Category: 1-7 Star Rating

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Review: Seven Complex Lessons for the Future

6 Star Top 10%, Best Practices in Management, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Education (Universities), Information Operations, Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution
Amazon Page

Edgar Morin

5.0 out of 5 stars 6 Star Spectacular,July 12, 2012

This is one of a handful of books I will not donate to the library as has been my custom. I first learned of this author through his work Homeland Earth : A Manifesto for the New Millennium (Advances in Systems Theory, Complexity and the Human Sciences). I was hugely drawn into the author's brilliant web of thinking, and delighted to learn that he is still alive and active in France.

This book can serve in so many ways. For myself, it is an independent confirmation of all that I have been exploring through the minds of others–the 1,800 plus authors whose works I have reviewed here at Amazon. It is a spectacular indictment of the existing educational, intelligence, and research systems that have become so fragmented and wasteful as to be an impediment to progress.

Since Look Inside the Book is not available, I will just list the main chapter heading–each chapter has three sub-chapters. This is an elegant cathedral of a book, the equivalent for the author's huge body of work that Will and Ariel Durant's Lessons of History 1ST Edition was for their own multi volume The Story of Civilization (11 Volume Set).

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Review: The Mobile Wave

4 Star, Change & Innovation, Information Society, Information Technology
Amazon Page

Michael Saylor

4.0 out of 5 stars 5 for Elegant Simplicity, 3 for Dumbed Down,July 12, 2012

For a guy who once said he was worth $600,000 a hour, I was expecting a great deal more. This is a Classic Comic for the masses–now I used to own all of the Classic Comics [for those under 60, these were the Great Books of Western Civilization, in comic book form, all the rage in the 1960's].

The author starts off by saying that everything is becoming software, but there is no mention of Marc Andersson's famous article, “Why Software is Eating the World” (Wall Street Journal, 20 August 2011), and across the book I notice other inconsistencies. I conclude this is a book researched and written by staff to the signed author's general specifications. It is a good outline, and worth reading, but it is also disappointing. This is not the book that Michael Saylor could have and should have written. Having said that, I give the staff high marks for a clean intelligible coherent book good enough for the 80% that do not think about these topics very much.

The central premise of the book is that mobile plus social equals radical change; that application hand-helds (as opposed to cell phones) are hugely disruptive, and that if we have 5.3 billion with phones right now (out of 9 billion plus), imagine what happens when everyone has a cell phone.

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Free Online Book: Geoeconomics

5 Star, Economics, Education (General), Knowledge
Book Page Online

Geoeconomics

With the shift from geopolitics to geoeconomics the focus is no longer the Heartland or the Rimland, or any coherent geographical region, but the set of all geographical locations containing economically-important natural resources, what we shall call the Nareland (Natural Resource Lands). This new logic of dispersed geographical locations marks the shift from geopolitics to geoeconomics.

The centre stage has been taken over by the private-sector organization, the corporation. This means that power has been transferred from the public to the private sphere. It means that the nation state is ceding its power to individuals – less in some countries and more in others, for instance less in Sweden than in the USA; but the trend is clear, and it is global.

About the Author

Dr Klaus Solberg Søilen is Associate Professor at Halmstad University in Sweden and Professor at Nordic International Management Institute (NIMI) in Chengdu, China. He is the editor-in-chief of Journal of Intelligence Studies in business (JISIB) and the associate editor of International Journal of Innovation Science (IJIS). Before entering academia he worked for ten years in industry, in the US, Europe and Scandinavia, the last three as auditor by KPMG Oslo.

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Book: Redvolution: The Power of Connected Citizens

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Environment (Solutions), Future, Information Society, Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Philosophy, Politics, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
Free Online

Free online as PDF, 180 pages, a great deal in English.

