1-7 Star Rating – Page 185 – Public Intelligence Blog

Does Not Name Names or Illustrate Networks, March 29, 2008

David Rothkopf

I grew up in the 1970's studying multinational corporations and inter-locking directorates, reading Richard Barnett's Global Reach, and so on. I am also familiar with the $60,000 a year special database that charts the top dogs and every membership, association, investment, etc.

The two major deficiencies in this book that left me disappointed are:

1. Does not name names nor show network diagrams such as you can pull from Silobreaker.com (Factiva is not even close).

2. Shows no appreciation for past research and findings. This is a current overview, closer to journalism than to authorship or research.

The book earns four stars instead of three for two reasons:

1. There is a very subtle but crystal-clear sense of goodness, ethics, and “good intention” or “right thinking” by the author. As diplomatic as he might be, he clearly sees the insanity of Exxon refusing to think about anything other than maximizing petroleum while externalizing $12 in costs for every $3.50 gallon that they sell–they did NOT “earn” $40 billion in profit this past year–they essentially stole it from the population at large and future generations).

2. Each chapter has a serious point or series of points, and I especially liked the author's constant presentation of tangible numbers on virtually every page.

Having said all that, I will list two books below that I found more interesting than this one, and then list a few notes that made it to my flyleafs.

Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich
All the Money in the World: How the Forbes 400 Make–and Spend–Their Fortunes

Notes from the book:

6,000 top people (in total of 6 billion, I think that's .0001–the author, who's no doubt better at math, says each is 1 in a million)

Top 1,000 rich own as much or earn as much as the bottom 2.5 billion poor.

Early on he says he decided not to do a list because it changes. I believe him, but I was truly disappointed to not find a lot of meat in this book–it has facts, anecdotes, a story line, but one does not get the “feeling in the fingertips” or the raw feel.

Early on he reviews and dismisses conspiracy theories, and returns to this in the final chapter where he reviews the Masons, Bohemian Grove, Skull and Bones, all in a cursory manner (for example, there is no table, a single page would do, of top Skull and Bones power figures today).

Power is shifting away from Nations. This is true. The author focuses on those who have money and live globally. He is not focusing on those who control their own spending, global assemblages. For that see
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs
Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems

Human interactions are the glue connects the superclass members–corridor meetings that take place on the periphery of “big events” where the important stuff is not the event, but the encounters–Davos, World Cup, Grand Prix, Allen & Co, Geneva Auto Show, Winter Olympics, the Chinese meeting on Hainan Island (the Boao Forum).

Corporate/Finance the top of the barrel, 2000 top organizations control $103 trillion in assets, do $27 trillion in annual sales.

Access/time is the most precious asset, one reason the Gulf Stream is really a solid indicator of top of the top–it provides time saved, mobility, flexibility, privacy, security, work en route, sleep well, etc.

The author tells us he is focusing on influence, not just wealth or accomplishments, but very candidly, while the book is coherent and there is nothing wrong with its facts or sequence of observations, one simply does not come away with a clear picture. This is like a verbal description of a trip around the world, which it is, but without the photos, smells, tastes, etc. It also avoids any substantive (as opposed to discreetly moral “in passing” commentary) attention to costs and consequences–a balance sheet showing choices being made (e.g. by Exxon) and who benefits, who loses, would no doubt terminate this author's welcome on the fringes of the super-elite as it would be devastatingly negative.

20-50 people control any given sector, worldwide

In the book the author seeks to discuss six central issues:

1. Nature of the superclass power

2. Link if any (ha ha) between concentrated wealth and the five billion at the bottom of the pyramid

3. Whether the superclass calls into question the sufficiency of our global legal and governance institutions

4. Whether the division in interests between the rich and the poor will be the central conflict of our time

5. Would we choose this superclass?

6. How is the superclass evolving

General conclusions:

Markets not working fully, need some non-market “controlling authority”

Elites are not taking responsibility for the poor in their own countries

Meritocracy is no longer–same merit, one becomes a billionaire from connections, the other a mere millionaire

Private equity is where its at in terms of starting salaries in the $300,000 range.

