Analysis – Page 7 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/10/022011/10/02

Patrick Meier: Ushahidi Emergent as Democracy in Being

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Hacking, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Reform, Serious Games, Technologies, Threats, Tools

Theorizing Ushahidi: An Academic Treatise

Posted on October 2, 2011 by Patrick Meier

[This is an excerpt taken from Chapter 1 of my dissertation]

Activists are not only turning to social media to document unfolding events, they are increasingly mapping these events for the world to bear witness. We’ve seen this happen in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen and beyond. My colleague Alexey Sidorenko describes this new phenomenon as a “mapping reflex.” When student activists from Khartoum got in touch earlier this year, they specifically asked for a map, one that would display their pro-democracy protests and the government crackdown. Why? They wanted the world to see that the Arab Spring extended to the Sudan.

The Ushahidi platform is increasingly used to map information generated by crowds in near-real time like the picture depicted above. Why is this important? Because live public maps can help synchronize shared awareness, an important catalyzing factor of social movements, according to Jürgen Habermas. Recall Habermas’s treaties that “those who take on the tools of open expression become a public, and the presence of a synchronized public increasingly constrains un-democratic rulers while expanding the right of that public.”

Continue reading “Patrick Meier: Ushahidi Emergent as Democracy in Being”

2011/09/272011/09/27

Tom Atlee: Whole System Conversations – Voice of the Whole

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Blog Wisdom, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), IO Sense-Making, Key Players, Methods & Process, Open Government, Policies, Strategy, Threats

Whole System Conversations – and the Voice of the Whole

WHO PARTICIPATES IN “WHOLE SYSTEM” CONVERSATIONS? – PARTISANS, STAKEHOLDERS, DOMAINS, AND CITIZENS

by Tom Atlee

Consciously convened conversations have many functions. Many seek simply to get people talking with each other. Others try to bring together what they call “the whole system” to address that system's collective issues or dreams. Who is involved in these “whole system” conversations?

A “whole system”, in this case, involves all the parties who play – or could play – roles in some social unit or situation. The social unit could be a family or relationship, a group or organization, a community or a whole society. A situation might be, on the one hand, an issue, a problem, or a conflict – or, on the other hand, an inquiry, an opportunity, a shift, or simply a periodic reflection about what's happening. We can convene conversations around any of these things.

So how do we decide who the parties or players are? How do we “cut the pie” of the whole system? And, if we're ambitious, how do we elicit a “voice of the whole”?

I see four different approaches to defining who “a whole system” includes. Each approach has its own rationale and appropriate usages. They are not mutually exclusive, but are usually used more or less separately. Perhaps being aware of them and building synergies between them would enhance the power and wisdom of our conversations. These approaches include:

Read full essay.

Phi Beta Iota: Tom Atlee is in our view the living founding father of Epoch B–there have been others before him, and there are other now, but for us, he is the spiritual center of gravity for doing the right thing now, here, in America. Please support his work on behalf of all of us.

Tom Atlee, The Co-Intelligence Institute, POB 493, Eugene, OR 97440
http://www.co-intelligence.org / http://tom-atlee.posterous.com
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2011/09/272011/09/27

Ric Merrifield: When Metrics & Assumptions Are Wrong

03 Economy, Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

Moneyball meets cater2.me and Marvin Windows

f you somehow missed it, they turned Michael Lewis’ book Moneyballinto a movie that premiered last weekend. Given how much coverage it got, I was stunned to see it come in third place at the box office, behind the re-released Lion King of all things.

I have been aware of the book and Billy Beane since Beane turned the baseball world on its ear by proving that the old school measure of talent, batting average, was necessary but not sufficient to make the best decisions about hiring, and talent is everything in baseball – or to put it in Yogi Berra-oid terms – 90% of baseball is 50% talent.

Beane showed that things lke on base percentage, slugging percentage, even the number of walks a player gets can have greater statistical impact on the outcome of games – and of course winning is what matters in the end. And for years, Beane was the only one managing a team this way, so he had the advantage and his team did better while spending less on their talent (because everyone was still so focused on batting averages). Now everyone follows this model so the playing field is once again relatively level (albeit a new higher level).

