Category: Collective Intelligence

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Design for the Other 90% Exhibit + “Micro-Giving” Global Needs Index to Connect Rich to Poor/Fullfill Global-to-Local Requests

01 Poverty, 02 Infectious Disease, 03 Economy, 04 Education, 06 Family, 07 Health, 12 Water, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Geospatial, Gift Intelligence, International Aid, microfinancing, Mobile
Link to online exhibit

“The majority of the world’s designers focus all their efforts on developing products and services exclusively for the richest 10% of the world’s customers. Nothing less than a revolution in design is needed to reach the other 90%.”
—Dr. Paul Polak, International Development Enterprises

Exhibition on view National Geographic Museum, Washington, DC through September 6, 2010

Imagine connecting item & service-requests to those lacking basic needs into a global online and mobile market forum like a Craigslist.org merged with Kiva+ SMS/txt message capabilities, something like Ushahidi, Wikimapia, as well as GoogleEarth-like & SecondLife-like 3D map to post photos and messages of requests and successful transactions without a centralized “middle-man” who manages everything.

Example: An African farmer needs a part for 1950’s Romanian pump. An aid worker posts need via UNICEF Rapid SMS. A Romanian engineer volunteers to make the part; a German pays for FedEx from Romania to Nigeria; a tourist commits to personally delivering it and posting a photograph of the farmer and repaired engine online to close out need.

It would be designed so that anyone could add “affordable” items (that meet a particular criteria) to the list. Please email earthintelnet |at| gmail.com if you have suggestions. For more info on the concept, see page 7 of the Earth Intelligence Network overview draft and this global range of nano-needs graphic. On 7/21/10 Craig Newmark of Craigslist.org sent this email: “..a number of people say they're working on similar efforts,” but he did not specify. Another great example is Practical Action's “Practical Presents” store where a goat, fish cage, farm tools, and many more products can be purchased for donation.

Global Range of Needs Index/Map/Forum could include the following items:
+ Cheap colloidal silver-treated water filters: see Potters Without Borders & Potters for Peace

+ Lifestraw, the one person water filter that can be worn around the neck

+ Saline water condenses into drinkable water using the WaterCone (video) (product info)

+ Various water storage products (bladder & plastic lined pond)

+ Peanut butter project (child malnutrition) connected with UNICEF, Doctors without Borders, USAID, etc and PlumpyNut

+ Affordable burn-proof stove | Guatemala Stove Project | stoves fr the Congo | Darfurstoves.org

+ Hand-Crank Battery-Free Dynamo Flashlight | “Light Up the World” solar powered battery L.E.D. lighting

+ List of innovations here from the Honey Bee Network

+ Cell phones (regionally compatible) / One Mobile per Human / One Mobile per Child / instead of just One Laptop per Child (see the $12 computer project) There are phone donation campaigns but the closest one found so far aims only at health care workers. And this wireless, local, do-it-yourself, telephone company toolkit.

+ KICKSTART water pumps for crop farming

+ Micro-irrigation systems for small plots (mentioned in this video at the chapter 6 mark), also called PEPSEE systems (also see DripTech)

+ Moringa seeds/leaves (nutrients + water filtering)

+ “Pot-inside-Pot Cooler” filled with sand and water (see 36 sec video). When that water evaporates, it pulls heat from the interior of the smaller pot, in which vegetables and fruits can be kept. See this African “refrigerator” called Zeer Pot (also: link1 | link2 | link3) which can keep meat fresh for five days mentioned in the book Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.

+ Shoes (Soles4Souls.org)

+ Shelter (mini-domes) and Architectureforhumanity.org (video in Haiti), Open Architecture Network, rammed earth, tires, and plastic bottle innovation, Earthship Biotecture, Grassroots United, and Uber Shelter (video).

