Methods & Process – Page 28 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/04/142011/04/14

Peter Thiel (PayPal) on Education Bubble

04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, Academia, Corruption, IO Impotency, Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Standards, Waste (materials, food, etc)

JOURNAL: The Education Bubble

Peter Thiel (Paypal and other ventures) has been making some waves for his position that higher education in the US is the next bubble. In short, he's right. Given what we now have available in terms of tools, it should be possible to get an Ivy league education for $20 a month.

Instead we are getting a stagnant product that is so out of date that it doesn't deliver much social and economic value. Even worse: it's undergoing hyper-inflationary price increases.

. . . . . . .

The solution to this problem is to help create employment opportunities (like what we are doing with our open venture start-up) that don't use a degree as a gating mechanism. A solution that creates its own educational modules if needed (from scratch using modern tools and techniques). A solution that delivers something better than an Ivy league eduction and then backs it up with economic and social opportunities that exceed what you get in the global econonomic and social sprawl.

college bubble — Click on Image to Enlarge

Peter Thiel: We’re in a Bubble and It’s Not the Internet. It’s Higher Education.

Sarah Lacy Apr 10, 2011

TechCrunch

Image Source: Mark J. Perry (read article)

Fair warning: This article will piss off a lot of you.

I can say that with confidence because it’s about Peter Thiel. And Thiel – the PayPal co-founder, hedge fund manager and venture capitalist – not only has a special talent for making money, he has a special talent for making people furious.

. . . . . . .

Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is about security and insurance against the future. Both whisper a seductive promise into the ears of worried Americans: Do this and you will be safe. The excesses of both were always excused by a core national belief that no matter what happens in the world, these were the best investments you could make. Housing prices would always go up, and you will always make more money if you are college educated.

Like any good bubble, this belief– while rooted in truth– gets pushed to unhealthy levels.

. . . . . . .

But Thiel’s issues with education run even deeper. He thinks it’s fundamentally wrong for a society to pin people’s best hope for a better life on something that is by definition exclusionary.

. . . . . . .

Thiel’s solution to opening the minds of those who can’t easily go to Harvard? Poke a small but solid hole in this Ivy League bubble by convincing some of the most talented kids to stop out of school and try another path. The idea of the successful drop out has been well documented in technology entrepreneurship circles. But Thiel and Founders Fund managing partner Luke Nosek wanted to fund something less one-off, so they came up with the idea of the “20 Under 20″ program last September, announcing it just days later at San Francisco Disrupt. The idea was simple: Pick the best twenty kids he could find under 20 years of age and pay them $100,000 over two years to leave school and start a company instead.

Read entire article by Sarah Lacy….

Web Stack

Phi Beta Iota: Read the chapter “Paradigms of Failure” in ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (EIN, 2008) to understand that the depth and breadth of the integrity failure in the USA. “Credentialling” is a form of top-down sub-prime scam, selling a credential instead of an education. As Thiel suggests, time for change at the top is long over-due.

2011/04/122011/04/12

Reference: Internet Freedom–and Control

03 Economy, 04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Autonomous Internet, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, InfoOps (IO), IO Multinational, Methods & Process, Mobile

Freedom on the Net: A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media

Freedom House 30 March 2009

As internet and mobile phone use explodes worldwide, governments are adopting new and multiple means for controlling these technologies that go far beyond technical filtering. Freedom on the Net provides a comprehensive look at these emerging tactics, raising concern over trends such as the “outsourcing of censorship” to private companies, the use of surveillance and the manipulation of online conversations by undercover agents. The study covers both repressive countries such as China and Iran and democratic ones such as India and the United Kingdom, finding some degree of internet censorship and control in all 15 nations studied.

Phi Beta Iota: Although somewhat dated, the report is worth a look. If overlain with the countries where poverty makes Internet access or control moot, the global picture is clear: despots and poverty are coincident with the physical and digital impoverishment of the people. The emergence on multiple fronts of movement to create the Autonomous Internet using the Open Source Tri-Fecta is encouraging.

2011/04/112013/02/09

Event/Trip Report/Reference: 1200-1330 8 Apr Woodrow Wilson Center DC In Search of a National Security Narrative for the 21st Century

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, History, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), International Aid, Key Players, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Open Government, Policies, Policy, Reform, Serious Games, Strategy, Threats

Wilson Center Collage JPEG with Y — Click on Image to Enlarge

“The National Conversation” Debuts

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars has announced a new initiative launching April 8, 2011: The National Conversation at the Woodrow Wilson Center. The National Conversation will examine overarching themes of U.S. international and domestic policy, drawing on high-profile guests and experts from all sides of the political sphere to provide thoughtful, intelligent explorations of challenging issues with the goal of informing the national public policy debate.

