#OSE Open Source Everything – Page 168 – Public Intelligence Blog

DIY Tech Explored In Free The Network

Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies

At the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City, Motherboard TV uncovered an unlikely hero in the thicket of the protest’s confusion. Meet Issac Wilder, the founder of The Free Network Foundation, a mesh networking system that allowed demonstrators access to free internet—that is until Zuccotti Park was ransacked and the Freedom Tower was confiscated and destroyed. See how DIY tech is influencing the state of modern day protesting and protecting our privacy in this video. Protests around the world, or even neighborhood networks will continue to be utilized and evolved as long as governments try to restrict people’s access to the internet in times of great need. This video takes a look at DIY mesh networks during the Occupy movement several years ago. We should see mesh networks pop up around the world during times of protest as this technology evolves.

VIDEO (30:55)

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Wireless Mesh Networking — Design for Freedom”

2013/06/212013/06/21

Jean Lievens: Thomas Malone on Collective Intelligence — You Have to Give Away Old Power In Order to Gain New Power

Crowd-Sourcing, Culture, Governance, Innovation, Knowledge, P2P / Panarchy

Thomas Malone, director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, is one of the leading thinkers in the realm of anticipating how new technologies will transform the way work is done and leaders lead. His 2004 book, The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life,helped thousands of executives and would-be executives see their organizations, and themselves, in startling new ways. As a result, many organizations are becoming more collaborative and democratic. Now, Malone is exploring how social business, data analytics and cognitive computing will transform organizations once again. Here, he talks about the revolution that is coming.

IBM: In your book The Future of Work, you talked about society being on the verge of a new world of work, a key element of which is decentralization of the organization. Since then, the social networking phenomenon has emerged and is sweeping not just popular culture but business organizations as well. How has this explosion of social networking affected your thinking?

Malone: Social networking is a good example of the kind of thing I was talking about in my book when I talked about how the cost of communication was decreasing. At the time I wrote the book, people were looking at e-mail and the Web. But since the book was written, there are these new ways of communicating electronically–Twitter, Facebook, et cetera. I think those are all excellent examples of the same underlying phenomena.

As information technology reduces the cost of communication, it becomes much easier for lots more people to know lots more things and in many cases they’re able to be well enough informed to make more decisions for themselves instead of just following orders from somebody above them in a hierarchy.

Continue reading “Jean Lievens: Thomas Malone on Collective Intelligence — You Have to Give Away Old Power In Order to Gain New Power”

2013/06/212013/06/21

Berto Jongman: The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet, by Ramez Naam

Crowd-Sourcing, Knowledge

The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet, by Ramez Naam

Brenda Cooper

IEET, Posted: Jun 20, 2013

There are writers and futurists who are swimming upstream against a tide of people screaming about the sky falling. Ramez Naam is one of the them, offering practical tools and illuminating the power of imagination and initiative.

The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet, Ramez describes a future full of prosperity and new ideas.This is, of course, generally what has happened before. Even though the future never turns out exactly like we futurists or anyone else imagines it, our progress along the arrow of time has almost always been positive. We live longer and better lives, we live in less repressive societies, and we have more opportunities.We still have problems. Maybe our most serious challenges so far. Ramez offers up solutions and plans that appear to be possible. He tells stories about our past to illuminate how we have prevailed before, and could do so again.One of the things I particularly liked about The Infinite Resource is that Ramez’s positions about the most functional roles for governments and businesses are very closely aligned to mine. He makes a strong case for government regulation where it’s needed, but of the type that encourages innovation rather the stifling prescriptive regulation style that has never worked as well. He provides examples of how good regulation has worked to make the market stronger and to encourage new businesses and business practices. He also strongly supports the power of a functional free market. I’d call this book a celebration of practical capitalism with a progressive agenda meant to help us protect the Earth.Note that some of the things Ramez talks about are not popular with environmentalists, but I encourage readers to keep an open mind and do independent research. There were a few ideas here where I had to do the same thing.The Infinite Resource left me – an optimist – feeling even more positive about the future.Some other ways to learn about this book:Blog entry about the race to save the planet on Ramez’s site. Video of Ramez talking at Ingnite Chicago.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet, by Ramez Naam”

2013/06/20

Patrick Meier: Using Big Data to Inform Poverty Reduction Strategies — Data Science for Social Good: Not Cognitive Surplus but Cognitive Mismatch

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Health, 11 Society, Crowd-Sourcing, Geospatial

Using Big Data to Inform Poverty Reduction Strategies

My colleagues and I at QCRI are spearheading a new experimental Research and Development (R&D) project with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) team in Cairo, Egypt. Colleagues at Harvard University, MIT and UC Berkeley have also joined the R&D efforts as full-fledged partners. The research question: can an analysis of Twitter traffic in Egypt tell us anything about changes in unemployment and poverty levels? This question was formulated with UNDP’s Cairo-based Team during several conversations I had with them in early 2013.

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Data Science for Social Good: Not Cognitive Surplus but Cognitive Mismatch

I’ve spent the past 12 months working with top notch data scientists at QCRI et al. The following may thus be biased: I think QCRI got it right. They strive to balance their commitment to positive social change with their primary mission of becoming a world class institute for advanced computing research. The two are not mutually exclusive. What it takes is a dedicated position, like the one created for me at QCRI. It is high time that other research institutes, academic programs and international computing conferences create comparable focal points to catalyze data science for social good.

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2013/06/20

John Maguire: YouTube Audio 1:10:01 Sync Book Press’ Alan Abbadessa-Green: Sychronicity, Reality Tunnels, and 3rd-Path Spirituality

Cultural Intelligence, Culture, Knowledge, Transparency

Published on Jun 19, 2013

Interview with Author, Visual Artist, and SynchroMystic Alan Abbadessa-Green. Alan is the founder and chief editor of Sync Book Press and Sync Book Radio. Both of which are outlets dedicated to exploring the mysteries of Synchronicity and its more spiritually oriented counterpart SynchroMysticism. Information on Alan's work and other Sync Book Press projects can be found at http://thesyncbook.com. Please refer to my blog @ http://jmag0904.wordpress.com/ for an outline of this Interview. Thank You for taking an interest!

2013/06/182013/06/18

Patrick Meier: CrowdRing — A New Free Cellular Activist Tool

Crowd-Sourcing

Using Crowdring for Disaster Response?

35 million missed calls.

That’s the number of calls that 75-year old social justice leader Anna Hazare received from people across India who supported his efforts to fight corruption. Two weeks earlier, he had invited India to join his movement by making “missed calls” to a local number. Missed calls, known as beeping or flashing, are calls that are intentionally dropped after ringing. The advantage of making missed call is that neither the caller or recipient is charged. This tactic is particularly common in emerging economies to avoid paying for air time or SMS. To build on this pioneering work, Anna and his team are developing a mobile petition tool called Crowdring, which turns a free “missed call” into a signature on a petition.

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2013/06/162013/06/16

John Maguire: YouTube 9:45) Children Full of Life 1 of 5

Design, Education, YouTube

Everything the Standard Model of Education doesn't teach our kids, and why we progressively find ourselves living in a more cynical, apathetic, and mean-spirited world everyday. We our rearing our kids to be disempowered, rudderless citizens who tolerate tyranny.

Description: “In the award-winning documentary Children Full of Life, a fourth-grade class in a primary school in Kanazawa, northwest of Tokyo, learn lessons about compassion from their homeroom teacher, Toshiro Kanamori. He instructs each to write their true inner feelings in a letter, and read it aloud in front of the class. By sharing their lives, the children begin to realize the importance of caring for their classmates.”