Globalists versus nationalist

Anti-globalists include leaders of Iran, Russia, and Venezuela

Tottering institutions–International Monetary Fund may not be funded by countries much longer

Global military-to-military relations work, political-diplomatic do not, and the money is mis-spent (billions here and there, and no money for spare parts to keep air forces flying, much cheaper good will spending)

Criminal elite a part of this (read Moises Naim's book Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy

USA has a power vacuum in that both the President and Congress have taken power that is not theirs and abused it, but the US voter has ceded power by failing to understand and deliberate on the issues.

He surprises me by bing familiar with General Smedley Butler's book, War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier

Two coolest sentences in the book for me:

“Most dangerous mind-altering substance on earth is oil.”

“Cost is simply not caring.” (Corporations that enrich dictators while ignoring the billions whose commonwealth is being stolen). For more on this evil and how the USA supports 42 of 44 dictators, see Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025

There is nothing in this book, published in 2008, on Sovereign Wealth Funds, nor does the author focus on dictators and “royalty” as part of the superclass. As Lawrence Lessig has noted, end corruption, end scarcity, begin a true harvesting of the common wealth for the common good. Right now we are all where “Animal Farm” put us–fodder for the wealthy.

The publisher's choice of ink colors for the jacket flaps and rear cover is terrible, those portions of the book are difficult to read.

The book is over-sold: “draws back the curtain on a privileged society.” Not really. This is a solid book of facts that is as close to bland and generic and inoffensive as one can get–but then, that was probably the author's intent since he wants to be able to see these people again…..

For a direct opposite of this book, seek out books on Collective Intelligence, Wisdom Councils, World Cafe, Social Entrepreneurship, All Rise, Power Governments Cannot Suppress, and so on. We live in interesting times.

2008/03/292009/10/30

Review: Navigating Social-Ecological Systems–Building Resilience for Complexity and Change

1 Star, Information Society

This Book Joins my List of Great Books at Wrong Price,March 29, 2008

Fikret Berkes

If the author will get in touch with me I can publish the book for sale at a cost of no morethan $39.95. If a digital copy of the book is available, I would like to post it immediately.

This book is an example of what happens when authors do not demand control over the pricing of their work.

This is an important topic, and no doubt a superb book, but this publisher is “out of control” and should be driven out of business by smart buyers who refuse to spend money foolishly. As a publisher myself, I can tell you that books like this cost no more than a penny a page to print.

Sadly, Amazon has refused my suggestion that they offer authors a direct publishing deal in which digital copies are delivered to Amazon where they can be sold as micro-text for micro-cash, or sold by the chapter, or sold as a digital transfer to the nearest FedExKinko's where they are perfectly capable of printing a hard copy book “one at a time.”

I care deeply about using knowledge to save Humanity and the Planet, and seeing prices like this on worthy books makes my blood boil. Search Amazon for this topic, there are at least ten other books on this topic that are more honorably priced.

2008/03/272009/10/30

Review: The Five Front War–The Better Way to Fight Global Jihad

4 Star, Terrorism & Jihad, War & Face of Battle

Endorse Retired Reader's Review, Adding Images and Links, March 27, 2008

Daniel Byman

I've learned that Retired Reader's background and judgement are very close to my own, and as a general rule, if he reviews a book before me, I look for something to add rather than replicate what he has already set forth.

In my own work back in the 1990's for the Strategic Studies Institute I developed the concept of having five functional strategies within a national grand strategy; “Threats, Strategy, and Force Structure” by Robert David Steele Strategic Alternatives Report (Strategic Studies Institute, Nov 2000) also as Chapter 9 in Steven Metz (ed.), Revising the Two MTW Force Shaping Paradigm (Strategy Studies Institute, April 2001), the five strategies were: global (multinational) intelligence; interoperability (communications, computing, and data standards); force structure (four forces after next (bitg war, small war, peace war, home defense); preventive (mulitnational) diplomacy and assistance; and finally, home front.

It's good to see a book that takes this five front approach (I might mention, there are six fronts on the ground: the USA, Latin America, South Asia, Africa, Central Asia including sects in China and Russia, and Europe, which has so totally lost it on giving citizenship to aliens that they are suffering from terminal cancer.

Now here is the key point: using the image provided above, please recognize that in the larger strategic context of the ten high-level threats to humanity (poverty, infectious disease, environmental degradation, inter-state conflict, civil war, genocide, other atrocities, proliferation, terrorism, and transnational crime, the “terrorist” threat is a TACTIC and a TINY TINY, infinitesmally small part of the totality of the threat to the USA and any other Nation. To exaggerate this threat and to blow the entire bank and make the USA involvent over it, is to be impeachable for breach of trust, dereliction of duty, and criminal malfeasance in office.