+ 10 cent blood-type test, 99 cent ovarian cancer blood test

+ Toothpaste & toothbrushes or teeth-cleaning twigs | African twig brush/chew sticks (sell to Westerners, sold here) | traveler feedback on chewsticks | Miswak | Other African info and some historical perspective on chew sticks

+ Solar dynamo radios + Farm Radio (African rural poor)| Healthy Radio

+ Bicycles / bicycles for humanity (and locks!) ONE | TWO

+ Devices powered by bicycle (Global Cycle Solutions)

+ Durable versatile safer wheelchairs Video 1 | Video 2 | Whirlwind Wheelchairs International (open source)

+ Low-cost infant warmers

+ Affordable prosthetics, eyeglasses, mobile eye exam lense

Other needs: medical supplies ($3 negative pressure pump, telemedicine microscope, Rice Univ project list), seeds & fertilizer, toilets (see this loo, & one-time use bags), electricity and medical equipment in Afghan hospitals, products for the elderly, games for children, and services such as the needs for software to be developed where there is a desire for “Code in Country” (CIC), and a global “classifieds” tool for job-hunting via mobile SMS (Craigslist.org but with more reach and aware to those without a web connection). Continue reading “Design for the Other 90% Exhibit + “Micro-Giving” Global Needs Index to Connect Rich to Poor/Fullfill Global-to-Local Requests”

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Citizen Intelligence Call Centers & Open311 to Connect Citizens to Governance & “True Costs” via Online & Mobile

Collective Intelligence, Mobile, Open Government

CitySourced Integrates San Francisco’s Open 311 System
San Francisco — May 5th, 2010 — CitySourced, a real time mobile civic engagement company and a finalist at the 2009 TechCrunch50 conference, announced today that its innovative mobile phone application is now integrated with the San Francisco Open311 API to send reports from CitySourced directly to San Francisco’s 311 system. 311 systems allow citizens to connect directly with non-emergency government offices.

Call centers for people to find out anything they need “one cell call at a time” is mentioned in two of these books published by the 501(c)3 Earth Intelligence Network (Collective Intelligence & Intelligence for Earth). A product and service system that provides all supply chain information & “true cost” information to anyone (to help with purchasing decisions) with a phone (SMS & audio) is also being advocated (public kiosks, too). This could also be added in the future to this kind of product video screen.

An Open 311 System for the City of New York – a Letter to Mayor Bloomberg (May 2009)

Open311 – A Platform for a Participatory Civic Infrastructure presentation by Philip Ashlock (September 8, 2009) A good slogan in this presentation is “911 for emergency action, 311 for emergent action.”

Open311.org & Open311 API Wiki

NYC's 311 web portal

San Francisco's 311 web portal

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Whitehouse Needing Online and Mobile Crowdsourcing & Collective Intelligence for Decision-Support

Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Government, Mobile, Open Government, Technologies
Full article

The Next Apollo Project in 140 Characters

Innovators are being asked to friend Uncle Sam as the next good ideas for the government are being sought through social networks.

By Emily Badger

Anil Dash sums up the power of crowdsourcing with a simple question he put to his Twitter feed a few months back. It was time for a new cell phone, he announced. What should he get?

“Somebody I don’t even really know said, ‘Here’s a list of the most popular handsets in America ranked by how much radiation they put out,’” Dash recalled.

Now he had an info stream he hadn’t even thought to consider. And if social media could better inform his relatively small cell phone conundrum, imagine what it could do for the big-picture questions we really want to get right — the questions government answers on behalf of us all.

“We have this disconnect where, as a private citizen, I can ask for my friends’ opinions on something on Twitter or Facebook,” Dash said. “But yet, someone can be making decisions that affect all of us” — a government official, that is — “but not have that ability.”

Full article here

Related:
+ http://expertlabs.org
+ http://expertlabs.org/thinktank.html (Open Source crowdsourcing web application)
+ Large list of “virtual democracy” related resources

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Journal: One Mobile Per Child

About the Idea, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), IO Multinational, microfinancing, Mobile, Real Time, Reform, Tools

Phi Beta Iota: The idea of one mobile per person was originally devised by the Earth Intelligence Network, and is articulated in both brief form and in a full-length book.  Now the idea is emerging, spontaneously, from others.  Below is a link to a letter in the Journal of Health Informatics in Developing Countries.

Letter: One mobile per child: a tractable global health intervention

The authors, Prajesh Chhanabhai and Alec Hold, one working at the University of Otago in New Zeland, the other for the Department of Economic and Soical Affairs in the United Nations, make several important points, not least of which is the price point: mobile telephones are being offered in Venezuela for $15, which is half the price the World Bank negotiated with Motorola.

