It is increasingly clear that the institutions of yesterday are inadequate for the challenges of tomorrow. Multinational corporations bent toward the myopia of quarterly returns are ill-fit for extended periods of volatility and turbulence. Centralized governments, with an opacity built in to ensure secrecy, cannot keep pace with the speed-of-light communications of 21st Century internet-based and mobile technologies. They must be opened up and redesigned with agility and integrity as guiding principles.
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What is needed now is nothing less than the wholesale redesign of civilization. Our banking institutions must be reconnected to the thriving of human communities. Our schools and universities must cultivate a creative resilience that enables massive-scale innovation. Our businesses must produce positive social impacts alongside healthy revenues. And our governments must successfully provide the supports through which well-being is sustained and spread across the entirety of nations, cities, and villages.
This schematic captures the essence of what is needed:
Back in 2003 visionary artist Anne-Marie Schleiner wrote an inspiring paper entitled “Fluidities and Oppositions among Curators, Filter Feeders and Future Artists” describing the future role of online curators as nature's own filter feeders. Anne-Marie is clearly referring to curators to and filter feeder in art world, but her rightful intuitions are equivalently applicable to the larger world of information, data, digital and content curation as well.
But let me explain better.
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First. The term “filter feeders” is used in nature to describe a group of animals which thrives on its ability to filter organic matter floating around them. From Wikipedia: “Filter feeders are animals that feed by straining suspended matter and food particles from water, typically by passing the water over a specialized filtering structure. Some animals that use this method of feeding are clams, krill, sponges, baleen whales, and many fish (including some sharks). Some birds, such as flamingos, are also filter feeders. Filter feeders can play an important role in clarifying water, and are therefore considered ecosystem engineers.” From Wikipedia: “In marine environments, filter feeders and plankton are ecosystem engineers because they alter turbidity and light penetration, controlling the depth at which photosynthesis can occur.[4]”
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Second. If you re-read this last sentence slowly and look at what it could mean if applied to the field of content curation, it would read to me something like this: “In large information ecosystems like the web, filter feeders/content curators and content itself are ecosystem engineers because they: a) directly influence our ability to inform ourselves effectively and to discern truth from false and useless info (turbidity) b) shed light and clarity on different subjects which would otherwise remain obscure (light penetration) c) determine our ability to make sense of our own generated information streams (photosynthesis).” A very inspiring parallel indeed, giving a way to visualize the true importance and role that curation, disenfranchised from the confines of museums and art galleries, could have on the planetary information ecosystem. Anne-Marie writes: “Most web sites contain hyperlinks to other sites, distributed throughout the site or in a “favorites” section. Each of these favorite links sections serves as a kind of gallery, remapping other web sites as its own contents. Every web site owner is thus a curator and a cultural critic, creating chains of meaning through association, comparison and juxtaposition, parts or whole of which can in turn serve as fodder for another web site's “gallery.” Site maintainers become operational filter feeders, feeding of other filter feeders sites and filtering others' sites. Links are contextualized, interpreted and “filtered” through criticism and comments about them, and also by placement in the topology of a site. The deeper a link is buried, the harder it may be to find, the closer to the surface and the frontpage, the more prominent it becomes, as any web designer can attest to. I am what I link to and what I am shifts over time as I link to different sites… … In the process, I invest my identity in my collection – I become how I filter.” Anne-Marie vision (2003), pure and uninfluenced by what we have seen emerge in the last few years, paints a very inspiring picture of the true role of content curators and of the key responsibility they do hold for humanity's future. Inspiring. Visionary. Right on the mark. 10/10
“Google, Facebook, Amazon and other web giants have harnessed big data to solve some of their biggest tech challenges. Now many of these engineers are setting out on their own with startups. Some are focused on analytics. Some are working on in-memory databases, which do all their work on data stored in memory instead of hard drives. Others are casting their lot with NoSQL, a new kind of database that spreads processing and storage across multiple servers and storage systems.”
For example, Data Gravity, founded in 2012 with headquarters in Nashua, NH and star Paula Long, makes big data more affordable by embedding the tech into storage systems. The implications posed by these startups for IBM SPSS, SAS, Palantir and Digital Reasoning are as yet unclear. VC’s certainly seem optimistic, with almost all of the startups mentioned raking in millions of dollars from various backers.
There can be no such thing as free access to academic research, says Robin Osborne in Debating Open Access essays – research is a process that universities teach and charge for
I think your thought piece on NATO is excellent, but somewhat incomplete. NATO is the diplomatic and administrative headquarters, but the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) is the actual C2 for NATO military operations
In my opinion, the U.S. needs to back out of NATO and its operational counter part SHAPE and leave both to the EU (as you suggest). The U.S. could join Russia in an observer status at NATO, but would no longer be a voting member. Both NATO and SHAPE would be under the EU, but would include non-EU members (e.g. Turkey).
This would do two beneficial things: it would provide Europe with a dedicated all European military force; and it would facilitate the move towards greater integration of EU member countries.
The benefits to the U.S. would also be significant by forcing the U.S. to recognize that the Cold War is over and there is no longer any reason to have a major U.S. Military presence in Germany (Italy is another matter given its proximity to the still volatile Maghreb)
I think that your proposal for a dedicated EU-NATO Intelligence Organization is absolutely brilliant, but again I would add a second intelligence entity to SHAPE for support to military operations (SMO). Both of these organizations would be all European.
I too am a non-player in the power games inside the DC Beltway. If I had any influence you would not be unemployed. Frankly I believe that the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. Government have lost interest in governing this country and are just going through the motions. So expecting the U.S. to take the initiative with NATO is fruitless.
Susan Rice is a brilliant and effective woman who I suspect will be ignored by President Obama, just as he ignored the super competent General Jones (who I became acquainted with when he headed the U.S. DOD Delegation at NATO).
Keep fighting the good fight!
Richard (AKA Retired Reader)
