Mark Twain once tried to distinguish between the storyteller’s art and tales that a machine could generate. He observed that stringing “incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities,” was the province of the American storyteller. A machine might imitate simple formulas behind yarns, but never quite master them.
The Pentagon’s freewheeling research arm is hoping to prove Twain wrong. Darpa is asking scientists to “take narratives and make them quantitatively analyzable in a rigorous, transparent and repeatable fashion.” The idea is to detect terrorists who have been indoctrinated by propaganda. Then, the Pentagon can respond with some messages of its own.
The program is called “Narrative Networks.” By understanding how stories have shaped your mind, the Pentagon hopes to sniff out who has fallen prey to dangerous ideas, a neuroscience researcher involved in the project tells Danger Room. With this knowledge, the military can also target groups vulnerable to terrorists’ recruiting tactics with its own counter-messaging.
Re the article below: This is terrible. It is bad enough on its face, but to realize that MIT's Malone is at the heart of this breaks my heart, devastates my soul and outrages my professional sensibilities. Now I am sorry that we didn't do a paper on pubic wisdom for his conference next year! Talk about the applications of collective intelligence unmonitored by collective wisdom!! This is NOT the power and capacity we sought to free by trying to pull together the field with our Collective Intelligence Convergence conference.
I see much more clearly now the distinction between my sense of “intelligence” and the use of that term by “intelligence” agencies. My sense of intelligence is that it means we are able to assess reality in a learning feedback loop where we've taken an action based on certain assumptions/mental models and seen how it works in real life. The results inform our reinforcement or revision of our assumptions and mental models. Collective intelligence is our ability to do that collectively, as whole communities and societies and humanity. The mere accumulation of data to inform official decision-makers – particularly in hierarchical power systems like ours – is a dangerous bastardization of the generic concept of CI. Notice that they aren't talking about using this system to find out how successful a particular government policy or program is – whether it actually served the public good or not – so that we could have a more evidence-based government. It is being used primarily to predict social unrest so it can be stifled or discharged so that the existing toxic power structures can remain as they are.
I notice it says the system will use “publicly accessible data”. I'm so dubious. They talk about traffic webcams and digital location trails from cell phones. Are these publicly accessible? And that begs the question of the fact that no one except giant institutions (governments, corporations) has the computing power to do those analyses. It's like freedom of the press when you can't afford a press.
They want to predict when the people will revolt. Ok. But where's the people's capacity to predict what the government and specific corporations are going to do? This is so one-sided. It empowers only half of Robert's vision of open source intelligence, and it feels like the same old crap is being given new capacities. This is collective intelligence?!!!? This is panopticism – the ability of the power center at the top to see everything going on the whole system. It has been brilliantly contrasted by Jean-Francois Noubel with holopticism – the ability of the whole and all its parts to view the whole. We don't need more panopticism. We need more holopticism, to help us navigate our collective destiny.
I am disgusted and horrified.
What can be done to reclaim the good name of collective intelligence? I do not feel drawn to or capable of organizing the kind of professional outrage that headed off Operation Camelot and Total Information Awareness (see the article). But I'll be damned if I will lend my good name to this so-called collective intelligence initiative. At the very least, I can blog my protest – and have it picked up at least by IARPA….
JOIN BLACK FARMERS AS THEY OCCUPY DC'S FRANKLIN PARK ON 10/24/11: BLACK FARMERS STILL AWAIT JUSTICE
Contrary to popular belief, Black farmers in the United States still have not received justice. Despite media reports to the contrary, not a single Pigford I farmer has received justice. Pigford I farmers are the original Black farmers who filed discrimination cases against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) resulting in the USDA acknowledgement of systemic and persistent intentional discrimination against Black farmers that had the result of the loss of approximately 13 million acres of Black-owned land. At stake today is approximately 1.5 million of the last remaining 3 million acres of Black-owned land. Continue reading “Event: 24 Oct 0900-1200 Franklin Park Washington DC Black Farmers”
Phi Beta Iota: If there is one video that could catalyze a General Strike and a demand for the impeachment of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton, along with the recall of Mayor Mike Bloomberg, this is the one. The US Government–and the New York Police Department–are OUT OF CONTROL, committing crimes against humanity, and long overdue for abolishment and a clean-sheet fresh start. The Electoral Reform Act of 2012 may be the last opportunity for a non-violent revolution in what was once America the Beautiful.
Phi Beta Iota: This is the single best reality rant we have seen, kudos to Brother John for pointing it out. No one is qualified to run for office without reading this first. No on is qualified to vote without reading this first. This is the “reset” button on reality & integrity in the USA and elsewhere.
Hmmmm. Can you spell unethical idiocy? AT BEST, the Iranian Liberation Nut-Jobs. AT WORST, another Israeli false flag operation. In the middle, the usual out-of-control lunatic covert action wanna-bees.
Robert Steele adds: if and when this becomes fully exposed, it will qualify as a “precipitant” of revolution, showing the public with stark immediacy the degree to which the US government lacks integrity as well as intelligence.
Fedor Dostoevsky:A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else.
Carl Jung: The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community.
Daniel Ellsberg speaking to Henry Kissinger: The danger is, you’ll become like a moron. You’ll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours” [because of your blind faith in the value of your narrow and often incorrect secret information].