If and when the Chinese see the opportunity (free cell phone, no extra charge for listening in), we should see both free cell phones and eventually free airtime as well as free call centers to educate the poor “one cell call at a time” at the same time that we recoup the investment in elevated national productivity, now proven to be associated with the diffusion of cell phone access.

It merits observation that the cell phone is now the “gift of life” that any one of the one billion rich (80% of whom do not give to charity now) can endow, down to a specific person in a specific village.  The sooner we make cell phones ubiquitous, the sooner we can start exposing corruption at all levels (with web sites that make sense of text messages and expose corruption in near-real-time “by name,” and also creating infinite wealth among the four billion at the “bottom of the pyramid.”  The human brain is the one inexhaustible resource we have, giving every human a cell phone is the fastest way to harnessing the distributed intelligence of the Whole Earth.

Interesting Side Note: Carlos “slim” Helu (richest person in the world) has a major stake in Tracfone (some phones go for $10). He could be a major player in the one mobile per child campaign. Venezuela president Hugo Chavez has a Twitter account and the Earth Intelligence Network just posted >>  earthintelnet @chavezcandanga “the Vergatario” ($15 phone) + Carlos “Slim” Helu ? http://phibetaiota.net/?p=25785 #Vergatario #Venezuela #CarlosSlim

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Event: 25-26 Oct 2010, Brussels, Crisis Group’s Annual Global Briefing

Collective Intelligence, CrisisWatch reports
event notice

The International Crisis Group is pleased to announce its new premiere annual event in Brussels: The Global Briefing. This two-day exclusive gathering – involving over thirty of Crisis Group’s senior staff and expert Board members – will take you beyond the headlines to examine urgent issues and solutions to the major conflict flashpoints across the globe today. The briefing is targeted at mid-level and senior representatives from governments, multilaterals, think tanks, NGOs, media, foundations, corporations and universities and will be limited to 120 participants. Details on the agenda, format, cost, and registration process will be posted on Crisis Group’s website at the end of June.

Related:
CrisisGroup update: Conflict in Congo

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Reference: Strategic Asymmetry–with Comment

Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Computer/online security, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, Geospatial, History, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), International Aid, Key Players, Policies, Policy, Reform, Research resources, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools, True Cost
Full Source Online

Dr. Steve Metz was published on this topic by the Military Review in July-August 2001.  A great deal of original thinking came out of the U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) in the aftermath of the 1998 Army Strategy Conference, and sadly, none of it has gained any traction with any Secretary of Defense (or State) since then.  Should Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) actually be selected to be the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI), this is a concept he is going to have to integrate into his thinking.

Although Dr. Metz fully understands the asymmetry of will and touches on the asymmetry of morale, he does not address the core intelligence question of our century: the asymmetry of morality.  Will & Ariel Durant understood this and highlighted the strategic value of being “in the right” in their capstone work, The Lessons of History.  Others, including Buckminster Fuller in Critical Path and Dr. Robert Ackoff (see first link below), understood that context matters, and within context, morality and doing the right thing.

Morale is not the same as moral, and the “collateral advantage” that allows one to harness the distributed intelligence of the Whole Earth–to receive unsolicited warnings large and small, to receive unsolicited good ideas large and small–comes ONLY when one holds the moral high ground.  It merits stressing that CONSENSUS is most easily achieved when those striving to achieve consensus share a common faith in integrity–in morality.

America is in the wrong today, because the US Government is imposing on both the domestic public and on humanity at large the wrong policies, the wrong programs, and the wrong acquisitions–as well as the wrong distribution of US taxpayer funds in the service of dictators, cartel leaders, and predatory immoral banks and businesses not at all interested in earning legal ethical profit fully compliant with true cost economics also known as the triple bottom line.

If the next DNI is to be successful, they must:

Continue reading “Reference: Strategic Asymmetry–with Comment”

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Journal: With No Successor In Sight, Intelligence Czar Departs

Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Computer/online security, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Geospatial, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Key Players, Maps, Methods & Process, microfinancing, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Open Government, Policies, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Research resources, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools, True Cost

FULL STORY:  Declassified (newsweek.com/blogs)

May 28, 2010

By Mark Hosenball

On Dennis Blair’s last day in office as director of national intelligence, the Obama administration seems more stymied than ever in its efforts to replace him.