Friday I was listening to NPR and they were talking about the book and the movie and why the book was such a huge hit and the person they were interviewing said it really well – he said the reason Moneyball was such an “important” book was because it rattled an entire industry by showing it the set-in-stone metrics that industry was using were not enough, and that sent ripples into other industies suggesting that they rethink their metrics as well. In many respects, my book Rethink is a guide to helping organizations do just that.

After I heard that piece on NPR I saw two different articles in The New York Times talking about two very different companies who have followed the Moneyball/Rethink logic and offer some great examples of non-obvious changes.

Continue reading “Ric Merrifield: When Metrics & Assumptions Are Wrong”

2011/09/222011/09/22

DefDog: The Importance of Selection Bias in Statistics

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Communities of Practice, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Officers Call, Policies, Threats

This would be a great tool to determine the analytical capabilities of the IC….bet they would miss it….

The importance of “selection bias” in statistics

During WWII, statistician Abraham Wald was asked to help the British decide where to add armor to their bombers. After analyzing the records, he recommended adding more armor to the places where there was no damage!

This seems backward at first, but Wald realized his data came from bombers that survived. That is, the British were only able to analyze the bombers that returned to England; those that were shot down over enemy territory were not part of their sample. These bombers’ wounds showed where they could afford to be hit.

Said another way, the undamaged areas on the survivors showed where the lost planes must have been hit because the planes hit in those areas did not return from their missions.

selection bias — Click on Image to Enlarge

Phi Beta Iota: The US secret intelligence community is largely worthless, providing “at best” 4% of what the President or a major commander needs, and virtually nothing for everyone else. They keep doing the wrong thing righter, instead of the right thing. To do the right thing requires integrity. Go figure.

2010: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy Updated

2011/09/012011/09/01

Steven Aftergood: Top Secret America–Totally Dysfunctional

Analysis, Commerce, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Policies, Threats

A SPOTLIGHT ON “TOP SECRET AMERICA”

Most people can vaguely recall that there was once no U.S. Department of Homeland Security and that there was a time when you didn't have to take your shoes off before boarding an airplane or submit to other dubious security practices.

But hardly anyone truly comprehends the enormous expansion of the military, intelligence and homeland security bureaucracy that has occurred over the past decade, and the often irrational transformation of American life that has accompanied it.

The great virtue of the new book Top Secret America by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin (Little Brown, September 2011) is that it illuminates various facets of our secret government, lifting them from the periphery of awareness to full, sustained attention.

Top Secret America, which builds on the series of stories the authors produced for the Washington Post in July 2010, delineates the contours of “the new American security state.” Since 9/11, for example, some 33 large office complexes for top secret intelligence work have been completed in the Washington DC area, the equivalent in size of nearly three Pentagons. More than 250,000 contractors are working on top secret programs. A bewildering number of agencies – more than a thousand — have been created to execute security policy, including at least 24 new organizations last year alone. And so on.

But the vast scale of this activity says nothing about its quality or utility. The authors, who are scrupulous in their presentation of the facts, are critical in their evaluation:

“One of the greatest secrets of Top Secret America is its disturbing dysfunction.”

Continue reading “Steven Aftergood: Top Secret America–Totally Dysfunctional”

2011/08/18

Patrick Meier: Crowdsourcing Imagery Analysis

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Blog Wisdom, Collective Intelligence, Geospatial, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Threats

Analyzing Satellite Imagery of the Somali Crisis Using Crowdsourcing

EXTRACT:

Here’s the plan. He talks to UNOSAT and Google about acquiring high-resolution satellite imagery for those geographic areas for which they need more information on. A colleague of mine in San Diego just launched his own company to develop mechanical turk & micro tasking solutions for disaster response. He takes this satellite imagery and cuts it into say 50×50 kilometers square images for micro-tasking purposes.

We then develop a web-based interface where volunteers from the Standby Volunteer Task Force (SBTF) sign in and get one high resolution 50×50 km image displayed to them at a time. For each image, they answer the question: “Are there any human shelters discernible in this picture? [Yes/No].” If yes, what would you approximate the population of that shelter to be? [1-20; 21-50; 50-100; 100+].” Additional questions could be added. Note that we’d provide them with guidelines on how to identify human shelters and estimate population figures.

Reference: Smart Nation Act (Simplified) 2011

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