5 Star – Page 203 – Public Intelligence Blog

2000/04/072009/11/08

Review: Powershift–Knowledge, Wealth, and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Complexity & Resilience, Culture, Research, Economics, Education (General), Information Operations, Information Society, Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks)

One of Five Really Core Books on Information Age,

April 7, 2000

Alvin Toffler

Alvin augments our vocabulary with terms like “info-warrior”, “eco-spasm”, “super-symbolic economy” and “powershift.” He examines the relationship between violence, wealth, and knowledge and concludes that an entirely new system of wealth creation is emerging, as well as entirely new approach to information dissemination that places most of our command and control, communications, computing, and intelligence (C4I) investment in the dump heap with the Edsels of the past. He anticipates both the emergence of information wars at all levels, and the demise of bureaucracy. He cautions us about the emerging power of the “Global Gladiators”-religions, corporations, and terrorists (nice little mix) and concludes that in order for nations to maintain their strategic edge, an effective intelligence apparatus will be a necessity and will “boom” in the 21st Century, with the privatization of intelligence being its most prominent break from the past.

2000/04/072009/11/08

Review: Consilience–The Unity of Knowledge

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Education (Universities), Environment (Solutions), Future, Information Society, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks)

Creating World Brain and the Virtual Intelligence Community,

April 7, 2000

Edward O. Wilson

EDITED 9 July 2007 to add comment and links to other books.

Comment: This is still one of the best books for someone who wants to think deeply about knowledge. Below are links to some others I recommend.

Our answer to Levy, but an order of magnitude more practical and steeped in some of the best endnotes I've ever enjoyed. Consilience is the “jumping together” of knowledge across boundaries, and the greatest enterprise of the mind. He begins with an example, showing how biology, ethics, social science, and environmental policy must all come together to properly resolve a global environmental issue, but actually do not-the learned individuals are fragmented into four separate communities, and within those communities further fragmented into nationalities and cliques and jobs, and it is our greater loss for we cannot arrive at the best policy without being able to integrate the knowledge across all these boundaries. He emphasizes that the public must be educated and have access to this unified knowledge, not just the policymakers. He poses, and then answers across the book, this question: “What is the relation between science and the humanities, and how is it important to human welfare?” In my own mind, Edward O. Wilson has defined both national and global intelligence writ large, and done so in way that suggests the “virtual intelligence community” is a very practical and achievable vision.

The Future of Life
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organization
Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives
Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Power at the Edge of the 21st Century
Infinite Wealth: A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era
The Age of Missing Information
Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography
Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
Information Productivity: Assessing Information Management Costs of U. S. Corporations

2000/04/072009/11/08

Review: Secrets of the Super Searchers–The Accumulated Wisdom of 23 of the World?s Top Online Searchers

5 Star, Intelligence (Commercial)

“Master's Class” for Information-Driven Smart People,

April 7, 2000

Reva Basch

Reva, one of the top five information brokers in the USA, sought out and interviewed 35 professional or gifted amateur commercial online (fee for service) searchers and provides in this book a delightful free-flowing conversation with each of them as a “master's class” for intelligence and information professionals.

2000/04/072009/11/08

Review: Cyberwar–Security, Strategy, and Conflict in the Information Age

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Information Operations, Strategy, War & Face of Battle

The First Good Collection on Cyber-war,

April 7, 2000

Alan D. Campen

This book is a very fine compilation, spanning a whole range of technical and non-technical aspects of information warfare, and including my own invited chapter on “Creating a Smart Nation: Information Strategy, Virtual Intelligence, and Information Warfare.” This is a basic text and those in charge of our information warfare segments today would do well to read it again and again because most of them are focusing on one tiny slice of the IW mission, hot bits.

2000/04/072009/11/08

Review: Cyberwar 2.0–Myths, Mysteries & Reality

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Information Operations

Round Two, USG Still Doesn't Get It,

April 7, 2000

Alan D. Campen

This sequel to the first book on cyberwar is even better (and the first one was very good) because it is much more deliberate about addressing strategy and diplomacy (part one); society, law, and commerce (part two); operations and information warfare (part three, where most military professionals get stuck); and intelligence, assessment, and modeling (part four). My chapter on “Information Peacekeeping, the Purest Form of War” appears here, but based on the lack of feedback I suspect all of the contributions in this section are a decade away from being understood with the U.S. Government.

2000/04/072009/11/08

Review: Strategic Intelligence & Statecraft–Selected Essays (Brassey’s Intelligence and National Security Library)

5 Star, Diplomacy, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public)

Strategic, Cultural Intelligence, Knowledge Policy,

April 7, 2000

Adda B. Bozeman

While reading this book, every intelligence professional should feel like a bashful second-grader shuffling their feet while being kindly reprimanded by their teacher. This book, a collection of essays from the 1980's, is the only one I have ever found that truly grasps the strategic long-term importance of intelligence in the context of culture and general knowledge. The heart of the book is on page 177: “(There is a need) to recognize that just as the essence of knowledge is not as split up into academic disciplines as it is in our academic universe, so can intelligence not be set apart from statecraft and society, or subdivided into elements…such as analysis and estimates, counterintelligence, clandestine collection, covert action, and so forth. Rather, and as suggested earlier in this essay, intelligence is a scheme of things entire. And since it permeates thought and life throughout society, Western scholars must understand all aspects of a state's culture before they can assess statecraft and intelligence.” The 25-page introduction, at least, should be read by every intelligence professional.

2000/04/072009/11/08

Review: Without Cloak or Dagger –The truth about the new espionage

5 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

One of Two Required Intelligence Books for ANYONE,

April 7, 2000

Miles Copeland

This is one of my two required readings for any aspiring intelligence officer or student of intelligence (the other one is by Allen Dulles, “The Craft of Intelligence.” An absolute gem across the board, providing insights into both capabilities and culture. This is really the only down-to-earth book that combines “a day in the life of a spy” with a serious practical discussion of just how and why spies do what they do. It is fun and easy to read, and offers some real world annecdotes that do not violate security but offer instead glimpses of the joys, the insanities, and the terror (10% of the time) or boredom (90% of the time–such as spending hours if not days waiting for a senstive asset to show up) that characterize the life of a spy.

To his credit, Copeland understood very early on that the spy world was missing out on what is known today as Open Source Intelligence (see my own book, “The New Craft of Intelligence” or view the 30,000 free pages at OSS.Net). The description on pages 41-42 (of the original hard-cover version) of how “Mother” concocted an entire network and got the head of Secret Intelligence to agree its production was worth $100,000 a year (big money in 1946), only to reveal that his source was actually five issues of The New York Times “demonstrated not only the naiveté of our nation's only existing group of espionage specialists but the value of ordinary New York Times reporting on matters regarded as being of high-priority intelligence interest.” Nothing has changed in 50 years. We still need our spies, but they need to be a bit more serious, a bit less white, a lot older, and much more focused. We lack–we need–men of the caliber of Dulles and Copeland today.