Resilience – Page 20 – Public Intelligence Blog

2013/02/26

Patrick Meier: Using CrowdFlower to Microtask Disaster Response — and Robert Steele on CrowdFlower to Manage Micro-gifting Local to Global Range of Needs & Fulfillment Table to Household Level

Architecture, Cloud, Crowd-Sourcing, P2P / Panarchy, Resilience, Transparency

Using CrowdFlower to Microtask Disaster Response

A devastating earthquake struck Port-au-Prince on January 12, 2010. Two weeks later, on January 27th, a CrowdFlower was used to translate text messages from Haitian Creole to English. Tens of thousands of messages were sent by affected Haitians over the course of several months. All of these were heroically translated by hundreds of dedicated Creole-speaking volunteers based in dozens of countries across the globe. While Ushahidi took the lead by developing the initial translation platform used just days after the earthquake, the translation efforts were eventually rerouted to CrowdFlower. Why? Three simple reasons:

CrowdFlower is one of the leading and most highly robust micro-tasking platforms there is;
CrowdFlower’s leadership is highly committed to supporting digital humanitarian response efforts;
Haitians in Haiti could now be paid for their translation work.

Continue reading “Patrick Meier: Using CrowdFlower to Microtask Disaster Response — and Robert Steele on CrowdFlower to Manage Micro-gifting Local to Global Range of Needs & Fulfillment Table to Household Level”

2013/02/232013/02/23

Berto Jongman: Paradise or Oblivion – A Documentary by the VENUS PROJECT

Culture, Economics/True Cost, Money, P2P / Panarchy, Resilience

great documentary about jacque fresco and the venus project — early articulation of need to restore natural economy instead of the artificial and very corrupt economy that does not properly value natural resources and human resources.

Paradise or Oblivion – A Documentary by the VENUS PROJECT
FOLLOW THE LINKS BELOW TO HELP MAKE THIS DREAM A REALITY

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Paradise or Oblivion – A Documentary by the VENUS PROJECT”

2013/02/22

Yoda: Integral Science Is the Force — Joining Intelligence with Integrity

Crowd-Sourcing, Culture, Economics/True Cost, Governance, Innovation, Knowledge, P2P / Panarchy, Resilience, Transparency

Imagine that the year is 1543 and you have just completed reading Copernicus’ newly published book, On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres, that has attempted to convince you that your daily experience of the sun moving around a stationary earth is an illusion. What do you think the chances are that you would have accepted the Copernican argument that violates your direct perceptions?

Thomas Gentry, Nonlinear Dynamicist, 1995

Is Integral Science related to Paul Ray’s work on Cultural Creatives?
Yes, ISI is working toward the same Integral Society identified by Paul Ray (see Cultural Creatives, 2003). We believe Integral Science provides a clearer understanding of why Integral Society is emerging and a more solid foundation for understanding what the Cultural Creatives must do to make it sustainable.

Is Integral Science related to Ken Wilber’s vision of Integralis?
Though there are some overlaps, Integral Science’s empirical foundation leads to some different conclusions from Wilber’s Integral Psychology and Integralis. Both views, for example, integrate spirituality and the evolution of consciousness, Integral Science integrates them into a seamless view of physical reality, using serious work from across disciplines, and taking great care to logically connect the dots from different fields.

Why is Integral Society emerging?
What does Integral Science say about what it will be like? Great changes are driven into being by the failure of the previous system, a breakdown whose root cause is cultural decay and whose main marker is a web of crises popping up in every sphere. Vowing to find a better way, a new cultural thrust then builds itself up around a new noble vision and defining metaphor that it believes will avoid the fiascoes of the old.

Hence, today’s great change, like those of the past, is being propelled by crises felt in every field. Think of education, health care, politics, energy, the economy, community, justice, and the environment. Yet, while these individual calamities grab attention, it is slowly becoming clear that the root problem is cultural decay. Late Modern culture has become a malady and late Modern America epitomizes the result.

Learn more.

Continue reading “Yoda: Integral Science Is the Force — Joining Intelligence with Integrity”

2013/02/15

Owl: Why the Elite Would Lose a Civil War

Crowd-Sourcing, Economics/True Cost, P2P / Panarchy, Politics, Resilience

Why The Elite Would Lose a Civil War

“Despite the fact that the banking elite wants to generate riots and stir social disorder in order to collapse the U.S. economy so they can buy up real assets on the cheap, if such chaos was to spill over into a full blown civil war, the consequences for the technocrats would be disastrous… In reality, even if a tiny minority of armed Americans chose to resist government oppression – the odds would be stacked hugely in their favor. Consider the fact that there are almost 100 million gun owners in the United States, who in total own over 300 million firearms and rising. There are only around 1.4 million active duty personnel in the entire US military – that includes the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard. Even if you include national guard reserves, the total figure is less than 2.3 million. Even if just five per cent of American gun owners actively resisted in a civil war, that would be five million Americans – more than double the entire US military and national guard, many of whom are already engaged overseas. So even if the government used the military to fire upon U.S. citizens, the troops would be easily outnumbered.”

