5 Star – Page 109 – Public Intelligence Blog

Exciting, Original, Superb Overall, Could be Expanded, July 5, 2008

Colin Ware

I found this book provocative at multiple levels.

At the strategic level, although I have known about and followed Elsevier for decades, I am beginning to perceive a more coherent publishing strategy, and was pleased to see notice of their collaboration with BookAid and the Sabre Foundation to create libraries in developing countries.

At the operational level, I found this book to be a fascinating easy to read and understand integration of cognitive science (what is the brain doing to “see” different forms of visual cues (colors, shapes, groups, etcetera), psychology, art, design, and ultimately engineering of both larger than human structures, and computer graphics.

At the tactical level, the book is clearly a superior collection of critical information and easily a required text for those who would design for the human eye. At this level I would have liked to see more depictions of both buildings and environments, and more depictions of computer screens.

The absence of Library of Congress cataloging data was also a disappointment. The Library of Congress is becoming archaic, I believe publishers are amply competent to provide their own cataloging data, and this is especially important when a book crosses disciplines, e.g. cognitive science, visual intelligence, art, design, computer graphics, etcetera. Indeed, in the process of assigning cataloguing data, the publisher might discover areas where the book is weaker than intended, and send it back for enhancement.

I recommend this book be expanded to add a chapter on “decision support” and an appendix on great practitioners of the visualization of information. Although Tuft is the best known, in part because of his ceasecell promotion of his books and classes, there are at least 25 if not 50 other great visualizers, and a page on each with their photo, short bio, list of publications, and a couple of examples of their work would be a mind-enhancing “walk about” in the field of visual design.

As a textbook, this is a clear five. As adult education is falls to a four, or needs a second book that properly introduces the collective intelligence and semantic web and geospatially and time-based visualizations that are emergent.

In addition to the books recommended by the first reviewer, see also:
Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder
The Design of Dissent: Socially and Politically Driven Graphics
Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become
Large Scale Structure and Dynamics of Complex Networks: From Information Technology to Finance and Natural Science (Complex Systems and Interdisciplinary … Systems and Interdisciplinary Science)
The Age of Missing Information
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin

2008/07/042009/12/04

Review DVD: Secondhand Lions

5 Star, Culture, DVD - Light, Reviews (DVD Only)

Utterly Brilliant, Subtle Detail, Heartwarming, July 4, 2008

Haley Joel Osment, Robert Duvall, Michael Caine

I have watched this DVD several times, and each time I find new details that enthrall.

This is a truly heartwarming movie that I used to push back against the crushing weight of reality, a reality I do not control.

The two super-actors are at their best, but the young man who stars as the son of the gad-about lady is the real star. His smile, his behavior, are Oscar material.

Don't miss the dogs, the pig, and the lion. This is a “top ten” movie.

2008/07/022009/12/04

Review: Mobilizing Minds–Creating Wealth From Talent in the 21st Century Organization

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Intelligence (Wealth of Networks)

Weak Five for HR Wonks, Distill to One Page for CEOs, July 2, 2008

Lowell L. Bryan

I was tempted to give this book three to four stars for lack of context and for lack of a solid literature review (the entire book is a McKinsey love fest and somewhat albino in its incestuousness) but because I read a Harvard Business Review article today on how HR is the new new thing for Harvard MBAs, and the book speaks very well to HR folks I rate it a weak five for HR, four for all others. The smart HR person will find a way to distill the book to one page for the CEO. The basic premises are not new, but they are valid.