Buy this book. It is one of the best works to date on the nuances of terrorism and how to approach terrorism. It is, however, valuable only for that small segment of the threat that it addresses. For a larger view, see the following ten books (or read my reviews for the snapshot–my article above is easily found on the Internet):

Modern Strategy
Security Studies for the 21st Century
Understanding International Conflicts (6th Edition) (Longman Classics in Political Science)
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
The leadership of civilization building: Administrative and civilization theory, symbolic dialogue, and citizen skills for the 21st century
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition
The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World
The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism

2008/03/262011/10/22

Review: Our Undemocratic Constitution–Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We the People Can Correct It)

5 Star, Democracy

Solid Five for Good Sense, Elegance, and Timing, March 26, 2008

Sanford Levinson

This is one of those critical books where even a top reviewer is well advised to carfefully consider all extant reviews by others, and I have done so. They all have something important, less the fellow that cannot handle brilliance in others. Having considered all the other reviews, I continue in my own belief that this book is a solid FIVE for good sense, elegance in presentation, and timeliness.

Although I have recently lauded State of the Unions: How Labor Can Strengthen the Middle Class, Improve Our Economy, and Regain Political Influence as perhaps the most important book in 2008, I confess that while I still believe that in terms of restoring democracy in November, this author has provided all of us with a compelling intelligent case for demanding a constitution convention in 2008, both through a nation-wide petition to all serving Members, and through direct controntation with our three candidates (two kids and an old guy–Bloomberg is looking better and better).

My flyleaf notes begin with INSPIRING! Coinfirms we need a new constitutional convention, ably distinguishing between then and now.

I would endorse the above conclusion, arguments unseen (yet) by pointinig out that there are 27 active secessionist movements in the USA today, with the third annual meeting of these groups coming up in October 2008. They are led by Kirkpatrick Sale, author of Human Scale and I judge most of their grievances and demands to be LEGITIMATE. When combined with the reality that Congress has gerrymandered a third of the population into irrelevance, and made it impossible for another third, the Working Poor, to vote without trade-offs with work (I refer to those who walk, bike, or bus to work), I am absolutely won over by this book's premise.

The author takes issue with seven tiny state populations having the same two Senators, and notes in passing that Senators were supposed to be elected by their legislatures rather than the people. That was changed many many years after the original was signed.

He discusses the problems with the Electoral College, with Executive power, with the Supreme Court being appointed for life, and with 13 states being able to block the rest if and when a constitutional amendment is proposed.

He ends the introductory section by surmising that the Constitution is both insufficiently democratic and dysfunctional. As one who thinks all Members less Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) should be impeached or at least not re-elected (see Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders and The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy), and both party structures DESTROYED (see Running On Empty: How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It, a Constitutional Convention in 2009 makes definite sense to me. I would note that Henry Kissinger among many others has noted the dysfunctionality of government, and many others I have reviewed here point to the blurring of the lines among governments, organizations, cororations, and civil society, and the need to find new ways of forming and informing and leveraging Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems while also nurturing social entrepreneurs (see How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition and also The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World.

The author notes that 14 states offer their citizens a vote on whether a new constitutional review is needed, and I reiterate, if we have 27 secessionist movements, we have 27 major groups whose existence by definition DEMANDS a Constititional Convention.

The author notes that the Preamble is THE most important part of the Constitution, and it is at this point that I have a note: Joins Lessig and Sunstein as one of my top three lawyers (see also my list on judging Dick Cheney's impeachability).

The author goes on to note that the US Constitition is THE most difficult Constitution on the planet to amend, and further observes that Congress excells at passing pork while failing always to pass substantive legislation. I agree–we cannot even get Senators Obama, Clinton, and McCain to *acknowledge* our public request that they introduce the eight-point Electoral Reform Act prior to 3 July 2008 (to read the outline of the Act, based on Ralph Nader's recommendations and refined by Jim Turner and Robert Steele, visit Earth Intelligence Network and look for it in the top menu). As the books I linked to above document, there are two kinds of corruption in Washington: financial bribery, and party line abdication. Congress is supposed to balance the power of a “reackless and arrogant” Presidency, to quote the estimable Senator Byrd, the only one with a spine in that body.

