References – Page 121 – Public Intelligence Blog

Plants and fish in a closed loop on any rooftop or other available space.

Jeff Rubin on new food and energy crisis

Short video, toss in sabotage of pipelines and extreme financial problems, you have a melt-down. See also his book, Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization.

Japan Acknowledges Radioactive Beef Sold to Markets, Restaurants

Cessium for the masses. A good example of why global sourcing of food/services = no control. See Urban Farming above for an antidote.

2011/07/132011/07/13

Reference: GW Seminar on Reflexive Systems

Briefings (Core)

For several years a group of faculty members, students, and people from off campus met once a month to discuss “complex systems”. Later we decided to discuss “reflexive systems” as the next step in the systems sciences.

The systems sciences and cybernetics provide a general theory of perception, cognition, learning, adaptation, and understanding, whether these phenomena occur in human beings, groups, organizations, nations, or machines. Just as physics provides a fundamental theory of matter and energy, which is used in the various fields of engineering, cybernetics may one day be seen as providing a fundamental theory of information and regulation for the fields of the social and design sciences .

Reflexivity is similiar to second order cybernetics. Both emphasize including the observer in what is observed. Cybernetics has already had an impact on a wide range of fields – computer science, robotics, engineering, biology, psychology, management, sociology, political science, economics and the philosophy of science. As a transdisciplinary field cybernetics serves as a catalyst for further developments in many fields.

The group meets from September to April except December.The presentations and discusssions take place at The George Washington University, from 10 a.m to noon in Funger Hall, 2201 G Street NW, Washington DC (coffee available, lunch afterwards).

Archives 2006-2011 [to be continued]

Tip of the Hat to Stuart Umpleby for the pointer.

2011/07/11

Winslow Wheeler: Analysis of House Mood on Defense Cuts

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Budgets & Funding, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, DoD, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Deeds of War, Methods & Process, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace Intelligence, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

WinslowWheeler Cropped — Winslow Wheeler

Below is an important and interesting analysis of John Isaacs of the Council for a Livable World of the “mood” of the House on defense issues. I do not agree with all of the characterizations or implications (and I agree with some), but I do believe John (whom I have known professionally with respect for almost four decades) has collected some significant information. From this and other data, I conclude:

1) No one should be surprised at the House' ambivalence on a defense issue like Libya. It has been the hallmark of Congress for longer than I can recall to permit presidents to do as they please internationally while sniping from the sidelines and avoiding taking responsibility;

2) Congress pats itself on its own back for pretending to support frugality in the Pentagon by taking easy votes such as against the second engine for the F-35 (which SecDef Gates successfully painted as a pork program) and against a piece of the DOD funding for military bands (see below). The size of the votes on matters that are actually significant, such as the Barney Frank/Ron Paul and the Mulvaney amendments to cut from $8.5 to $17 billion from the 2012 DOD budget, shows a new high-water mark for budget cutting in the Pentagon not seen in Congress since — by my recollection — in the mid-1980s when the so-called Military Reform Caucus and budget cutters like Chuck Grassley were fully active.

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Analysis of House Mood on Defense Cuts”

2011/07/102011/07/10

Tom Atlee: Bacteria–and Human Intelligence

Blog Wisdom, Cultural Intelligence

Bacteria — and the intelligence of individuals and collectives

Collective intelligence is not an abstraction. It is a real-world emergent phenomenon — a phenomenon that ranges from collective stupidity to collective brilliance. It arises from interactions among entities in shared situations. Collective intelligence — of any quality — can just happen, or it can be consciously enhanced or undermined. The diversity of the entities involved and the free flow (and absorption and consideration) of relevant information among them can facilitate higher levels of collective intelligence. But regardless of what is happening, some level of collective intelligence is always present wherever interacting entities share fate in shared circumstances.

Many people think collective intelligence only applies to groups of people or, perhaps also, to groups of primates and social insects. But we as individuals are actually intelligent collectives. One aspect of this can be seen when a therapist helps a patients sort out different “voices” inside them — and then has those voices talk to each other — sometimes with the patient physically moving to different chairs assigned to each voice. In therapy, these bickering “voices” are helped to come up with some coherent decisions or more conscious relationships among themselves that make the patient more functional and feel more whole. As it gets its act together, this little internal community acting as one person usually seems to work quite well!

