#OSE Open Source Everything – Page 191 – 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

2013/04/17

SmartPlanet: 9 best ways to socially network your next live conference

SmartPlanet

9 best ways to socially network your next live conference

By Joe McKendrick | April 16, 2013, 7:07 PM PDT

While social networks and technology have made it possible for anyone on the globe to connect and learn electronically, there is still a need for onsite conferences. There’s an immeasurable value to connecting with colleagues on a face-to-face basis that cannot be replaced by social media.

Still, social networking can greatly enhance your conference experience. In a new post at the Vocus blog, Brian Conlin does a good job of detailing the role social can play in… well, being social. The bottom line is social media now starts conferences weeks before the official opening session, and then keeps the conference going months after the meeting rooms are swept up and vacuumed.

Conlin’s advice:

Continue reading “SmartPlanet: 9 best ways to socially network your next live conference”

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.

2013/04/17

Graphic: Open Source Hardware Economic Model

Citizen-Centered, Graphics, ICT-IT

Source

2013/04/172013/04/17

Jean Lievens: Open source hardware meets the p2p economy

Hardware

Open source hardware meets the p2p economy

We are at this moment in history when we can say with certainty that open source hardware (OSHW) is economically viable. The video below tells the success story of Adafruit Industries. Barely formed, this business model relying on OSHW might already be obsolete. A new model, the open value network, is already threatening to transform the landscape of the open source economy. This article explains why.

Most people find it counter-intuitive that companies can survive in a highly competitive capitalistic environment, designing and distributing high tech products, giving away their recipes, AND allowing (even encouraging) everyone else to copy them, WITH THE RIGHT TO MAKE COMMERCIAL USE.

If you don't believe it, stop wasting your time arguing against it. It is real, it is here, you better understand it fast before the world changes around you, leaving you an alien in your own surroundings.

The business around open innovation cannot be learned in school. It belongs to a new economic paradigm. Old arguments don't apply anymore, because the semantics and the logic are not the same. Some time ago, we published the article How to play the open game in the present and future economy, which tries to capture the essence of sustainable open innovation. You should revisit this article from time to time, becausewe'll continue to improve it.

GRAPHIC: The open value network is model for commons-based peer production. See SENSORICA as an example.

The most successful ventures build around OSHW, like Arduino, Adafruit, Sparkfun, etc., can only be understood within their larger ecosystem. We can identify two main structures: a commercial entity and a community. The commercial entity is a classical form, usually a corporation or a co-op. It takes care of manufacturing, insures quality, structures and integrates the feedback from the community into new products, nurtures the community, performs legal functions, integrates all the transactional logistics (storage, shipping, payment), and provides services. The community plays different roles: consumers of products, provide feedback on products, provide new designs, spread the buzz, educate new members of the community and provide help, etc.

Phi Beta Iota: Emphasis added.

See Also:

Open Source Everything

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”