Part I:  Experiences

Part II:  Reflections

Part III:  Tools and Applications

Part IV:  Interviews

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Review: Homeland Earth

6 Star Top 10%, Atlases & State of the World, Best Practices in Management, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Cosmos & Destiny, Culture, Research, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Democracy, Economics, Environment (Solutions), History, Information Society, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Religion & Politics of Religion, Science & Politics of Science, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, United Nations & NGOs, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
Amazon Page

Edgar Morin and Anne Brigitte Kern

5.0 out of 5 stars Six Star Keeper – Joins Durant, Fuller, Ackoff,July 1, 2012

This is a PHENOMENAL book, a joint effort by Edgar Moron, whose life's work includes Method: Towards a Study of Humankind, Vol. 1: The Nature of Nature (American University Studies Series, No. 5, Philosophy, Vol. 3). Today I am ordering Seven Complex Lessons in Education for the Future (Education on the Move). The translators Sean M. Kelly and Roger LaPointe merit recognition — this is as fine a translation of a complex mind's work as I have ever encountered.

I donated my entire library to George Mason University when I joined the United Nations in 2010 (little realizing the depth of the corruption I would encounter — and soon leave in the same year). Among all my books, I kept back three: Philosophy and the Social Problem: The Annotated Edition, Lessons of History 1ST Edition, and Ideas and Integrities: A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure. This book joins that august group.

If I were president of a university, these four books would be required reading, along perhaps with High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them and Designing a World That Works for All: How the Youth of the World are Creating Real-World Solutions for the UN Millenium Development Goals and Beyond.

Since Look Inside the Book is not provided for this extraordinary work, I will list the 9 chapter here (each with over ten sub-titles not listed here):

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Review: Rebuild the Dream

4 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Civil Society, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform)
Amazon Page

Van Jones

4.0 out of 5 stars Oblivious to the Insanity of the Two-Party Tyranny, But Worth Digesting, July 1, 2012

This is one of two books I read on the plane to DC from Seattle, the other being Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy.

Part I for me is largely a waste of time. The author is — in my view of course — delusional on Obama's success and at face value completely unwitting or unphased by the depth and breadth of the progressive betrayal of Obama aka Bush III. The author is also high on Al Gore — along with 9/11 and the root corruption of Congress that made our economic collapse inevitable this is one of my litmus tests. Al Gore took the bribe, rolled over and played dead despite the three months notice by Greg Palast of The Observer (later published in book form as The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. On the Republican side, I hold Colin Powell and George Tenet accountable for betraying the public trust, allowing Dick Cheney to take America to war on the basis of 925 now documented (Truth.dig) lies. There are no winners — no paragons of virtue — in either party, and I specifically include Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich has false flags, never really being willing to leave their warm embrace of their chosen tyranny.

Part II is slightly interesting is you do not read a great deal, a rehash of heart space, head space, the American story, and swarm theory. The rest of us call it collective intelligence, cognitive surplus, human scale, etcetera. Books to read here, vastly more detailed that the author's light once over, include Tom Atlee's The Tao of Democracy: Using co-intelligence to create a world that works for all, Jim Rough's Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People, Barbara Marx Hubbard's Conscious Evolution: Awakening Our Social Potential and so many others that I have reviewed here at Amazon–and the many more I have not.

Part III begins to return value, and I certainly agree with the author's early articulation that “America is still the best idea in the world,” but I find him hypocritical or oblivious in the extreme to completely ignore all of the broken promises, the role of money, the loss of integrity across every pillar of society.

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Review: Twilight of the Elites – America After Meritocracy

4 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Civil Society, Congress (Failure, Reform), Culture, Research, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform)
Amazon Page

Christopher Hayes

4.0 out of 5 stars Strongest on Collapse Part, Very Weak on What Next…,July 1, 2012

This is one of two books I read on the plane back to DC from Seattle, the other was Van Jones' Rebuild the Dream

This is a light book with a poor bibliography, more of an essay turned into a book than a book proper. The author focuses on the “near total collapse of every pillar institution of our society.” Yes, this is not news. Many of us have been saying this for some time, my own 2008 version is easily found by looking for < Paradigms of Failure >, free online.

The author loses one star for being so oblivious to the reality of 9/11 such as any informed citizen can determine (see the 30+ Amazon reviews easily found as a group at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog).

He touches on three themes generally, in a useful juxtaposition:

1) The ignorance of the elites

2) The end of upward mobility in the US economy

3) The evaporation of trust, the collapse of trust

While I find his essay interesting, I am continuously disappointed by the narrowness of his reading. Matt Taibbi's brilliant Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History, a work I consider seminal and of lasting value to future generations, is not noticed by this author.

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