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Bacteria–and Human Intelligence”

2011/07/082011/07/08

Stuart Umpleby: Papers on Reflexivity, Soros Reviews

Academia, Advanced Cyber/IO, Articles & Chapters, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Methods & Process, Policies, Strategy, Threats

2010

“From Complexity to Reflexivity: The Next Step in the Systems Sciences”

2009

with Emil Nedev, “A Reflexive view of a Transdisciplinary Field: The Case of Cybernetics”

2007

“Reflexivity in Social Systems: The Theories of George Soros”

1990

“A Preliminary Inventory of Theories Available to Guide the Reform of Socialist Societies”

Many Other Papers

From BRIC to BRICS–Sanya Declaration

George Soros Nails It: Intelligence with Integrity

Continue reading “Stuart Umpleby: Papers on Reflexivity, Soros Reviews”

2011/07/082011/07/08

John Marke: Complexity Enhanced Risk Insights

Blog Wisdom, White Papers

Accenture isn’t “top of mind” when we think of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM)…for now. I recall a Senior Director at consulting firm I worked for (it's no longer in business) tell an auditorium of about 1000 consultants “I'm not afraid of Accenture. They don't scare me.” Ah huh.

I thought: “That's because you haven't come up against them in the market.” Look, this Risk Report is more than a compilation of statistics and trends, it tells us a lot about Accenture's corporate culture and what's important to them. But first, go get the App!

The App – They ought to charge you for it. A couple of clicks and you’re got customized and mobile knowledge management. Works on your iPhone, iPad, Android device or laptop. The only way they could have made it better is to have tossed in Key Board Cat for good measure. Accenture wants to be your E-Buddy and they'll go through a lot of expense to spoon feed you great info.

Continue reading “John Marke: Complexity Enhanced Risk Insights”

2011/07/07

Jon Lebkowsky: Drought No Fireworks A Metaphor

Blog Wisdom, Cultural Intelligence, IO Sense-Making

Uncle Vanya vs Transformers near the 4th of July

It’s a weird culture that mashes Chekhov into the same week with Optimus Prime, but we followed an experience of Uncle Vanya (with terrific performances by Rob Matney and Liz Fisher, and staging that puts you right there on the farm) with a 3D romp through the Transformers universe, and somehow I’m trying to connect the dots. In Chekhov’s play, you could see trouble brewing – Rob says “that Vanya is about the moment before an epochal and cataclysmic culture shift as a culture and these lives look into a future that appears to promise little.” Sound familiar? Transformers, on the other hand, offers a world where one set of massive robotic aliens wants to enslave the human race, and another set – against all logic – are sworn to protect us. A massive battle levels Chicago; at the end, humanity is free from Decepticon enslavement (but not necessarily from our own particularly human enslavements, not addressed in the film, though the nastiest character on board is the human accountant, played by Patrick Dempsey, who makes a devil’s deal with the Decepticons).

While I experienced fanboy delight at the expert use of 3D and exquisitely choreographed robotic battles in the Transformers film, the very real tensions within Uncle Vanya were more real and more compelling. No Decepticons there, but the sense of a subtler, willing enslavement – hard-working farmers exploited by a spoiled elite, and everyone miserable except perhaps the character Sonya, who ends the play with these words: “We shall hear the angels, we shall see the whole sky all diamonds, we shall see how all earthly evil, all our sufferings, are drowned in the mercy that will fill the whole world. And our life will grow peaceful, tender, sweet as a caress. . . . In your life you haven’t known what joy was; but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait. . . . We shall rest.” (This makes me think of the idea of grace in Malick’s Tree of Life, which is probably a reference to the concept of “actual grace”: a supernatural gift of God to intellectual creatures (men, angels) for their eternal salvation, whether the latter be furthered and attained through salutary acts or a state of holiness.)

After Vanya and Transformers, we had a muted 4th of July – in the midst of drought, no fireworks, surely a metaphor for our times.

Category: References

John Robb: Signals for the Future