My annoyance first (minus one star):
– Neither ethics nor the environment appear in this book.
– True costs and the triple bottom line do not appear in this book.
– Customer minds do not appear in this book [see BW “The Power of Us”]
– The authors make facile assumptions, e.g. Exxon and GlaxoSmithKline are top “performers” by their account, but the authors are–with all due respect–clueless about the fact that Exxon did not make $40 billion in profit, it externalized $12 per gallon and stole that money from the public commonwealth now and into the future; similarly, GSK is profitable because the US Government is not allowed to negotiate, 50% of the health system is waste (see PWC report), and they are allowed to charge 100 times what the same medications cost in any given Third World country (different lowest cost country for each of the top 75 medications).
+ The bibliography is marginal, a form of McKinsey pablum.
+ The authors make facile reference to “complex adaptive systems” and to Wikipedia as well as blogs, but fail to provide a proper bridge to the “wealth of networks” or to Generation 2.0/Digital Native mindsets and methods.
+ They significantly exaggerate and misrepresent the relative value of “distinctive” and proprietary knowledge in relation to giving employees access to public knowledge in the external environment as well as internal knowledge that is not secret (see images under book cover).
+ The publisher puts the lead author's Harvard MBA right after his name, while relegating the second author's degree to the last line of her bio. As an admirer of the book What They Don't Teach You At Harvard Business School: Notes From A Street-Smart Executive I found this substantially OFFENSIVE. I hate feminazis, but in this instance, if the second author would like the publisher fire-bombed, I'm there for her [metaphorically speaking].

My irritation aside, this is a good book and I recommend it. Let me start with a few quotes that captured my respect:

p 13 “The plagues of the modern company are hard-to-manage workforce structures, thick silo walls, confusing matrix structures, e-mail overload, and ‘undoable jobs.'”

p 24 “Surveys confirm the symptoms of the disease, which include e-mail and voice-mail overload, task forces hat go nowhere, pointless meetings, delays in making decisions because of scheduling conflicts, too much raw data and not enough information [or sense-making aka decision-support], and challenges in getting the knowledge one needs because of organizational silos.

p 26 “Interaction costs involve searching for information and knowledge, coordinating activities and exchanges, and monitoring and controlling the performance of others within the same firm.” [credit by the authors to Ron Course, 1937]

p 239 “Today, the most valuable capital that companies can use in the 21st century is not financial capital but ‘intangible capital.'”

Duh. Okay, a bit more of my irritation, but the book stays at four to five stars. Here are the books the authors did not read in reinventing the wheel:
Organizational Intelligence (Knowledge and Policy in Government and Industry)
The exemplar: The exemplary performer in the age of productivity
The Knowledge Executive
The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organization
Information Payoff: The Transformation of Work in the Electronic Age

There are others, but I need to save four links for the close of this review. Now on to what I did find worthwhile, which is to say, at least 75% of the book (the negative reviewers dismiss this work too quickly).

+ Minds of virtually all employees are grossly under-utilized
+ In emphasizing human brains, authors run counter to the machine learning fad that permeates the meta-web crowd, and that is good
+ “Unproductive complexity is the common enemy”
+ Profit per employee is a useful measure [but I would emphasize, not in isolation, see my damnation of Exxon and GKS above]
+ Existing financial reports *block* internal collaboration
+ Economies of scale and scope undermined by complexity, HR and IT can help regain momentum
+ It's not enough to pick good people, have to change corporate context, capability, and the culture (collaboration instead of competition)
+ Informal networks cannot be *managed* [authors' emphasis, heavens!]
+ Decisions on not making numbers versus future-oriented investment need to be pushed to the top of the corporation
+ Few CEOs understand the legacy front line, need to interview and listen
+ Valuable pages for the HR wonk emergent on alternative performance measures and alternative economic incentive plans

9 ideas fully discussed in this book:
+ backbone line structure (3 layers instead of 7)
+ one company governance and culture
+ dynamic management (portfolio of risks)
+ formal networks
+ talent marketplace (HR as broker)
+ knowledge marketplace (internal wikis, blogs)
+ internal motivating economic incentives
+ role-specific performance management
+ organizational design as strategy: who you hire *is* your future

I put the book down satisfied that it was worth the time it took to read; that the points above are important; and that the CEO of the future needs to elevate HR to the high table.

By the same token, neither of these authors is at a CEO level of strategic holistic perception–everything about the world has changed, to include the establishment of the World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility (WISER), and the emergence of global social networks capable of breaking the backs of companies that continue to export jobs, leverage sweatshops, import toxins, and generally steal from the commonwealth. The book reflects zero understanding of, to use my remaining four links:

No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

Bottom line: within their niche, worth listening to. They don't know what they don't know, and that is why CEOs have a job (in theory–most CEOs and flag officers receive biased, incomplete, late information, and could really use help thinking about trransformation in a transformative environment–this book is a fraction of the total, perhaps 20%).

