Category: Methods & Process

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BLOG WISDOM: One View of Internet & Devices

Advanced Cyber/IO, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats
Seth Godin Home

It might be about the size of the screen and whether or not you're standing up.

Start at the bottom. For the first five years of the Internet, the most used function was email. Email remains a bedrock of every device and system that's been built on top of the internet, though sometimes it looks like a text message or a mobile check in. This is the layer for asynchronous person to person connection, over time.

Moving from left to right, we see how the way we use the thing we call the internet has evolved over time. We also see how devices and technology and bandwidth have changed the uses of the net and, interestingly, how a growth in mass has led to a growth in self-motivated behavior.

Early online projects were things like Archie and Veronica and checking in changes to the Linux code base. You needed patience, a big screen and a sense of contribution.

Layer on top of this a practice that is getting ever more professional, which is creating content for others to consume. Sometimes in groups, sometimes using sophisticated software and talented cohorts.

Click on Image to Enlarge

As we move to the right (and through time) we see the birth of online shopping. Still to this day, most online shopping happens on traditional devices, often sitting down.

The sitting down part is not a silly aside. Ted Leonsis theorized twenty years ago that the giant difference between TV and the internet was how far you sat from the screen. TV was an 8 foot activity, and you were a consumer. The internet was a 16 inch activity, and you participated. I think the sitting down thing is similar. You're not going to buy an armoir while standing on the subway.

Moving over in time and device and intent, we see the idea of consuming content. While tablets get their share of shopping, this is where they really shine. I think 2011 is going to be the year of the tablet, from the Kindle to the iPad to the thing we used to call a phone.

It's in the last two categories that these other devices, things that don't involve sitting down, are superior, not just a mobile substitute. The social graph is a very low bandwidth, peripheral attention interaction, perfect for this audience and this medium. And the last category–tell me where I am, where to eat, who's near me, what's the weather, get me a cab right now–is all about me and now and here.

I don't believe this is a winner take all situation, any more than one bestselling book makes all other books obsolete. I think different pillars work for different devices, and there will continue to be winners in all of them.

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WASHINGTON RULES: US-Korea-China-NK NAFTA

01 Agriculture, 02 China, 02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Methods & Process

A project of Americans for Free and Fair Trade

Dear Citizen:

Barack Obama is pushing a NAFTA-Style Korea Free Trade agreement that would undermine America's sovereignty, laws and economy. This deal would:

  • Allow foreign corporations to drag the U.S. before U.N. and World Bank tribunals to enforce special trade privileges and to demand compensations from the U.S. Treasury.
  • Undermine states rights with hundreds of state laws and regulations subject to review and alteration.
  • Kill almost 160,000 jobs in the U.S.

Six things you can do right now:

1.    Add your organization's name to our coalition letter (attached)
2.    Ask your members to sign our petition
3.    Add this widget to your homepage and e-communications
4.    “Like” on Facebook
5.    Twitter
6.    Learn more. FAQ's

Thank you for your commitment to authentic free trade!

Joseph McCormick
Americans for Free and Fair Trade
Project Site: StopUSKoreaNAFTA.org
Phone: 541.531.0530
Email: jmccormick@freeandfairtrade.org

Frequently Asked Questions (Link)

Below the Line: Top Ten Reasons KORUS is Not Free or Fair Trade

Continue reading “WASHINGTON RULES: US-Korea-China-NK NAFTA”

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WASHINGTON RULES: The Revolving Door Continues

07 Other Atrocities, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Chuck Spinney Recommends....

… in the Hall of Mirrors that is Versailles on the Potomac

ps … good report, notwithstanding the fact that Politico is one of those slimy publications that thrives on the bottom-feeding cocktail circuit of Washington, which is funded by … who?

Obama administration's revolving door

By: Kenneth P. Vogel, Politico

January 18, 2011 04:43 AM EST

Candidate Barack Obama repeatedly pledged on the campaign trail that working in his administration would not be “about serving your former employer, your future employer or your bank account.”

But with his administration at its midpoint, a traditional time for personnel turnover, it’s clear that despite Obama’s avowals, a longtime truism of Washington life — that a prestigious-sounding administration post can be a lucrative career enhancer — remains unchanged.

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Review (Guest): Winner-Take-All Politics–How Washington Made the Rich Richer – and Turned its Back on the Middle Class

03 Economy, 04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Amazon Page

Paul Pierson and Jacob S. Hacker

5.0 out of 5 stars Political Economy

January 17, 2011

Retired Reader (New Mexico) – See all my reviews

This book is an effort by two political scientist to explain how in the last thirty years or so wealth in the U.S. has become concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller number of people. The fact that this has occurred is indisputable. So is the fact that the gap between the richest Americans and everybody else has grown exponentially just as the U.S. middle class is gradually disappearing. The explanation of why this has occurred offered by Hacker and Pierson is rather more controversial.

