Knowledge – Page 18 – Public Intelligence Blog

Powerful and effective heuristics are the only way to quickly communicate the complex understandings required to save humanity, because they facilitate quick feedback. They break through information logjams. They reduce information overload. The various elite powers on the planet use heuristics in the form of propaganda to mislead the people and drive them like cattle toward a predetermined objective. But they have a great advantage over us. It's easier to confuse than enlighten. It's easier to destroy than to build. It's easier to get people to misunderstand complexity than to get them to understand it.

So unless we become clever at heuristics, we are outnumbered and outgunned. And we need to be cognizant of any model that can help us dilate the conduits of feedback to the point where our big picture understandings can spread like lightening to the general public. There are many ways to do this, mostly by commandeering well-understood terms and putting them to new uses.

While I was watching the Boston Marathon bombing coverage I heard them talk about victims who were at one point in critical condition but who had been reevaluated to serious condition. And it made me want to look up the precise definitions of these terms. That's when I saw that they could have usefulness describing all kinds of complex social dynamics. After all, that's what systems theory is all about. The five terms are: undetermined, good, fair, serious, and critical. You can find definitions here at wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_state

Briefly, they are: waiting assessment; stable within normal limits; indicators are favorable; indicators are questionable; and indicators are unfavorable. These concepts can be applied at every level and context of social dynamics because they are terms that describe systems. And as Donella H. Meadows stressed, the whole point of systems theory is to cut through all the jargon of the multiplicity of specialties. The point is to make things as simple as possible without making them too simple. Simplify but don't oversimplify.

Continue reading “Theophillis Goodyear: Complex Systems Dynamics, Hueristics, & Poetry”

2013/04/17

Graphic: 12 Elements in the Universe of Meaning

Cultural Intelligence, Data, Governance, Graphics, Knowledge

Source

2013/04/172013/04/17

Neal Reauhauser: Exploring E-International Relations

Access, Crowd-Sourcing, Culture, Design, Governance, Knowledge, P2P / Panarchy

Exploring e-International Relations

When I was checking out the Think Tanks & Civil Societies Program I noticed e-International Relations – the world’s leading website for students of international politics. They had an About page similar to that of Wikistrat, listing all of their volunteer editors and some additional information on them.

Last night I entered most of that information into e-IR-base, a Maltego graph. Those who want to follow along can download the graph file, get the free Maltego Community Edition, and do a portion of the things I do with it. The free version has very limited access to Paterva‘s transform servers, so I will provide the necessary intermediate files.

This is a top level view of the e-IR graph. What I say next presumes some knowledge of hands on work with Maltego.

The lavender dots are Person entities – a place for a first and last name, and like every entity you can makes notes and attach files to it. The blue dots at the upper right are URL entities and they contain links to an editor’s profile on the official site. Not everyone has a profile – this seems to be for people who produce their own content as well as work as editors. The five green dots are Twitter accounts, the five blue dots with an orange dot in the middle are LinkedIn profiles and an entity for the domain itself.

Maltego provides different types of entities, but here at the start we are only using Person, Domain, URL, and Phrase. Maltego provides a way to group different types of entities using colored stars – blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. This is useful for searching and organizing tasks – if you run a transform that starts with the five Twitter accounts shown here, but gets back over a thousand responses, how do you spot your originals?

Read full post with additional graphics and links.

2013/04/152013/04/15

John Maguire: Local Empowerment Through Legal Education

Knowledge

Thomas Linzey is the Executive Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). CELDF, as some of you might know from John Steiner's recent posting, is committed to limiting/abolishing the entrenchment of corporate-personhood and reestablishing the rights/resilience of small communities through legal education and local ordinance initiatives.

All too often in the current political climate the “Law” is utilized as a weapon by the powers-that-be to inhibit the sovereignty and self-organizing character of both individuals and community groups. If we truly want to consider ourselves as citizens, some degree of legal literacy is becoming almost mandatory. Understanding CELDF's model and tactics is a huge step for any mindful change-agent.

Below the line is a brief interview with Thomas Linzey for those who are interested:

Continue reading “John Maguire: Local Empowerment Through Legal Education”

2013/04/152013/04/15

Anthony Judge: Dynamic Transformation of Static Reporting of Global Processes

Architecture, Design, Economics/True Cost, Knowledge, Resilience

Dynamic Transformation of Static Reporting of Global Processes

Suggestions for process-oriented titles of global issue reports

EXTRACT

Given the increasingly disastrous “state of the world”, and that foreseen for the future, it is appropriate to ask whether another language might enable meaning to be carried otherwise — and potentially more imaginatively and fruitfully. There is clearly a fundamental problem with respect to the relationship between states of any kind — one which obscures consideration of the dynamics which may be vital to the essence of meaning. This is only too evident in the case of Israel-Palestine, India-Pakistan, North Korea-South Korea, and the like — as with the “two-state solutions” proposed in the first case.

. . . . . . . .

With respect to enhancing insight into the dynamic, a striking innovation in “turning statistics into knowledge” — with the slogan “unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact based world” — has been offered by the Gapminder initiative, within the context of the OECD Global Project on Measuring the Progress of Societies. A provocatve case might however be made for re-imaging “statistics” — as exemplifying state language – with something akin to “dynastics”.

. . . . . . . .

It can be readily argued that this collection of “states” offers no indication of how they are interrelated systemically between the domains so thematically bounded. This systemic connectivity has been the primary preoccupation of the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential now accessible online.

See table of recommended changes and rest of article.

2013/04/10

Graphic: Knowledge Wheel (Intelligence 101)

Analysis, Citizen-Centered, Graphics, Knowledge, Strategy-Holistic Coherence

Source

The Theory of Knowledge (ToK) programme is central to the educational philosophy of the International Baccalaureate. It challenges students and their teachers to reflect critically on diverse ways of knowing and areas of knowledge, and to consider the role which knowledge plays in a global society. It encourages students to become aware of themselves as thinkers, to become aware of the complexity of knowledge, and to recognize the need to act responsibly in an increasingly interconnected world.

2013/04/082013/04/08

Jean Lievens: Wikinomics Model for Value of Open Data

Analysis, Architecture, Balance, Citizen-Centered, Data, Design, Graphics, ICT-IT, Knowledge, Policies-Harmonization, Processing, Strategy-Holistic Coherence

A visual model showing the value of open data

Prof. Robert Appleton of Ryerson University recently told me: “In most fields, the language [of communication] is still dominated by words and numbers.” I think he is right. Think about the daily routine in most organizations. We produce reports and strategy papers. We often forget to convey this knowledge into tangible pictures and stories.

Visualize Business Models

I bought the book Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers [72 slides free online at SlideShare] by Alexander Osterwalder. First, this book provides and easy understandable and visual approach for capturing the value and the implications of business models. This book is a useful “ready to use” tool to change the way in which you approach your work. Roger Martin, an advocate for design thinking in business says: “Businesspeople don’t just need to understand designers better – they need to become designers.”

Second, the book itself has a new business model. It is co-created by 470 practitioners.

Value Model of Open Data

Continue reading “Jean Lievens: Wikinomics Model for Value of Open Data”