The author proposes a tricameral situation where the President is just one of three bodies that can veto anything, and where two of the three (the others being the Senate and House, as well as the President) can over-ride the third.

He mentions DC not being represented (one reason all DC license plates have “Taxation Without Representation” on them), discusses the need for extended terms (I agree–with longevity, it makes sense to increase the House to four years, the President to six years, and the Senate to eight years).

Other highlights I note:

Death and disability in the House are not properly addressed.

The people do NOT rule America, and two thirds of them lack confidence in Congress (the percentage is probably higher today).

He spends some excellent time discussing how hard it is to replace an incompetent President (to which I would add, and how easy for an irresponsible Congress to impeach a President and spend $50 million on a minor sexual act between consenting adults (yes, there is marriage, but there is also the flagrant extra-curricular activity of the wife, so let's call it even).

He notes how dreadful our Presidential selection process is, and I for one can only agree most forcefully. I have stopped watching the barnyard brawl between Clinton and Obama, both children and neither offering serious programs in the context of a balanced budget, and I have also written off John McCain, who is an honorable pig-headed man with no idea of how to create a grand strategy that shapes our inter-agency capabilities and policies while resurrecting multinational alliances. In this regard, I will mention four ideas a number of us have had since 2000:

1. Presidential candidates should be required to name a transition Cabinet in advance of the election, and

2. have at least three (Attorney General, Defense, and State) participate in Cabinet level debates–America is too complicated to elect one person who then picks their cronies from one party (see Transpartisan at Wikipedia or at Reuniting America).

3. The Transpartisan Cabinet should be announced on New Year's Day of the Election Year, and be required to present a balanced budget for online deliberative dialog as well as face to face town hall meetings, by 4 July of Election Year. David Walker, former Comptroller General, resinged in year nine of a 15 year appointment because he declared the US insolvent, and not a single Member, INCLUDING Senators Obama, Clinton, and McCain, paid heed. Today David Walker runs the Peterson Foundation, and his job is to inform all of us–we care, we are ahead of the jerks in Congress–so that we can demand a restoration of a balanced budget and an end to the corruption and wasteful spending of what Davy Crockett learned was “not his to give.”

4. At the same time that we end the Cabinet being all from one party, we must end the winner take all leadership of Congress, and move to proportioinal representation, where all Libertarians in any one state count, and tightly drawn districts are allocated accordingly (See the eight-point Electoral Reform Act).

The author winds down by noting there is no point to the delay between election and inauguration, that pardon power is too loose (I for one would forbid Presidents from pardoning their own staff who get caught doing illegal things on behalf of the President–such as Scooter Libby).

The author surprises me, but I have to agree, with the suggestion that the Vice President NOT be automatically elevated to the Presidency if the President dies. Given the nakedly amoral Vice President we have now, a man that is a combination of war criminal, closet dictator, thief, and perverted in his own secret ways (see, among many other books, Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency) this is not only a sensible point of view, but an urgent one.

The author is against qualification for office such as age, citizenship, and time in state, and Arnold the Terminator as well as all of his Austrian friends will clearly love the author's view that even the Presidency should be open to non-native Americans. I am inclined to agree, with the caveat that we have cheapened our citizenship, both with corporate personality and with gratuitous welcoming of millions who got here illegally, who have not learned to speak English, and who more often than not are more loyal to Israel or to a religion than they are to America. This whole thing needs work.

The author ends with “what is to be done” and suggests a nation-wide petition to every Member demanding a Constitutional Convention be called. He also notes with favor the value of real referendums, and of deliberative polling. In Denmark, important questions are decided by a citizen's jury that can call witnesses, grill them, supeona them, and so on. The only qualification is that the citizen know nothing of the issue and have a completely clear and open mind. For other good ideas, see Tom Atlee's superb book, The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All.

I put the book down with admiration for the author, and a real concern that Americans will remain apathetic sheep. We should all be signing recall petitions now, and not waiting to vote out the incumbents. We should have the incumbents, each and every one less Senator Byrd, scared to within an inch of their life. Otherwise, we will suffer the same fate and the 25+ kids at Virginia Polytechnic who instead of “rushing and crushing” the mentally ill person killing them one at a time, stood still while he reloaded and methodically shot each of them. Congress is killing each and every one of us by allowing Cheney and Bush to run amok unchecked. The country is bankrupt. The infrastucture, schools, health system, labor unions–all in the toilet. What does it take to make us MAD? I do not know. If and when we do get mad, this author and this book must be among the serious works that guide our citizen leaders as we restore the Republic.