2008/07/012011/10/14

Review: Deer Hunting with Jesus–Dispatches from America’s Class War

5 Star, Corruption, Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Democracy, Politics

cover deer hunting with jesus — Amazon Page

Serious Book Highly Recommended, July 1, 2008

Joe Bageant

Senator Obama may or may not have read this book. It's author does open with the observation that life is so hard among the white poor and working poor that they seek solace in beer, overeating, Jesus, and guns. This is, however, a very serious book, a first-hand deep look into the hearts and minds of the 60% of the country that cannot control its lifestyle, environment, pay check, or future.

Early on I note that the author appears to combine both education and common sense. There are magnificent turns of phrase throughout.

My fly-leaf notes:

+ Parallel world to that of the educated urban liberals
+ Life runs from complete insecurity to looming job insecurity
+ Just over half the poor in the US are white and this is the only group that is growing in number
+ For someone earning $8 an hour, if nothing goes wrong, they have $55 a week for groceries, gas, and incidentals
+ Insurance can cost as much as rent or mortgage
+ One third of working Americans make less than $9 an hour
+ They are inherently anti-union, facts are irrelevant, Christian radio is their primary source of information and viewpoint
+ This is a permanent underclass, two out of five have no high school diploma while all over 50 have major health issues, and low to no credit
+ The leftist middle class does not realize that this group votes right in part out of a feeling of revenge
+ Right owns the bars, the non-Internet real world
+ Left lost the middle when they demonized guns and gun owners–70 million gun owners, 200 million guns, guns are used to protect 60 times more often than they are used to attack
+ Superb multi-page discussion of whitetrashonomics and the trailer mortgage scams
+ Fundamentalists are superbly organized, home schooling leads to select colleges where political indoctrination is part of the deal
+ Sense of Rapture and Left Behind is very real within this group
+ Excellent discussion of how health “non-profits” are a real-estate valuation scam that serve only the well-off and not the poor
+ Television and petroleum have defined us

The author makes it a point to quote and point to a dirty dozen books that he drew on, but overall this is an essay from the heart with a great deal of intellect and a great deal of discipline in the presentation.

I highly recommend this book to both moderate Republicans wondering where their Party went off the rails, and to moderate leftists and to libertarians wondering how best to reconnect to what appears to be a very angry, down-trodden, unheard and unseen majority.

The most compelling insight for me from the author centered on his description of small towns across America, but especially in the South including Virginia, where a network of “elites” controlled the bank, newspaper, city hall, zoning board, and so on. As the author describes it, these fiefdoms and their masters are all too eager to cut deals with corporations and make money off the resulting land transactions, while not spending money on education, localized health care, or anything that might elevate the “local poor” to a point where they might understand the value of unions or tenant boards.

I experienced one major personal insight in reading this: the author takes great care to point out that most members of this group do not read, period. No books, no newspapers, barely use the Internet (except for NASCAR) and–this is the insight–have great disdain for those of us who have the “luxury” of sitting around and reading (not real work, that). This book and this author really communicated to me how little value my education and reading has in this context–what is needed is a long-term hands-on strategy for educating all the people all the time, and that is something neither the Democrats nor the Republicans appear willing to fight for, which is sad, since Thomas Jefferson said so clearly that a Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry.

Other books I recommend (and have reviewed):
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back

The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor
Left Hand of God, The: Healing America's Political and Spiritual Crisis
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Manufacture Of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System

DVD (links poverty and military recruitment):
Why We Fight

AA Mind the Gap — Vote and/or Comment on Review

2008/06/302009/12/04

Review DVD: The Bucket List

5 Star, Culture, DVD - Light, Reviews (DVD Only)

White, Black, Death, Life, Perfect, June 30, 2008

Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman

Jack Nicholson is as good as it gets for crazy in love with life, and Morgan Freeman is as good as it gets for smart, thoughtful, and good to the core.

