Stephen E. Arnold: The New Landscape of Enterprise Search. A Critical Review of the Market and Search Systems. Published by Pandia, Oslo, Norway, 2011.
ISBN: 978-82-998676-0-3
Phi Beta Iota: For over fifteen years Stephen E. Arnold has been the “virtual CTO” for OSS.Net (ceased operations at end of 2010) and Earth Intelligence Network, of which he is a founding partner. We have reviewed the 154-page document, and as with all publications by Stephen E. Arnold, author of the still-trenchant Google Trilogy, have found it to be deeply helpful including sharp but polite eviseration of both Google and Microsoft (Microsoft comes out ahead of Google, but has its own sucking chest wounds). What is clear to us is that none of the major vendors are serious about the necessary migration to open source software that integrates information sharing, multi-media analytics, cross-disciplinary directories, and deep web applications, for example, integrating c drives and emails across all poverty stakeholders. The big new trend in this book–and in our own research–is the compelling nature of five minute videos as documents of lasting value. We are seeing this in open education and non-government decision-support. Combine that with on demand translation and the way is open for someone to create the M4IS2 system of the future. We doubt it will be Google, and we are certain it will include OpenBTS for the three billion poor, the center of gravity for future knowledge.
Beyond Five Stars–Epic, Poetic, Startling, Reasoned, June 11, 2011
I have been totally absorbed with this book, and I HATE electronic books. At the age of 58, if I can't hold it and flip back and forth and quickly check the index, and so on, it's just not a book. This is why I have encouraged the author, whom I know and respect enormously, to offer this book as an Amazon CreateSpace soft-cover hard-copy. It should certainly be translated into Arabic, Chinese, and other languages. This book goes into my top ten percent “6 Stars and Beyond.” See the others at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, under Reviews (middle column).
Right up front, let me give the author and this book my highest praise: both have INTEGRITY. Integrity is not just about honor, it's about doing the right thing instead of the wrong thing righter, it's about being holistic, open-minded, appreciating diversity, respecting the “other.” There is more integrity in this book than in the last thousand top secret intelligence reports on Afghanistan, all full of lies and misrepresentations.
I was expecting so much more from this book, it is almost a three in relation to disappointment, but assuredly a solid four as far as it goes. This is a very good review of politics at the top personality level, but devoid of any discussion at all of corruption, government ineptitude, and so on. The index stinks, mostly a name index, but that sums the book up–names, not root cause and effect.
Part I is about Deng, Thatcher, Reagan, Gorbechev, Eastern Europe coming free, Latin America moving to the center, and India awakening.
Part II is about Fukuyama, Greenspan (before he was striped naked), Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Asia rises, and in a most interesting but all too short section: the role played by the anti-globalization advocates and the neo-conservatives.
Part III offers three scenarios, the world as Europe, the world as China and Russia, and the world as Pakistan.
In relation to my broader reading habits the book is disappointing. It is a journalism story not at all illuminating. Particularly annoying to me, and especially so noting the financial reporting capabilities of the author, is the absolute refusal to call a spade for what it is: a spade. The destruction, de-construction, corruption, and flat out fraud that permeated all of the governments under the varied leaderships discussed by the author do not exist within the jacket of this book.
At a simplistic level there is certainly value to the book, but it ignores so much I was constantly resisting the urge to simply put the book down and move on.
The author concludes that there are three sources of zero sum thinking:
1. Slower economic growth
2. Rivalry between the USA and China (no mention of Brazil, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, and Wild Cards like South Africa and Turkey that I noticed)
3. Clash of national interests in face of global challenges–the author's range of understanding of global challenges is very limited and traditional: climate change (which is 10% of environmental degradation), global economic imbalances (but no focus on massive fraud and corruption), nuclear proliferation (ho hum compared to poverty and infectious disease), resource shortages (duh, especially when farm land is the next bubble and food prices suffer from unethical politicians pushing ethanol), and failed states (no mention of the role of the US in increasing that number from 25 to 175 in the last 12 years).
When the author states that China is “stealing” jobs from the US I almost drop this book to a three. That is idiotic. Jobs are being exported from the USA by unethical CEOs with no grounding in moral capitalism, and allowed to do so by unethical politicians who are absolutely not making policy in the public interest.
The author anticipates that polarization and protectionism are the most likely near-term national reactions, and this is the point at which I realize he has absolutely no idea about what is going on among the young and those that have labored in the evolutionary activism, emergence, and open everything circles these past twenty years.
QUOTE I liked (275): “On every one of the big global issues, a mixture of national interests and ideological disagreements blocks the chances of an international deal.”
Although I like the quote it reflects a complete lack of appreciation for panarchy, end-user democracy, open information-sharing, hybrid coalitions across the eight tribes (academia, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, non-governmental/non-profit).
My view of the author as totally status quo and convention is confirmed when he states that the existing international economic system must be preserved at all costs.
There is nothing in this book that actually helps understand complexity or foster resilience.
As a trained neurologist working at a school of medicine, I thought I had a fairly good understanding of BSE and its human counterpart, nvCJD. But clinical knowledge is only one piece of the puzzle.
Drawing upon epidemiologic, forensic, political, medical, scientific, and historical sources, the author has provided a truly chilling account of the importation of prion disease samples from the small cannabalistic Fore tribe in New Guinea for U.S. animal experimentation in the 1950's and '60's, with credible links to the current epidemic of animal prion disease in North America (CWD or chronic wasting disease, TME or transmissible mink encephalopathy, and BSE), as well as the current epidemic of Alzheimer's disease in developed countries (i.e., those eating mass-produced livestock). The author also speculates that the cattle mutiliations in North America in the past few decades may have been programs designed for the surveillance of prions within the nation's food supply.
I have long admired Gretchen Morgenson and cheered when she was awarded a Pulitzer. Perhaps this book in conjunction with her hard-hitting NY Times reporting will garner her another one. She deserves it. The authors echo my sentiments precisely in their introduction “…felt compelled to write this book because we are angry that the American economy was almost wrecked by a crowd of self-interested, politically influential and arrogant people who have not been held accountable for their actions.” And the people who did it “…continue, even now, to hold sway in the corridors of Wall Street and Washington.”
First, Juggernaut is a well thought out, level-headed, and refreshingly non-partisan look at the evolution of western political-economic thought from the 1500s and the discovery of the New World to the present. The author discusses Marxian critiques of capitalism, the School of Salamanca, robber-barrons and laissez-faire capitalism, the effects of the division of labor championed by Adam Smith, the interventionism of Keynes, the ascent of money as a preferred medium of exchange, the perils of interdependency created by a closed economic environment, and many more emotionally charged subjects with an admirably dispassionate tone. In each case equal time is given to the benefits and inherent problems of each of the ideas presented. This serves well to define the problems we face in the modern political and economic environment and to illustrate how the US and other developed nations got into their current messes and why there is such great difficulty in untangling them effectively. Continue reading “Review (Guest): Juggernaut — Why the System Crushes the Only People Who Can Save It”
Brilliant Detailed Exposure of Power Killing Intelligence, July 30, 2011