From uprisings in the Arab world to troubled economies around the globe, challenges to America’s role in the global community have seldom been greater or more complex. And with economic woes at home and our military capacity stretched thin through involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, many are left wondering about our ability to respond and adapt to a rapidly changing world. At a time when national unity around a shared vision is lacking, there is a growing belief that a new national security narrative must emerge that defines the role of the U.S. in global affairs for a new century. But can we achieve such a national consensus in this era of hyper-partisanship? A possible answer comes in the form of an anonymous “white paper.” Two US military officers have written an essay describing a vision for the missing narrative under the authorship of “Mr. Y.” Join our panel as it discusses the ideas contained in this provocative paper from an unexpected source. Is this the blueprint for the narrative we seek?

The inaugural National Conversation kicks off April 8 from 12:00 to 1:30 p.m., with a discussion on the search for a new national security narrative to guide U.S. policy in the 21st Century. Five panelists will participate in a discussion moderated by award-winning New York Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman. The panel will feature: Steve Clemons, founder of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation; Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim American to be elected into the U.S. Congress; Robert Kagan, senior fellow for foreign policy at the Brookings Institution; Brent Scowcroft, U.S. national security adviser to President Ford and President H.W. Bush; and Professor Anne Marie Slaughter, former director for policy planning for the U.S. Department of State and current Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Event Home Page

Watch Video of the Event (Permanent URL)

Note: Robert Steele invited comment starts at 01:15:12

Download “A National Strategic Narrative,” By Mr. Y (15 Page PDF)

Strategic Analytic Model from Earth Intelligence Network

Trip Report & Selected Links with Graphics Below the Line

Continue reading “Event/Trip Report/Reference: 1200-1330 8 Apr Woodrow Wilson Center DC In Search of a National Security Narrative for the 21st Century”

2011/04/112011/04/11

Reference: A National Strategic Narrative

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Key Players, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Policies, Policy, Reform, Serious Games, Strategy, Threats, True Cost, White Papers

cover strategic narrative — Click on Image to Enlarge

PDF (15 Pages)

2011 Cyber-Command or IO 21 + IO Roots

2011/04/102011/04/10

The Emergent Open Source Revolution

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Autonomous Internet, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Mobile, Open Government, Policies, Real Time, Reform, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools

REVOLUTION OS tells the inside story of the hackers who rebelled against the proprietary software model and Microsoft to create GNU/Linux and the Open Source movement.

On June 1, 2001, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said “Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.”

Microsoft fears GNU/Linux, and rightly so. GNU/Linux and the Open Source & Free Software movements arguably represent the greatest threat to Microsoft's way of life. Shot in cinemascope on 35mm film in Silicon Valley, REVOLUTION OS tracks down the key movers and shakers behind Linux, and finds out how and why Linux became such a potent threat.

REVOLUTION OS features interviews with Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, Brian Behlendorf, Michael Tiemann, Larry Augustin, Frank Hecker, and Rob Malda. To view the trailer or the first eight minutes go to the ifilm website for REVOLUTION OS.

Two books below the line…

Continue reading “The Emergent Open Source Revolution”

2011/04/092011/04/09

40 Years of Doing Intelligence Analysis-Lessons

Analysis, Articles & Chapters, Intelligence (government), Methods & Process

face chris pallaris — Chris Pallaris Recommends

What I Learned in 40 Years of Doing Intelligence Analysis for US Foreign Policymakers

Martin Petersen Studies in Intelligence Vol 55 No 1

An advantage of getting older is increased perspective. I have been doing, thinking and writing about intelligence and intelligence analysis for almost 40 years now. The business we are in has changed a great deal in that time, but more in its form than in its fundamentals. I want to focus on three broad topics: understanding the customer, the importance of a service mentality, and the six things I learned in doing and studying intelligence analysis during my career in the DI. While these experiences are drawn from work in the CIA, I believe the principles apply across the Intelligence Community (IC).

Understanding the Consumer: Five Fundamental Truths

The Importance of a Service Mentality

The Six Things I Learned

Read the complete article….

Phi Beta Iota: This is a pleasure to read, and useful.

New Rules for the New Craft of Intelligence

2011/04/09

New Institutions as Bulwark Against the Corporate-Political State

Advanced Cyber/IO, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Methods & Process, Policies

New Institutions as the Bulwark Against the Corporate-Political State from Kevin Rollins on Vimeo.

Michael Ostrolenk and Kevin Rollins discuss the role of new media, both social media like facebook and twitter, as well as niche magazines. Ostrolenk says that such forums help new ideas because they “remove barriers to entry and support [new idea] generation.

Five minute video