Culture – Page 17 – Public Intelligence Blog

Posted on March 5, 2013 | 1 Comment

The vast majority of volunteers engaged in the Ushahidi-Haiti Crisis Map project (January 2010) were women. The Ushahidi-Chile Crisis Map (March 2010) was entirely spearheaded by women. Fast forward three years and women in 2013 are still the main driving force behind the field of crisis mapping. If you peruse the membership of the Standby Task Force’s Core Team, you’ll find that the majority are women. This cannot be mere coincidence. It follows, therefore, that the field of crisis mapping today would definitely not be what it is were it not for these amazing women, many of whom I am honored to count as friends.

Where is all this coming from, you might as? I just spoke at GSMA’s Mobile World Congress (MWC13) in Barcelona and was shocked (is horrified too strong a word?) by the total male domination of the mobile industry. (This is saying something given that I had spent the previous five weeks in Qatar). The only “group” of women I saw at the venue were teenage girls hired to serve as models so that men could pose with them for photo ops (no joke). This got me thinking about the communities that I belong to, such as the crisis mapping and humani-tarian technology communities. So I thought back to the early days (Haiti & Chile) and to the role of women in crisis mapping today. The contrast with GSMA could not possibly be starker.

So this post is dedicated to the amazing women who have made important contributions to the field of crisis mapping. The following is a list of colleagues who I have had the honor of working with and learning from over the past 3 years. (As always with long lists, they are fraught with danger: I really hope that no one has been left out; please email me and give me a hard time if I have!). A big, big thank you to all of you for your wisdom, tenacity and friendship. If I ever have daughters, I hope they become as formidable as all of you.

All phones and links below the line.

Continue reading “Patrick Meier: The Women of Crisis Mapping”

2013/03/032013/03/03

Tom Atlee: On the Relation Between P2P Systems and Wisdom-Generating Forums – P2P Foundation

Architecture, Culture, Knowledge, P2P / Panarchy

On the Relation Between P2P Systems and Wisdom-Generating Forums – P2P Foundation

WHAT DO “WISE DEMOCRACY” AND POWERFUL DIALOGUE AND DELIBERATION PROCESSES HAVE TO DO WITH PEERNESS?

P2P systems generate self-organization out of similarities and power equity: People eagerly move into productive/enjoyable relationships because of passions or needs they share with similar others when their interactions are not unduly hindered by arbitrary power-over dynamics. These relationships form naturally, needing little if any management and only simple forums to facilitate the connections.

Tom Atlee:

“There is a seeming contradiction between p2p systems and the approaches to wise democracy that I've been advocating.

P2P systems generate self-organization out of similarities and power equity: People eagerly move into productive/enjoyable relationships because of passions or needs they share with similar others when their interactions are not unduly hindered by arbitrary power-over dynamics. These relationships form naturally, needing little if any management and only simple forums to facilitate the connections.

Certain high quality group processes generate collective wisdom out of diverse people who may or may not have diverse levels of power in hierarchical systems: Such people need to be consciously brought together because they are normally and willingly separate. We actively seek people with different views, interests, roles, personalities, demographic characteristics, etc., because it is the positive use of that diversity that generates the wisdom (a “wholeness” to the resulting decision or understanding).

Yet both of these innovations – p2p systems and wisdom-generating forums – are leading edge social developments. Can some shared logic or coherent synergistic potency be found between them?

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: On the Relation Between P2P Systems and Wisdom-Generating Forums – P2P Foundation”

2013/02/28

Berto Jongman: Free MindShift Seminar Online with Craig Hamilton

Culture, Education, P2P / Panarchy, Politics, Resilience, Transparency

FREE ONLINE BOTH LIVE AND AS DOWNLOADABLE RECORDING

If, in your deepest hopes and ambitions for a better self and a better world, you’ve sensed that something more is possible–yet has so far eluded us–you’re right.

Activating the Impulse of Evolution

The simple and radical shift that can liberate you from the patterns of the past and unlock the door to an authentic enlightened life.

Most of us assume that the human condition is a fixed state and that we have no choice but to work within it–or fight it every step of the way.

But emerging wisdom is proving otherwise, and that game-changing discovery has yielded a revolutionary path to personal and cultural transformation.

Recommended by Barbara Marx Hubbard, Ken Wilbur, Jean Houston, Brian Thomas Swimme, Michael Beckwith,Terry Patten, and Claire Zammit

Learn more and free online registration.

2013/02/232013/02/23

Berto Jongman: Paradise or Oblivion – A Documentary by the VENUS PROJECT

Culture, Economics/True Cost, Money, P2P / Panarchy, Resilience

great documentary about jacque fresco and the venus project — early articulation of need to restore natural economy instead of the artificial and very corrupt economy that does not properly value natural resources and human resources.