Bravo.

2008/03/262009/10/30

Review: Nudge–Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

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

Innovative, Helpful, Relevant: Opening Shot in Science of Choice, March 26, 2008

Richard H. Thaler

This is one of several books on decision-making and choice I have ordered, the first to arrive. I had no idea when I ordered it, based on the title, that the first author was Distinguished Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics as well as the Director of the Center for Decision Research at the University of Chicago, and the second author was Cass Sunstein, one of three lawyers I would not automatically sentence to exile.

I really liked this book. It can be read fast or slow. I went fast, if one accepts the authors' propositions at face value, the details are not as necessary. These guys are heavy hitters with a very serious case to present. Although I did not see references to predecessors in this area, such as Herb Simon's “satisficing,” the one word I remember from my MPA finished in 1987, the bibliography and notes are excellent and I have the feeling the authors and their research assistants have been thorough with the recent literature (last 15 years).

The book opens with a compelling example: a cafeteria manager discovers that she can seriously influence students by how the food is placed, arranged, and displayed, moving an entire student body toward healthier choices (or not).

The authors term such a person a “choice architect” and say that like physical architecture, there is no such thing as a “neutral” choice. They go on to discuss the emerging science of choice. I love this, in part because I just published a book, Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace (free online at Earth Intelligence Network) intended to force acceptance of Collective Intelligence as a sub-discipline within Cognitive Science. We succeeded.

The authors coined the term NUDGE from the ardiously broken down:
iNcentives
Understand mapping
Defaults matter
Give Feedback
Expect Error
Structure complex choices

Corney, but no worse than my own United Nations Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network (UNODIN). This is an important book, and the last one, “structure complex choices,” is in my view the critical one because we are in an era when our politically-elected leaders know nothing of the real world and are surrounded by advisors that are hacks who are terrified of anyone with a brain gaining access to “their” candidate. No one now running for President of the USA is qualified to date, for this very reason. Not one of them can appoint a transpartisan cabinet, produce a balanced budget, name the ten threats to humanity, list the twelve core policies from agriculture to water, or explain why we have less than six years to create a sustainable model that we can present to Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Wild Cards like the Congo, which is as big as the USA.

Leadership must be redefined, and I believe that the authors have put together a capstone book that is richly qualified to join books such as The leadership of civilization building: Administrative and civilization theory, symbolic dialogue, and citizen skills for the 21st century and Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World and the oldie but goodie by Harlan Cleveland, still a best in class offering, The Knowledge Executive.

The authors distinguish between Automatic Mind and Reflective Mind, and I cannot help but tie this to the truly elegant essay The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It in which the urgency of preserving generative freedom to innovate at the edge of the network is retained. I see such a convergence among all the books I am reading, and am reminded now of Kevin Kelly's unigue Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World. The problem we face is that government and all other organizations are pyramidal, secretive, selfish, and generally corrupt–and busy trying to “lock down” the appliances, one reason I will never buy an iPhone or an XBox.

The authors explore hor people are so unrealistically optemistic about their own capabilities (and I would add, unnecessarily suspect of the other, one reason I recommend to one and all Derek Leebaert's The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World.

I agree with their discussion of the bias toward the status quo and truly appreciated their discussion of social influences (herd mentality). This is different from wisdom of the crowds, smart mobs, etc.

They have four chapters on money (savings, investing, credit, and social security), and the bottom line for all four is this: 1) it is possible to structure complex choices so people have freedom but err on the side of wisdom; and b) defaults matter.

In the section on health they discuss prescriptions, organ donation, and the environment. Here I would simply note that we know how to cut Medicare prescription costs to 1% of their existing and projected costs, but Congress is both gutless and totally lacking in ethics. I will also note that in another book I reviewed recently, the Chinese have discovered that they are losing TEN PERCENT of the Gross Domestic Product to envrionmentally-related loss of work productivity. This is serious!