They begin by noting that over the last thirty years not only have the already rich gotten much richer, but that the U.S. National Economy has been transformed into a system that no longer serves the interests of the once broad and thriving American Middle Class that once was the backbone of that economy. In their view the system now serves the interests of a small minority of the rich and very rich (one to five per cent of the population). So their book begins by asking how and why did this occur and why over the last thirty years?

Since Hacker and Pierson are political scientists not economists, they argue that this transformation was due to political, not economic factors. Using what appears to be accurate statistical data they cite three `clues' or factors that point to what happened to the U.S. economy: 1) hyper-concentration of wealth; 2) sustained hyper-concentration; and 3) during the thirty years under study, while wealth concentrated at the very top of the income scale, the economy essentially stopped working for the middle and working classes who continually lost ground during this period.

This economic transformation in favor of the rich they argue is not the result of impersonal economic forces but of deliberate government actions or at times inaction (drift). Their central thesis is that mostly incremental government policies over the last thirty years have had the cumulative effect of changing the U.S. economic system into a `winner take all' system heavily biased in favor of the rich and very rich. At the same time federal government policies undermined the traditionally strong labor unions that served as a counter weight to corporations' power and systematically deregulated financial markets and executive compensation.
Continue reading “Review (Guest): Winner-Take-All Politics–How Washington Made the Rich Richer – and Turned its Back on the Middle Class”

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BLOG WISDOM: 2011 Cloud Merger & Acquisition

Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Commerce, Methods & Process
Ric Merrifield

RE-THINK

2011 Cloud M&A Predictions

Posted: 17 Jan 2011 11:35 AM PST

Phi Beta Iota: Ric is the author of Rethink–A Business Manifesto for Cutting Costs and Boosting Innovation.  Below we list only the eleven companies with links, and one additional reference.  His complete posting with full paragraphs on each as well as context on GroupOn, Facebook, and Microsoft, is a tremendous overview.

1) doxo. free online bill pay service

2) Yelp. social voting

3) Tippr.  highlights flaws in GroupOn

4) Gist.  aggregates all social interactions in one place

Click on Image to Enlarge

5) Shiftboard. sign up and manage shift assignments

6) Limeade.  personalized health plans

7) ReputationDefender. gives individual complete control

8) Concur.  expense management

9) ActiveWords. saves time, productivity enhancer

10) Symantec.  gorilla in security marketspace

11) I4CP.  Institute for Corporate Productivity

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Richard Wright: MILITARY INTELLIGENCE: All Eyes No Brain Part II

Advanced Cyber/IO, Ethics, Methods & Process, Military, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy
Richard Wright

The USAF claim that the tragic killing of 23 innocent Afghan civilians last February by one of its Predator UAVs was due to “information overload” reflects an appalling lack of critical thinking on the part of senior Air Force officers. General Mike Hayden (USAF ret.) when director of the NSA used regularly entertain the U.S. congress with the same complaint again reflecting the same lack of critical thought.

The problem for both the USAF and the NSA is that both seem to be following collection and processing strategies that belong to the Cold War era before the information revolution.

The Soviet Union may have been the most incompetent super power in world history, but it was extremely good at information denial. When the NSA could actually find and collect a signal containing exploitable information emanating from the USSR, it was common practice to collect and process everything from that signal 24/7 because it was such a rare occurrence. Because of the Soviet practice of immediately shutting down any signal that there was even as hint had been comprised the material so obtained was compartmentalized and distribution was tightly controlled. All this was possible because the information collected from such a signal at best was miniscule by today’s standards. In the same manner before such neat things as down linking digital images, the number of images to be processed were absurdly small and scarcely time sensitive. So again ‘full take’ was the best, and indeed, the only option.

Continue reading “Richard Wright: MILITARY INTELLIGENCE: All Eyes No Brain Part II”

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CORRUPTION Correlates to Earthquake Fatalities

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process
Click on Image to Enlarge

Extent of Corruption in Countries Around the World Tied to Earthquake Fatalities

ScienceDaily (Jan. 16, 2011) — A new assessment of global earthquake fatalities over the past three decades indicates that 83 percent of all deaths caused by the collapse of buildings during earthquakes occurred in countries considered to be unusually corrupt.

The 2010 Haiti earthquake is believed to have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, primarily due to shoddy building construction. (Credit: U.S. Air Force)