This movie is one that I got, skimmed through, dismissed, and then sat down and watched all the way through.

It is NOT a depressing movie, nor is it a “joy” movie. It is a lovely mix of suffering, love, fulfillment, discovery, and reconciliation.

BRAVO.

2008/06/282009/12/04

Review: Looking For Trouble–Adventures in a Broken World

5 Star, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Force Structure (Military), Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Security (Including Immigration), War & Face of Battle

What Humans Knew in 1990's That Secret Mandarins Refused to Hear, June 28, 2008

Ralph Peters

This book is not, as some might expect, a collection of past Op-Eds, but rather an extraordinary retrospective at the 1989-1996 time frame when officers like Ralph (and General Al Gray, myself, and a number of others in the Army and the Marines) were seeing the writing on the wall: the end of big war and the emergence of global instability in every clime and place). Ralph actually walked the ground and had “eyes on.”

I was immediately charmed anew by the poetic writing and the visually elegant turns of phrase. I have in my notes: chuckled, amused, reminded.

This review is going to combine my fly leaf notes with as many short quotes as I can fit in within my 1,000 word allotment.

Notes first:

Deep reading of Tolstoy and others set the stage for *understanding* today's culture and mindset in Russia. Earlier in his life, a subscription gift from an aunt to National Geographic opened his eyes to the rest of the world.

Early on, disdain for how we spend billions on satellites and nothing on officers walking the ground. He notes that overt human intelligence can absorb and articulate what no satellite can provide: “the temper of the people, the taste of the land.”

USSR in 1991 was potholes and rust. In his “walk-about” he gained direct invited access to an MVD commander's office, to all of the local “secret” messages, and had invited “eyes on” the MVD special intelligence communications room.

In the Bosnia-Kosovo run-up, which he and others anticipated, he learned that Europe cannot be trusted to act in unison or decisively in the absence of strong US leadership–France, Germany, and the United Kingdom all revert to their historical animosities, and despite their large standing armies, lack the political will or the deep strategic analytics necessary to use those armies in a coherent manner.

His respect for Armenia is deeply rooted in his on the ground experience among them.

Col Stu Herrington, whose book Traitors Among Us: Inside the Spy Catcher's World I have praised, is strongly praised in this book. He and the author were part of a team that worked with the Russians to address the long-standing concern over Americans being held in the Gulag, and the pages in this book, covering each of the wars from World War II onwards, are a complete surprise and essential reading for anyone interested in POW/MIA accounting.

He blasts the US policy of crop eradication, and his devastating criticism of arm-chair politicians and ivory tower diplomats warms my heart.

Late in the book he focused on Pakistan and I find this chapter especially vital for the public understanding of how the US is destroying its once-close ties to the Pakistani officer corps. The older officers are fully trained by the British or the US. The company and field grade officers are not, and are so delusional about Islam and so ignorant about the rest of the world as to be very dangerous to us.

Throughout the book he laments the lot of women across most Islamic countries (with Indonesia and Malaysia as notable exceptions; I add this from my own knowledge and Ralph's official report to the Marine Corps in the 1990's).

Now the quotes. Page number, then words:

8 On [the Russian and Central Asian] frontiers, humanity is a brotherhood of smugglers.

29 Only its women allowed the Soviet Union to endure as long as it did.

38 …I am convinced there is no Russian word for maintenance.

45 …worry too much about dead facts and too little about their antagonist's delusions.

66 Artist and intelligence challenges similar: an eye for detail and ability to reduce complexity to coherence

73 …no one in the US intelligence community was interested. If the data didn't come from a satellite, it didn't count.

87 What Belgrade lacked … was human dignity.

108 I knew we could overpower [Iraqi] military….I had seen…his officer corps…drunk and whoring.

132 Conquest of Central Asia is a chronicle of…cruelty….Soviets are the champs….[others] tortured human beings. The Soviet Union tortured the earth itself.