In the section on Freedom their “libertarian paternalism” shows itself in full force as they discuss school choice, doctors, and marriage. I will not be critical here, other than to note that reforming education is NOT about school choice, it is about changing the entire model to throw out rote learning in neat little rows and testing of memorized regugitation. See Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage (Critical Perspectives Series) and Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, among others.

They end with a dozen “example” nudges that I will not list here, in part because I do like this book, it is an easy read, and it is worthy of your time and money. Do not expect a scholarly tome with lots of pretentious mathematics. This is a good book for real people, and all the more valuable because the science of choice, like services sciences and collective intelligence as a cognitive-socio-economic ideo-cultural techno-demographic force, is going to make a very positive contribution to how we self-organize and how we respond to those who would be Epoch B leaders rather than dictators that take We the People for granted.

Buy this book–it might not improve your own decisions, but it will assuredly help you think about what to look for in a leader.

2008/03/252010/01/05

Review: R & D Collaboration on Trial–The Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation

3 Star, Information Technology

Excellent in its Time, Overtaken by Time & Technology & Mindset, March 25, 2008

David V. Gibson

I have been toying with the need for a national skunkworks to create a complete open source software suite of analytic tools including open source multi-lingual and multi-media data ingestion and sense-making, and so I bought this book in part because the Microelectronics and Computer Corporation (MCC) was the “big deal” in the last quarter century of the 20th Century.

Bottom line: don't bother. The bulk of the book, while very detailed and certainly a worthy effort of reporting and sense-making, does not really apply to today's circumstances, when three big things are different:

1) Changes to the Earth and the marketplace are at light speed

2) Technology is no longer a top-down massive investment challenge

3) Social entrepreneurs, triple-bottom lines, and blended value propositions are the norm for those who seek to invent the future.

I can see now–in hind-sight, that the MIT Media Lab was the better venture, and still sets a gold standard for others to consider.

The final chapter of this book, entitled “Lessons Learned,” I found only two gems in that chapter:

1) Despite all the challenges of heterogeneous collaboration, benefits do emerge, and they are often unexpected and not part of the original concept of operations.

2) The challenge for the US is not technology invention, but technology application.

I was serving in the Office of Information Technology (OIT) of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the late 1990's, and I well remember the Japanese Fifth Generation Project that inspired fear among U.S. electronic companies (never mind all the great Japanese espionage against us at the same time). I well remember all the expectation of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and so on. And I know for a fact that today, fully 26 years after CIA's Office of Scientific and Weapons Research (OSWR) identified the eighteen functionalities needed for a desktop analytic toolkit called CATALYST (Computer Aided Tools for the Analysis of Science & Technology)–see the image above–the U.S. Intelligence Community, despite a $60 billion annual budget, still has total crap on its desktops; its vaunted Intelink system is a “crapshoot” in the words of its own managers; it cannot access the 96% of the information that is openly available in 183 languages it does not speak; and there is no one place (I am NOT making this up) where all of the information from across all of the disciplines can come together and be made sense of.

I conclude, from this book and my life experience, that LINUX is the right model, and we need to do more in open source hardware, and refuse to buy into proprietary black boxes. I am interested in helping to find funding for anyone that can build an Application Oriented Network (AON) router-server that can provide AON functionality at the hand-held or laptop or desktop point of creation; that can be updated without having to throw away the plastic container; and that is completely open source. CISCO CEO refuses to do this. Anyone else?

A few other books that come to mind in relation to this one….
Media Lab, The – Inventing The Future At MIT
The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, Twentieth Anniversary Edition
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
The Hacker Crackdown: Law And Disorder On The Electronic Frontier
Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World
Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway
Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization
Competing On Internet Time: Lessons From Netscape And Its Battle With Microsoft
The Age of Missing Information
In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations

I won't list books by Strassmann, Drucker, or Steele, but I will offer three final thoughts as I put this book away:

1. Strassmann: most firms' investments in information technology return a NEGATIVE return on investment;

2. Drucker: we've spent the last 50 years focusing on the T in IT, we need to spend the next 50 focused on the I–one reason I do not think Google will succeed, just as NSA has not succeeded in 50 years; and

3. Steele citing Bamford: the ultimate computing machine, no larger than a small ball, powered by a tiny battery, capable of doing petaflops of calculations against unstructured data, remains “the human brain.”