This part of the article reminds one of John Robb's super-empowered global guerilla*:

Continue reading “Owl: Why the Elite Would Lose a Civil War”

2013/01/262013/01/26

Tom Atlee: A society governed by the people’s wisdom…

Politics, Resilience

A society governed by the people's wisdom…

Last weekend I joined a small group exploring the idea that society could have the capacity to generate “public wisdom” and that we could empower that wisdom to support wiser public policy and popular behavior.

Because many people don't know what we mean by “public wisdom”, we clarified that, for the purposes of this inquiry,
the word “public” means that

– the wisdom is generated by ordinary people
– in groups who embody the diversity of their communities
– for the guidance of officials and the citizenry (the whole public)
– regarding public affairs and the concerns of the citizenry
– in forms that are known about and readily accessible to everyone.
and the word “wisdom” means, simply,
– taking into account what needs to be taken into account
– for long term broad benefit.

Evidence suggests that under the right conditions, ordinary people can produce that kind of wisdom on behalf of their community or country. (I explore those “right conditions” in my 2012 book EMPOWERING PUBLIC WISDOM.)

In our gathering last weekend, my colleague Carolyn Shaffer invited me to answer the following question:

“How is life in the public realm better after empowered public wisdom takes hold?”

Her question invited me to assume that a culture of empowered public wisdom had already come about. It was an interesting exercise. I want to share with you my answers. Perhaps they will help you see why some of us are so attracted to this approach to social change.

When I imagine myself in a culture that enables and empowers public wisdom, I imagine a society in which the following are true:

Read full article.

2013/01/22

John Robb: Resilience With Stacked Functionality

Resilience

How Your Home Can Produce MORE With Less

When I walk through my home and around my yard, I'm constantly looking for ways to do more with the space I have available.

More? No, I'm not talking about finding ways to store more stuff by stacking and packing it in every nook and cranny.

Instead, I'm talking about finding ways to produce more in less space.

One of the secrets I've found to producing more, is to stack functionality so that the same space can do many things simultaneously.

Here's an example. Here's ground mounted solar system that a family in Devon, UK had installed (via Chris Rudge). Incidentally, this install is about what a family needs to power their home.

Ground mounted solar panels are often a smart choice, if you have a place to put them for a variety of reasons (cost to performance). However, ground mounted panels deprive you of usable land unlike roof mounted panels.

How do you fix this?

By using the space under the panels as a shed, chicken coop, or other useful structure. Something like this solar shed (via Pete Blanchard):

Can more functionality be added? Sure. You could turn the panels into a rainwater harvesting system, by adding a gutter and a cistern.

You could also turn the shed into a place that houses a battery bank to provide back up power for your house. Or, you could turn the shed into a workshop to use the power produced by the panels to make things you can sell to the world.

Be creative. If you have some ingenious ideas, please share them in the comments below.

Resiliently Yours,
JOHN ROBB

PS: This is a classic engineering technique. It's also something that is used in permaculture design.

PPS: Think about stacking functions serially and in parallel.

2013/01/122013/01/12

Michel Bauwens: Economic Value of Nature – Priceless — AND Irreplacable

Earth Intelligence, Resilience

Why the economy needs nature

Nature is not a drag on growth – its protection is an unavoidable prerequisite for sustaining economic development

Tony Juniper

The Guardian, 9 January 2013

One of the greatest misconceptions of our time is the idea that there is somehow a choice between economic development and sustaining nature. The narrative developed by the chancellor, George Osborne, since the 2010 general election provides a case in point. He says environmental goals need to be scaled back to promote more growth.

The reality we inhabit is somewhat different, however. One hundred per cent of economic activity is dependent on the services and benefits provided by nature. For some time, and during the last decade in particular, researchers have investigated the dependence of economic systems on ecological ones, and in the process have generated some striking conclusions. I tell the stories behind their findings in my new book, What has nature ever done for us?

While many mainstream economists suffer from the kind of delusions that make it perfectly rational for them to accept to liquidate natural systems in the pursuit of “growth”, different specialist studies reveal the huge economic value being lost as decisions and policies that are geared to promoting economic activity degrade the services provided by nature.

For example, as we struggle to cut emissions from fossil fuels, one study estimates that the value of the carbon capture services which could be gained through halving the deforestation rate by 2030 is around $3.7 trillion. And the wildlife in the same forests has huge value too – about 50% of the United States' $640bn pharmaceutical market is based on the genetic diversity of wild species, many of which were found in forests. And it's not only the genetic diversity in wildlife that brings economic benefits.

Among other things, wildlife also helps to control pests and diseases. The cost of losing India's vultures has been estimated at $34bn, largely because of the public health costs associated with their demise, including increased rabies infections. The annual pest-control value provided by insectivorous birds in a coffee plantation has been estimated as $310 per hectare while the annual per hectare value added from birds controlling pests in timber-producing forests has been put at $1,500. Great tits predating caterpillars in a Dutch orchard were found to improve the apple harvest by 50%.

The services provided by animals, such as bees, doing the pollination work that underpins about one trillion dollars-worth of agricultural sales has been valued at $190 billion per year.

Read full article.