation and to conduct public consultations. In particular it will work with government agencies to help them consult their citizens on key public policy issues that the government faces.

Learn more….

What Is Public Consultation?

Public consultation is a means to improve democratic governance by helping governments consult their citizenry on the key public policy issues the government faces.  Public consultations are conducted with representative samples of the citizenry. Using standard scientific methods of random sampling, a sample is chosen and subsequently weighted to reflect the population census on all major demographic variables, thus producing an accurate microcosm of the citizenry.

Learn more…

Responding to the Crisis of Democracy

PPC was developed in response to extensive evidence that democracy is in a crisis. The core principles of democracy are widely endorsed around the world, especially the principle that the will of the people should be the legitimating basis for government decisions.However, there is a widespread perception in the publics of democratic countries that their governments do not serve the common good of the people, but rather serve organized special interests that have the means to exert disproportionate leverage over government decisions.

Learn more…

See Also:

Continue reading “Worth a Look: Program for Public Consultation”

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Dolphin: Seasteading Away from Governments?

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Methods & Process, Policies, Threats

We dolphins are not too thrilled about this idea.  Humans have not evolved very far from their Neanderthal roots, and the idea of human hoards invading and polluting the seas is scary to those of us for whom sustainability and resilience comes naturally.  Requires further study.

Silicon Valley billionaire reveals plan to launch floating ‘start up country' off San Francisco

Daily Mail, 11 August 2011

PayPal-founder Peter Thiel was so inspired by Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand's novel about free-market capitalism – that he's trying to make its title a reality.

The Silicon Valley billionaire has funnelled $1.25 million to the Seasteading Institute, an organization that aspires to launch a floating colony into international waters, freeing them and like-minded thinkers to live by Libertarian ideals.

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Mr Thiel recently told Details magazine that: ‘The United States Constitution had things you could do at the beginning that you couldn't do later. So the question is, can you go back to the beginning of things? How do you start over?'

The floating sovereign nations that Thiel imagines would be built on oil-rig-like platforms anchored in areas free of regulation, laws, and moral conventions.

The Seasteading Institute says it will ‘give people the freedom to choose the government they want instead of being stuck with the government they get.'

See Also:

Journal: Seasteading and Start-Up Countries

Phi Beta Iota:   The idea of seasteading in some form of idealic libertarian island of paradise is fairly distant from reality.  Accepting that the libertarians will be armed and alert, this concept fails to account for a) the outlaw sea; and b) the dead sea.   There is no solution for any group of humanity that is sustainable absent its embracing all humanity.

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Who’s Who in Public Intelligence: Steven Kull

Alpha I-L, Public Intelligence
Steven Kull

Steven Kull, PhD is a political psychologist who studies world public opinion on international issues. He is the Director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and the Center on Policy Attitudes (COPA). He conducts ongoing surveys of the US public and plays a central role in the BBC World Service Poll of global opinion. His articles have appeared in Political Science Quarterly, Foreign Policy, Public Opinion Quarterly, Harpers, The Washington Post and other publications. He is the co-author with I.M. Destler of Misreading the Public: The Myth of a New Isolationism (1999). He regularly appears in the US and international media and gives briefings for the US Congress, the State Department, NATO, the UN and the EC. He is a faculty member of the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Wikipedia (Steven Kull)
Center on Policy Attitudes
Program on International Policy Attitudes

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John Robb: State Failure, Deep Resistance, Open War

Blog Wisdom, Resilience
John Robb

Anonymous declares war on Facebook.

For those of you interested in how global guerrilla warfare theory is being applied in the wild, here's a book for you:  Deep Green Resistance (by Derrick Jenson,  Aric McBay, and Lierre Keith). Here's a little on their ecowarfare strategy from their website, and some more on how they use open source warfare and systems disruption.  At this point, nearly every meaningful insurgency in the world is using OSW (open source warfare).  From some of the folks behind the London riots to al Qaeda's new “Open Source Jihad” to Lulzsec/etc. Fortunately for these groups, the US military and their consultants are mired in 20th Century counter-insurgency (COIN), fighting farmers/herders in global backwaters.

Vinay Gupta has put up 4.3 Gb of data/presentations/thinking on surviving state failure.  Some good STAR TIDES stuff in there.

Ancestral Health Conference.  Coincidentally, getting healthy is completely in alignment with resilience.

PeoplePower. “An open-source platform for learning about nonviolent regime change.”

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Event: 3-4 November Chicago Predictive Analytics

Analysis

Final Agenda: http://theiegroup.com/PA_Brochure.pdf

This invitation only summit has the most influential selection of advanced analytics experts chosen to deliver real actionable content.

Confirmed speakers for 2011 include:

– Director, Distribution Strategy & Analytics, AOL
– Vice President, Audience Development, AT&T
– Chief Data Officer, City of Chicago
– Head of Online Analytics, Dell
– Director, Quantitative Analytics, Google
– Global Vice President, CRM, Ancestry 
– EVP, Chief Credit Risk Officer, Discover Financial
– Director, Marketplace Analytics, eBay
– Senior Director, Analytics, Expedia
– Senior Director, Market Measurement & Analysis, Marriott
– Senior Director, Worldwide Licensing & Pricing, Microsoft
– Head of North America Business Analytics, Paypal
– Senior Director, Personalization & Targeting, CBS
– Director, Analytics, Hewlett Packard
– Senior Marketing Statistician, LinkedIn
– Director, Analytics, Ask
– Director Operations Research, McDonalds
– Senior Director, Software Development, Salesforce
– Senior Strategist, Product Management, NetApp
– Department Head, Data Insights, Domino's Pizza

To request an invitation please connect with me directly at: dwatts@theiegroup.com

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