Paradise or Oblivion – A Documentary by the VENUS PROJECT
FOLLOW THE LINKS BELOW TO HELP MAKE THIS DREAM A REALITY

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Paradise or Oblivion – A Documentary by the VENUS PROJECT”

2013/02/22

Yoda: Integral Science Is the Force — Joining Intelligence with Integrity

Crowd-Sourcing, Culture, Economics/True Cost, Governance, Innovation, Knowledge, P2P / Panarchy, Resilience, Transparency

Imagine that the year is 1543 and you have just completed reading Copernicus’ newly published book, On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres, that has attempted to convince you that your daily experience of the sun moving around a stationary earth is an illusion. What do you think the chances are that you would have accepted the Copernican argument that violates your direct perceptions?

Thomas Gentry, Nonlinear Dynamicist, 1995

Is Integral Science related to Paul Ray’s work on Cultural Creatives?
Yes, ISI is working toward the same Integral Society identified by Paul Ray (see Cultural Creatives, 2003). We believe Integral Science provides a clearer understanding of why Integral Society is emerging and a more solid foundation for understanding what the Cultural Creatives must do to make it sustainable.

Is Integral Science related to Ken Wilber’s vision of Integralis?
Though there are some overlaps, Integral Science’s empirical foundation leads to some different conclusions from Wilber’s Integral Psychology and Integralis. Both views, for example, integrate spirituality and the evolution of consciousness, Integral Science integrates them into a seamless view of physical reality, using serious work from across disciplines, and taking great care to logically connect the dots from different fields.

Why is Integral Society emerging?
What does Integral Science say about what it will be like? Great changes are driven into being by the failure of the previous system, a breakdown whose root cause is cultural decay and whose main marker is a web of crises popping up in every sphere. Vowing to find a better way, a new cultural thrust then builds itself up around a new noble vision and defining metaphor that it believes will avoid the fiascoes of the old.

Hence, today’s great change, like those of the past, is being propelled by crises felt in every field. Think of education, health care, politics, energy, the economy, community, justice, and the environment. Yet, while these individual calamities grab attention, it is slowly becoming clear that the root problem is cultural decay. Late Modern culture has become a malady and late Modern America epitomizes the result.

Learn more.

Continue reading “Yoda: Integral Science Is the Force — Joining Intelligence with Integrity”

2013/02/162013/02/16

John Robb: Life in a Networked Age

Architecture, Culture, Governance

Life in a Networked Age

Here's some idle thinking for a sunny afternoon at the end of winter.

To access it, let's make a simple assumption that economics, politics, and warfare are all a function of the dominant technological substrate.

A technological substrate is the family of related technologies that we rely upon. In the 20th Century, we were clearly reliant on an industrial substrate.

The challenges posed by industrial age technologies dictated the development of two management forms: bureaucracy and markets. Bureaucracies and markets are both decision making systems. These management forms dominated economics, politics, and warfare for centuries.

Neither system of management is sufficient as a solution for industrial economics, politics, or warfare.

Democracies use market decision making to determine leadership over a nation-state bureaucracy. Capitalism uses markets to determine leadership/control over corporate bureaucries. Education uses bureaucracy to manage its institutions and a combination of markets and bureaucracy to allocate students. The modern age was dominated by market based warfare (think: Wallenstein) but it is now firmly bureaucratic.

Although ideologies have been built and wars have been fought over the mix of bureaucracy and markets, neither system has proven dominant. .

This simplification is useful when we shift the technological substrate.

In the last thirty years, we've seen a shift in the technological substrate. This new susbstrate is increasingly a family of technologies related to information networks.

As this new substrate begins to take control, we're going to need new management forms. Both bureaucratic and market systems are proving insuffient solutions to the challenges of a networked age.

Continue reading “John Robb: Life in a Networked Age”

2013/02/15

Rickard Falkvinge: Swarmwise – Tactical Manual for Changing the World – Chapter One

Crowd-Sourcing, Culture, P2P / Panarchy, Politics

Swarmwise – The Tactical Manual To Changing The World. Chapter One.

Swarm Management: Somewhere today, a loose-knit group of activists who are having fun is dropkicking a rich, established organization so hard they are making heads spin. Rich and resourceful organizations are used to living by the golden rule – “those with the gold make the rules”. New ways of organizing go beyond just breaking the old rules into downright shredding them – leaving executives in the dust, wondering how that band of poor, rag-tag, disorganized activists could possibly have beaten their rich, well-structured organization.

On June 7, 2009, the Swedish Pirate Party got 225,915 votes in the European Elections, becoming the largest party in the most coveted sub-30 demographic. Our campaign budget was 50,000 euros. Our competitors had spent six million. We had spent less than one per cent of their budget, and still beat them, giving us a cost-efficiency advantage of over two orders of magnitude. This was entirely due to working swarmwise, and the methods can translate to almost any organized large-scale activity. This book is about that secret sauce.

A swarm organization is a decentralized, collaborative effort of volunteers that looks like a hierarchical, traditional organization from the outside. It is built by a small core of people that construct a scaffolding of go-to people, enabling a large number of volunteers to cooperate on a common goal in quantities of people not possible before the net was available.

Continue reading “Rickard Falkvinge: Swarmwise – Tactical Manual for Changing the World – Chapter One”