141 Bukhara is where Islam turned dark…

146 The Clinton Administration was run by intolerant dreamers… With neither self-critical faculties nor experience of the world …

151 Islam froze by the mid-fifteenth century when science-fearing zealots….

172 And there you have our diplomats. Unwilling to talk to our enemies… Unwilling to learn.

200 Azerbaijan was the first place where I got n inside look at the nastiness of our Saudi “friends.”

204 Everywhere, the Saudis took an interest in human suffering only if it offered them an entry point for missionary activities. And any Muslim who wouldn't sign up for … Wahhabi Puritanism was welcome to die.

218 …the callousness with which our government had treated the family members of our MIAs…

231 [General McCaffrey] wasn't getting an adequate tie-it-all-together picture of the cocaine problem. Not from his staff, and not from the alphabet-soup agencies…

239 You cannot take away the livelihood of the poor [coca crops] unless you have the wherewithal to replace it immediately and enduringly.

244 Found wealth, when immature countries…hit the natural-resources lottery, is uniformly destructive of the souls of men and nations.

251 [Army saw the future coming.] It was impossible, however, to persuade the Clinton White House, the intelligence establishment, or even our own services (except for the Marines) that our enemies, rather than our desires, would shape the future security environment.

319 [Drug Czar] was not allowed to differentiate between hard and soft drugs.

335 [At the Plain of Jars] I saw my country's dark side….we go mad now and then. And when we do, we leave desolation behind.

This is an amazing book and for anyone who is concerned with strategic warning, honest intelligence, strategy, force structure, the need to rebalance the instruments of national power, and the future of humanity, will find this book inspiring.

E Veritate Potens–From Truth, We the People Are Empowered

2008/06/032009/10/30

Review: Sway–The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior

5 Star, Communications, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Democracy

Super Book, Fast Read, Relevant to Participatory Democracy, June 3, 2008

Ori Brafman

This is a very fine book, a fast read, and highly relevant to Web 2.0 and all the emergent opportunities to turn our world right side up, restoring power back to all the people. My reading has moved heavily toward cognitive science and “open everything,” and my avowed goal, apart from creating public intelligence in the public interest, is to make “true cost” visible to the public on every product and service, penetrating through the kinds of sway barriers this book describes.

Each chapter is excellent, with a nice teaser diagram. The book is double-spaced with adequate notes and index.

My flyleaf highlights:

+ Diagnosis bias is huge. [The book does not focus enough on how our “experts know more and more about less and less,” but the core point is valid: once their tiny little brain storage reaches a conclusion, they bend everything to fit it. this could also be called paradigm or disciplinary bias.]

+ Hidden currents in the individual and group decision support process include loss aversion, value attribution or negatiion, and a commitment to the wrong s trategy. Holy Cow. Talk about CIA, Microsoft, Google, CISCO, they are all there.

+ NBA draft is mostly guess and speculation [so is most intelligence “analysis” and both groups get away with it because they are not held accountable for getting it wrong.]

+ Labels *matter* and deeply influence outcomes.

+ Visualization *sells* just about anything.

+ Cues and subtle messages are nuanced and complex and omnipresent. I was really engaged by this section.

+ Need to be heard is vital and the more one does that, the more value is created (this is social networking 101, as Web 2.0 starts to go over the cliff so Web 3.0 can rise like a Pheonix.] The authors stress that those offering to listen must *hear* each individual voice.

+ Blockers matter, i.e. there have to be people in the loop who have the courage, the commitment, the *role* of saying no to abuses of authority including rankism. [I think of all our flag officers and Congress Members who refused to challenge the criminal lies of the White House and the abuses of power by the Vice President, all documented now in the open literature. Had Colin Powell resigned and called for a stop, he would be President in 2009, instead of those now running. all flawed in their own way [and each a testiment to how easily we are swayed by a lack of substance on the part of all three–visit Earth Intelligence Network to see the 52 questions none of the candidates can answer, and the 52 “starter” answers for a Citizens Summit to discuss (February 2009 in Chicago, over Lincoln's birthday).

Great little book. Here are some others I have found to be valuable:
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
The Age of Missing Information
Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq

Below is the first in a series of non-profit books (also free online), relevant to creating public intelligence in the public interest).
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

Category: 5 Star

Review: Visual Thinking: for Design (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies)