The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Download as slide (ppt): Competing Influences
Credit: Jack Davis
2000 in Book (p. 53): ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World (AFCEA, 2000)
2008 in Chapter (p. 100): Open Source Intelligence (Strategic) in Loch Johnson, Strategic Intelligence Volume II (Praeger, 2006)
Download as ppt: Ten Threats and Open Source
Original appearance: 2008 Open Source Intelligence (Strategic)
Ten threats from: High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility (United Nations, 2004)
This is going to get into the hands of many more people much more information, and this can't help but have consequences for the “global brain” and all kinds of social activism.
Soon You'll be Able to Go to CVS and Print a Book
Print-on-Demand Books Coming Soon to Thousands of Stores via Espresso Book Machine and Kodak Picture Kiosks
“On Demand Books, the company behind the Espresso Book Machine, and Kodak are partnering to add print-on-demand technology to Kodak Picture Kiosks. That means consumers will be able to print paperback photo books, self-published books and the seven million backlist and public domain titles in On Demand’s catalog from retail chains such as CVS…There are 105,000 Kodak Picture Kiosks globally; you can find them in chains like CVS as well as photography stores, pharmacies and other retail outlets. The partnership with On Demand launches in the U.S. this year and will expand internationally in 2013.”
Phi Beta Iota: Kinko's then FedExOffice experimented with PerfectBind, the same concept, but at the time, not cost effective. Since fiction dominates the book marketplace, rather than non-fiction, the existing client base for CVS and other retail stores is a better target for this offering. At the same time, we anticipate that social media will do a much better job of pointing readers toward worthy reads, displacing the advertising model of book publishers; and those who pay for localized printing will be incentivized to donate the books to their local library. Amazon continues to ignore the human / local factor. Local libraries and local reading clubs could make this take off — group buys of specific books followed by donation to the library.
See Also:
Kodak, On Demand Books and ReaderLink Join Forces for In-Store Book Printing at Retail
Six Degrees of Separation: Implications for Verifying Social Media
The Economist recently published this insightful article entitled” Six Degrees of Mobilisation: To what extent can social networking make it easier to find people and solve real-world problems?” The notion, six degrees of separation, comes from Stanley Milgram’s [small world] experiment in the 1960s which found that there were, on average, six degrees of separation between any two people in the US. Last year, Facebook found that users on the social network were separated by an average of 4.7 hops. The Economist thus asks the following, fascinating question:
Continue reading “Patrick Meier: Social Mobilization via Six Degrees of Separation with Comment”
Koko like.
Fruitful disobedience: Guerrilla Grafters grow undercover orchards
A secret operation in San Francisco disregards city regulations and grafts fruit branches onto non fruit-bearing public trees, hiding farm-fresh produce in an urban environment. Officials have banned fruit trees from the city sidewalks in the hopes that it will help keep urban areas clean and avoid messy situations as a result of fallen fruit. But Tara Hui and Miriam Goldberg have found a way around that law.
The two women are the leaders of Guerrilla Grafters, a group that exists to make “delicious, nutritious fruit is made available to urban residents” through the creation of inner-city orchards. Using electrical tape to color code their work, the Guerrilla Grafters develop partnerships in each neighborhood they graft in so there’s someone local to monitor progress. According to Hui, “There’s no ownership of these trees. There’s just stewardship.”
The LA Times reports that though city officials disapprove of the grafts, they haven’t done anything to formally remove them. But, it is considered vandalism and if this project were ever to really gain momentum it’s possible that officials would eventually decide to step in and halt it. Others, however, are impressed by their efforts: their work was featured in the “Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good” exhibit at the 13th International Architecture Biennale in Venice, Italy.
The group (which consists of about 30 people) has grafted about 50 trees so far. Perhaps it will always be a small-scale project, but Guerrilla Grafters is working to reach as many people as possible: they’ve developed an online mapping app to help track their illicit produce and have an active Facebook group to help grow popularity.
Attack on Camp Bastion: The Taliban strike on Camp Bastion in Helmand Province destroyed more than $150 million worth of planes and equipment, Western officials said on 16 September. Military officials said the insurgents destroyed six AV-8B Harrier jets and three refueling stations. Two other Harrier aircraft and six soft-skin aircraft hangars were significantly damaged in the attack.
Comment: An investigation of this security breach is in progress. As with other similar attacks, the success of this attack almost certainly indicates the attackers had extensive intelligence provided by insiders and inside assistance in penetrating the bases at the time of attack
Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: Afghanistan – One Attack, $150 Million in Losses”
Koko: Smart human – in the jungle we only work part-time.
2 Billion Jobs to Disappear by 2030
Yesterday I was honored to be one of the featured speakers at the TEDxReset Conference in Istanbul, Turkey where I predicted that over 2 billion jobs will disappear by 2030. Since my 18-minute talk was about the rapidly shifting nature of colleges and higher education, I didn’t have time to explain how and why so many jobs would be going away. Because of all of the questions I received afterwards, I will do that here.
If you haven’t been to a TEDx event, it is hard to confer the life-changing nature of something like this. Ali Ustundag and his team pulled off a wonderful event.
The day was filled with an energizing mix of musicians, inspiration, and big thinkers. During the breaks, audience members were eager to hear more and peppered the speakers with countless questions. They were also extremely eager to hear more about the future.
When I brought up the idea of 2 billion jobs disappearing (roughly 50% of all the jobs on the planet) it wasn’t intended as a doom and gloom outlook. Rather, it was intended as a wakeup call, letting the world know how quickly things are about to change, and letting academia know that much of the battle ahead will be taking place at their doorstep.
Here is a brief overview of five industries – where the jobs will be going away and the jobs that will likely replace at least some of them – over the coming decades.