2008/03/252010/01/05

Review: The Power of Unreasonable People–How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Environment (Solutions), Information Society, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum)

Remarkable, Inspiring, Instructive, a Total “Wow”, March 25, 2008

John Elkington

I became very enthusiastic about the term “social entrepreneurship” when I made the transition from reading about collective intelligence and citizen wisdom councils and wealth of networks, to understanding that there was a form of energy I first encountered in How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition.

This book is remarkable, all the more so for being the third in the series that started with Cannibals with Forks in 1997 that introduced the term “triple bottom line” (financial, social, environmental); and in 2001, The Chrysalis Economy: How Citizen CEOs and Corporations Can Fuse Values and Value Creation, anticipating the period of creative destruction coming from 2000-2030.

I like this book very much, in part because after 20 years of thinking of myself as a reformist beating his head against the idiot secret world, I now realize I am a social entrepreneur who has turned his back on secrets and is focused on creating public intelligence in the public interest.

The authors made me smile with their early explanation that most social entrepreneurs can be so unreasonable as to be called lunatic. This is precisely what happened to me when I published “E3i: Ethics, Ecology, Evolution, and Intelligence” in the Fall 1992 edition of the Whole Earth Review–for having the temerity to suggest that we should emphasize open sources of information instead of spying, and sharing instead of hoarding, I was told that Sandra Cruzman, the top woman at CIA at the time, said “this confirms Steele's place on the lunatic fringe.” So forgive me for this sidebar, but this book speaks to me in very personal as well as socially meaningful terms, it resonates with me, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to think about ways of doing good while doing well enough.

I always look for whether authors are respecting those that came before or have made adjacent contributions, and on that score this book is completely satisfactory. It is also blessed by the authors' broad range of examples, carefully selected from what is clearly a universe they know better than anyone else.

Citing George Bernard Shaw, they explain early on that “unreasonable people” are seen so for their seeking to abandon outmoded thoughts, mindsets, or practices. Amen, brother!

This is not a feel-good book in intent, although it achieves that effect. It is a serious book that methodically reviews new business models, leadership styles, and thinking about value creation. It held my total attention over two evenings of reading.

The authors offer esteem to social entrepreneurs with the observation that corporations are noticing and hiring such individuals for three reasons:

1. They see the future sooner than the average cubicle resident
2. They help retain talent by making the business challenging
3. They bring love and fun into the office environment

The authors caution that social entrepreneurs fail more often than not, but they persist and ultimately find means of making a difference while making a living.

They suggest that immature markets are best explored by non-profits while noting that hybrids with blended values are the most interesting forms.

Page 5 is suitable for scaling up and framing for the office. The ten characteristics of social entrepreneurs (severely abbreviated here):

1. Shrug off ideology and discipline
2. Focus on practical solutions
3. Innvoate
4. Do social value creation and SHARE
5. Jump in without waiting for back-up
6. Have unwavering beliefs in innate capacity of others
7. Dogged determination
8. Passion for change
9. Have a great deal to teach change makers in other sectors
0. Healthy impatience (don't do well in bureaucracies)

They tell the reader that confusion is a normal circumstance for social entrepreneurs, whom they define as those that take “direct action that generates a paradigm shift” while attacking an “unsatisfactory equilibrium.”

They see a deep and lasting need for social entrepreneurs because coming decades will require unprecedented levels of system change (I add, and will have unprecedented and often unanticipated disasters, many turning into catastrophes for lack of planning, preparation, or responsiveness)

The authors tell us that the best of the charitable foundations are shifting from plain grant-making to sequential investments and deeper continuing relations with those being funded. At the same time they tell us that corporation and private equity firms are beginning to notice the value options in this space. [I think to myself, this is great, just at a time when corporations are also understanding green to gold, sustainable design, ecology of commerce, and true cost accounting.]

I am totally impressed with one page that describes how China has developed new green accounting methods and now realizes that environmentally-related work loss is no less than 10% of their newly-understood green Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

They provide a fine overview of new measures of merit including the double bottom line, the triple bottom line, the Social Return on Investment (SROI), and the “blended value proposition.”

On page 20 I see a quote worth posting: social entrepreneurs “bring together natural, social, human, intellectual, and cultural forms of capital.”

