Category: Topics (All Other)

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“The Century of the Self”: Must-See Documentary on Psychology, Advertising, Consumerism and Control

03 Economy, 04 Education, 07 Health, Academia, Civil Society, Commerce, Corporations, Corruption, Ethics, Government, Media, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, True Cost, Videos/Movies/Documentaries

FULL VIDEO HERE

Century of the Self (ADAM CURTIS)

DOCUMENTARY DESCRIPTION
Episode 1: Happiness Machine
Episode 2: The Engineering of Consent
Episode 3: There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed
Episode 4: Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering

CENTURY OF THE SELF asks the deep questions about the roots and methods of consumerism and representative democracy and the implications of the two. The foundation of this documentary is the idea that public relations and politicians have used the theories of Sigmund Freud to engineer a society of consent.

This series is about how those in power have used Freud s theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy. Adam Curtis

For more information about this series, visit its Wikipedia page.

Keywords from imdb.com: Propaganda, Public Relations, Consumerism, Capitalism, Media, Advertising

Related:
Documentary – “The Corporation” (full movie in 23 parts at YouTube)

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Journal: Self-Organizing Emergence from Chaos

Blog Wisdom, Collective Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Methods & Process

Making Sense Out of Chaos: An Audio Interview

I did an interview on September 7th for the Community Learning Exchange –CLExchangeonair with Cheryl Fields on Blog Talk Radio.

EXTRACT:

  • Early in the book you tell the story of how your own perspective on engaging emergence began. Tell us about that experience?

In the 1990′s I managed software projects.  I was excellent at figuring out the steps that needed to be done and then making those steps happen —  planning the work and then working the plan.

As the projects got bigger and more complex, I ran into a one that involved enough people with different opinions that that old approach just didn’t cut it.

Fortunately, I had the opportunity to work with someone who understood how to work in a different way.  Once I experienced it, I had to learn more.

See Also:
TED: Sugata Mitra–The child-driven education
Worth a Look: Engaging Emergence
Reference: Peggy Holman Free Video on Emergence
Reference: 21st Century Leadership-12 Guidelines
Who’s Who in Collective Intelligence: Peggy Holman
Review: The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management–Reinventing the Workplace for the 21st Century

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Reference: 21st Century Leadership-12 Guidelines

Blog Wisdom, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Methods & Process

The Facebook Generation vs. the Fortune 500

1 Gary Hamel

….in the future, any company that lacks a vital core of Gen F employees will soon find itself stuck in the mud.

With that in mind, I compiled a list of 12 work-relevant characteristics of online life. These are the post-bureaucratic realities that tomorrow’s employees will use as yardsticks in determining whether your company is “with it” or “past it.” In assembling this short list, I haven’t tried to catalog every salient feature of the Web’s social milieu, only those that are most at odds with the legacy practices found in large companies.

1. All ideas compete on an equal footing.
2. Contribution counts for more than credentials.
3. Hierarchies are natural, not prescribed.
4. Leaders serve rather than preside.
5. Tasks are chosen, not assigned.
6. Groups are self-defining and self-organizing
7. Resources get attracted, not allocated.
8. Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it.
9. Opinions compound and decisions are peer-reviewed.
10. Users can veto most policy decisions.
11. Intrinsic rewards matter most.
12. Hackers are heroes.

Read full post in glorious detail.

Tip of the Hat to Steve Denning at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: We've been skirting all of these since 1988, and even more so since we opened Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) in 1994.  Please do read the full articulation, and pass it on.  It's is the single best summary we have found to date.

See Also:

Graphic: Digital Learners versus Analog Teachers

Graphic: Principles of War versus Principles of Peace

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Reference: Blogs and Bullets–No Brains for Now

Cultural Intelligence, Mobile, Technologies, Tools
Full Source Online

Tip of the Hat to  Pierre Levy at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: This excellent but truncated report has the same problem we saw in Global Governance 2025–it just does not “get” the dual facts that a) governments no longer rule and b) connecting is not the main event–sense-making is the main event and it is 5-10 years off.  THAT will be the revolution.  Better–and earlier–insights remain those in 2002 Pinkham (US) Citizen Advocacy in the Information Age and Reference: Social Search 101.   The future was defined in 1989, then again in 1992, 1998, and on and on.  Connecting all humans with all information in all languages all the time is the end-game.  Anything less lacks integrity.

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Journal: Chinese Super-Computing…

02 China, Research resources, Technologies

China's ‘big hole' marks scale of supercomputing race

1,000 U.S. scientists are involved in exascale development, but China and Europe have stepped up their investment, IBM warns

Full Story Online

Computerworld – WASHINGTON — To make a point about China's interest in supercomputing, David Turek, IBM's vice president of deep computing, displayed a slide with a picture depicting a large construction site for a building that will house a massive computer.

Speaking at an IEEE-USA forum here on Thursday, Turek pointed to a photo (below) of a supercomputing center being built in Shenzhen, China, and said, “That's a truck — that's a big truck, that's a big hole, and that's going to be a big building. And that's only the first building they are going to build there.”

Phi Beta Iota: Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institute got it right years ago–the ONLY revolutionary technology at the time, and still today, is C4I but better called C2I today because command & control is dead: communication, computing, and intelligence (decision-support, not secrets).  Energy revolutions are coming along, including paintable solar energy molecules, but C2I is where it's at for now.  CISCO continues to refuse to create cradle to cradle routers that also deliver Application Oriented Network (AON) ownership and rule making to the point of creation, so this is one big need we have; the other is a complete open source software suite of tools that delivers the eighteen functionalities defined by CATALYST et al in 1985-1989.  Finally, but actually first, we want free reliable simple cell phones for the five billion poor.  THAT is the super-computer of now and ever.

Tip of the Hat to Lynn Wheeler at LinkedIn.

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Reference: Social Good as Emergent Self-Organization

Blog Wisdom, International Aid
Full Source Online

How Social Good Has Revolutionized Philanthropy

Zachary Sniderman

The term “Social Good” has been bandied about, but pinning down exactly what it means in concrete terms can sometimes be tricky. Is social good the same as “the common good”? Is it the same as normal fundraising? Is it just online giving, or is it particular to social networks and web trends?

Social good is equal parts online fundraising and advocacy via social networks. While the Internet has been used before by non-profits and charities to raise money, social good implies more than just money changing hands. Social good campaigns often combine the ability of the Internet to find, introduce and bond communities around a common interest. That interest, in this case, is usually a problem worth fixing.

Where social good starts to get fuzzy is just how that problem gets fixed. Social good campaigns can be about building safe, entirely free, online support communities, spreading awareness through updates, raising cash, or a combination of all three.

Tip of the Hat to  Pierre Levy at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: Our colleague Harrison Owen keeps stressing that the Internet has unleashed a new level of self-organization, and we are starting to realize how right he is.   What is missing in our view is a service of common concern that provides public intelligence about the true costs of every good and service (while outing corruption through transparency), and at the same time connects the one billion rich to the five billion poor one micro-need at a time BUT visible to those who wish to aggregate needs and solutions.  This is illustrated in Graphic: Global Range of Nano-Needs and discussed coherently and in detail in 2010 INTELLIGENCE FOR EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability.

noble gold