Following a torrent of criticism from Capitol Hill—apparently touched off by this Declassified interview with Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the House Intelligence Committee’s top Republican—the candidacy of James Clapper looks doubtful to say the least. On top of Hoekstra’s criticism of the retired three-star general, who currently serves as the Defense Department’s intelligence chief, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s leaders are now also publicly saying they think he’s the wrong man for the job.

. . . . . .

The latest boomlet in speculation on potential candidates is centered on Michael Vickers, a former Green Beret and CIA operative who has been the Defense Department’s top civilian in charge of counterterrorism and special-operations programs slnce late in the Bush administration. Vickers was one of 15 potential DNI candidates we identified when news of the job opening broke….

. . . . . . .

But other names keep coming up. Some, such as Homeland Security undersecretary Rand Beers, Joint Chiefs of Staff Deputy Chairman Gen. James Cartwright, and outgoing Sen. Evan Bayh, have surfaced before (one former official who worked in national security positions with Beers describes him as “indefatigable”). But others are new to this particular search, including Rep. Jane Harman, former Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, and former CIA deputy director John McLaughlin.

Phi Beta Iota:  Worth a complete read.  Here are the fifteen potential DNI's they identified earlier:, followed by our picks.

Political and bureaucratic heavyweights:
FBI Director Robert Mueller
CIA Director Leon Panetta
Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg
Marine Gen. James Cartwright, deputy chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

Intelligence and defense technocrats:
Lt. Gen. Jim Clapper, currently Defense Department intelligence supremo;
Michael Vickers, assistant defense secretary for special operations;
John Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary;
Harvard academic Joseph Nye, also a former senior Pentagon official; and
John McHugh, a former GOP congressman whom Obama named as secretary of the Army.
 
High-profile intelligence politicos:
John Brennan, the White House counterterrorism and Homeland Security supremo; or
Rand Beers, a former career intelligence official who left his job as a senior counterterrorism adviser in the George W. Bush White House to become national security adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, and now serves as undersecretary of Homeland Security

High-profile politicos:
former Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican close to Obama; former congressman and
intelligence-reform campaigner Lee Hamilton;
former Indiana senator Evan Bayh; and
former representative Tim Roemer (another intel-reform campaigner who is now U.S. ambassador in India)

Phi Beta Iota:  Everyone in the above lists is a ridiculous untenable suggestion with one exception: Senator Chuck Hagel.  His combination of integrity, substantive experience, standing on the Hill, and general non-partisan common sense, is ideal.  What he lacks is a kick-ass deputy who actually understands all the crap that the agencies–and their den mother Jim Clapper–put forward.  Leon Panetta would actually be very good as the Deputy, responsible for turning off all funds to all agencies at 20% a year (10% a year restored for new initiatives; savings to education and national research under DNI oversight as provided for in the Smart Nation-Safe Nation Act) but Hagel is going to need a kitchen cabinet of truth-tellers and we are pretty sure he is not even aware of who they might be.  That is his sucking chest wound–if he solves that he will not only earn Obama a second term, he will transcend politics and impact directly on the totality of all budgets–US, state & local, other nations, corporations, NGOs.  Jack Devine is in the wings in New York, the Trilateral Commission's choice for either DNI or Director of Central Intelligence, he has our vote for the latter position.

The problem President Obama has is in the White House is that no one working for him actually “gets it” with respect to 21st Century governance–between his pogomist and his pollster and his talented but oblivious others, he is running on fumes, will not get a second term, and is simply counting the days to when he can follow Bill Bradley, Al Gore, and Bill Clinton in Goldman Sachs honey-land–and screw the American public, they were never the intended beneficiaries of all this in the first place.

References for any future DNI:

Human Intelligence (HUMINT): All Humans, All Minds, All the Time (SSI, 2010)
The Smart Nation Act: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest (OSS, 2006)
Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time (OSS, 2006)
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political (OSS, 2002)
On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World (AFCEA, 2000; OSS, 2001)

and for the really big picture:

Intelligence for Earth: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability (EIN, 2010)
Collective Intelligence: Crating a Prosperous World at Peace (EIN, 2008)
Peacekeeping Intelligence:  Emerging Concepts for the Future (OSS, 2003)