LEVERAGE is a key concept for these authors, and one I take very serioiusly as they describe how small investments can leverage indigenous capabilities (such as hard work from people who are poor but not stupid), philanthropic and other support, business partnerships, and income from previously untapped markets (at the Base of the Pyramid, like my Seattle friends they are clearly not comfortable with C. K. Prahalad's choice of title in The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks).

The middle section of the book discusses three models and examples of each:

1. The leveraged non-profit, which is hard to scale, dependent on hand-outs, focuses on public goods and being a change catalyst

2. The hybrid non-profit that combines non-profit and revenue generating activities, with a focus on outcome generation, empowering the people at the base, community-centric, focused on low cost long term, and on driving the market or pulling more traditional providers into the market.

3. The social business, which focuses on both social and financial returns, scales much more easily because it can assume both debt and equity. We learn that Whole Foods is an example, that it drove the organic market and leverages voluntary cooperation among many networks. Another example combines sustainable organic agriculture, rural employment of the uneducated but willing, price security for farmers, and transparent information.

I want to emphasize the latter: transparent information. I have been persuaded by numerous books on the wealth of knowledge as well as my own 30+ years as an intelligence professional that shared information and transparent decision support is a wealth creation process that scales fast and inexpensively.

The authors go on to discuss ten markets that lend themselves to social entrepreneurship, and I will list them with tiny examples–the book is absolutely a gem that merits buying a reading from end to end.

1. Demographic: condoms, aging, disadvantages
2. Financial: child knowledge of finances, simple technologies, helping poor self-organize for leverage
3. Nutritiional: duck rice, food bank, food waste elevated to tasty and nutritious near zero cost consumables
4. Resources: energy, energy, energy (I would add water, and throw a respectful salute the the George Mason University professor born in Bangladesh who created a virtually free means of removing arsenic from water using a combination of charcoal and steel filings (from the ships torn apart there, see The Outlaw Sea : A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime
5. Environment: educatae, plant trees
6. Health: high volume low cost (or free), cateract cures, telephone centers to help poor remotely
7. Gender (best ROI ever is on educating women, see A Half Penny on the Federal Dollar: The Future of Development Aid)
8. Educational: end rote learning, cross-pollinate, barefoot college that trains doctors and engineers narrowly and without years of credentialing (my own idea is call centers to education “one cell call at a time,” I would love to see India do this sooner than later)
9. Digital: embrace and empower poor as citizens
0. Security: redefine as jobs for everyone rather than high-end military

The last third of the book covers

1. helping those at the base of the pyramid with access (e.g. curing neglected diseases); price (slash to 10%); and quality (e.g. $100 laptops).

2. Democratizing technology (four clusters: basic building blocks, motorcycles and free neutral air in and out of disaster zones; media and media technology; and genetics and biology.

3. Changing the rules of the game (search for my “New Rules for the New Craft of Intelligence” free on the Internet). They emphasize transparency; accountability; certification; land reform; emission trading; and value & valuation.

4. Scaling solutions, with examples covering true costs, clean toilets for tens of millions, and General Electric's commitment to 17 clean technoloogies, sustainability attracting the best and the brightest of the social entrepreneurs.

5. Lessons for leaders (below does not do the section justice–buy the book and read the whole thing):

– Focus on scalable entrepreneurial solutions
– Tackle apparently insolvable problems
– Be prepared to fail–but learn from failures
– Experiment with new business models
– Close the pay gap
– Join forces
– Seed tomorrow's markets
– Fuel growing expectations
– Help democratize technology
– Work to change the system
– Figure out how to scale and replicate
– Within reason, cultivate the art of being unreasonable

I put the book down extremely pleased with the content and the presentation. This is a very serious book for serious people, not just social entrepreneurs, but Second and Third World policy makers, bankers, investors, international and non-governmental leaders, and so on.

As I see it, social networks and collaboration among what I call the “ten tribes” (government, military, law enforcement, academia, business, media, non-governmental, labor, religion, and civil society) are in their very infancy. The Internet has not been matched by easily available information sharing and decision support tools (DARPA STRONG ANGEL and TOOZL is a start), and governments persist is wasting tens of billions waging war and stealing secrets, instead of waging peace and nurturing open sources of information in 183 languages.

This book continued the inspiration that I have been getting from others, and here I list a few others including the first book from Earth Intelligence Network (free at the website):

Improper behavior
Radical man
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace.

Category: 1-7 Star Rating

Review: Superclass–The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making