Consciousness & Social IQ – Page 21 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/09/272011/10/01

Review: Public Parts – How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Information Society, Intelligence (Public)

Jeff Jarvis

5.0 out of 5 stars Being Twittered, a Helpful Contribution,September 27, 2011

I was going to use the existing review as a guest review at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog (all point back to their Amazon pages), but on further investigation have found that this book is being Twittered, and the Executive Director of the Earth Intelligence Network thinks very highly of it (he read it, he does not do reviews, this is my way of sharing his views and my links as well as flagging the book for the global readers of Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog). So in part to give the author a break, in part to urge used of the Look Inside feature that Amazon enables and the publisher utilized, and in part to point to the below books, I give this book five stars and suggest that it deserves a bit more praise than it has received.

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

Amazon sucks in some ways. The following two relevant non-fiction titles are “not allowed” by their rules against “self-promotion,” never mind that they are the only two books on their respective topics and highly relevant to the domain that this book addresses.

2010 INTELLIGENCE FOR EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability

2008 COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

2011/08/132011/08/14

Review: Sacred Economics – Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Environment (Solutions), Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Stabilization & Reconstruction, Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Charles Eisenstein

Beyond 5 Stars, an Integrative Pioneering Work,August 13, 2011

Sacred Economics is the second book in the new Evolver Editions imprint, following Jose Arguelles Manifesto for the Noosphere. Other books in the first season include What Comes After Money, The Secret Tradition of the Soul, The Four Global Truths, The Electric Jesus, Star Sister, and Nothing and Everything.

I read a lot, and the one word that really describes this book is “integrative.” The author describes, in three parts, what is wrong with what he calls the “economics of separation,” today's money and financial network economy that lacks soul or spirit; its alternative, the “economics of reunion” in which all forms of transaction have memories, gifts and reciprocal gifts and localized forms of exchange rule, and economics is fully integrated with society to produce social and cultural dividends. The third and last part closes the circle with a hundred-page discourse (double-spaced large print, this is not a hard book to read) on how to live within the new economy in which gifting, community, and beauty are integrated.

Throughout the book the author evolves his core point: money is “hard” and nurtures external diseconomies, including grave destruction of cultural and social intangible value-gradually the author builds up to his conclusion, that beauty is a tangible value, that relatedness is a tangible value, and that in the past century or two we have stripped so much value from what it means to be human as to have become less than human, less than we can be.
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2011/07/262011/07/26

Review: Measuring Evolution

6 Star Top 10%, Atlases & State of the World, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Environment (Solutions), Future, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Philosophy, Science & Politics of Science, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

David Loye

6 Star Plus — Simple, Sensible Revolutionary, July 26, 2011

I am astonished that there are no reviews of this book. I first learned of it from my reading of A Democratic Approach to Sustainable Futures: A Workbook for Addressing the Global Problematique, and now I have discovered other books by this author, among which I would quickly point to

Bankrolling Evolution: A Program for a President
Darwin's Lost Theory of Love: A Healing Vision for the 21st Century
The Healing of a Nation

This book is very fairly priced, and while it may come across to superficial reviewers as too simple or shallow, I find it to be engrossing. This is a really big idea ably presented, with very brief overviews of prior science, examples of organizational applications, and addendums including a pointer to The Darwin Project.

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2011/07/222011/07/23

Review: A Democratic Approach to Sustainable Futures — A Workbook for Addressing the Global Problematique

5 Star, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Economics, Education (General), Education (Universities), Environment (Solutions), Future, Games, Models, & Simulations, Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Priorities, Public Administration, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Strategy, True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Thomas R. Flannagan, Kenneth C. Bausch

2011 Workbook 49 Problems, 10 Clusters, & Software,July 22, 2011

This is a very reasonably priced workbook that can also be purchased in bulk (presumably at the standard 50% discount) from the publisher, and I certainly do recommend it as a toolkit for any level–undergraduate to postgraduate to professional–discussion about how to apply holistic analytics to complex problem sets.I rate it as a five for its intended purpose, but absent references to other critical supplements that I link to below, it is a four by which I mean it cannot comprise the sole text for teaching. As an endeavor in systemic thinking and a new tool for teaching systemic thinking, it is a six.Although I am generally hostile to software as a panacea that obscures more than it illuminates (especially if the assumptions buried in the code are flawed), I give the authors the benefit of the doubt, and would seek to integrate their endeavor with those of Medard Gabel, the State of the Future project, and other emerging efforts to create functional hybrid networked governance systems.Ambassador John McDonald provides the foreword, and I pull two quotes from him:QUOTE (vii): The theories are not particularly useful to develop predictive models.

QUOTE (viii): This is the book to prepare for the messy multi-layered, multi-faceted, personal, political real world of applied activism.

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2011/05/292011/05/29

Review: The Arab Revolt and the Imperialist Counterattack

4 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Country/Regional, Culture, Research, Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), History, Impeachment & Treason, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle

James Petras

TImely, Deep Historical Insights, Some Gaps & Biases, May 29, 2011

I would normally wait but in the absence of any reviews want to just praise this book as timely, with deep historical insights, and a few gaps and biases as well as no index, the latter almost always causes me to remove a star. The book has been rushed into print and suffers from that rush, but I fully anticipate that a second edition will be fleshed out, add an index, and be a full five star contribution. This is a print on demand book (Amazon's superb CreateSpace offering) and only 78 pages, it is properly priced and that I find especially commendable.

The author is nothing less than a superior analyst with very high integrity, and his historical knowledge, as well as his historical contributions to non-fiction literature, cannot be denied.

Among the core findings that I appreciate are the author's early focus on the complete ignorance of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) [and of course also the Departments of State and Defense] with respect to both the opposition leaders (all of them, not just the normal suspects] and the underlying preconditions of revolution across all dimensions.

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2011/05/272011/05/27

Review (Guest): Alone Together — Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other

4 Star, Civil Society, Communications, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Information Society, Information Technology, Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design

Sherry Turkle

4.0 out of 5 stars Whoa! Let's not get carried away, February 6, 2011

By Martin Zook “Martin Zook” (Virginia) – See all my reviews

There is much insight to be gained about our relationship with digital technology in reading Alone Together…but it's equally informative to consider some of what's not covered in Turkle's book. When viewed through a broader perspective, perhaps we needn't be as alarmed as one might think after finishing AT.

Sherry Turkle's research indicates a loop. People design digital machines that make demands on us, their users. But people program digital technology such as robots and games to appeal to vulnerabilities. Turkle is most concerned with demands digital makes on our vulnerabilities, to the extent that some people are so attracted to the digital world that they run the risk of not being able to differentiate between reality 101 and digital illusions.

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2011/05/272011/05/27

Review (Guest): The Psychopath Test — A Journey Through the Madness Industry

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Civil Society, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Crime (Organized, Transnational), Culture, Research, Disease & Health, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial)

Jon Ronson

5.0 out of 5 stars A Serious Topic Tackled with Humanity, May 12, 2011

By Monty Archibald “HeavyMetalMonty” (west coast of Scotland) – See all my reviews

‘People who are psychopathic prey ruthlessly on others using charm, deceit, violence or other methods that allow them to get what they want. The symptoms of psychopathy include: lack of a conscience or sense of guilt, lack of empathy, egocentricity, pathological lying, repeated violations of social norms, disregard for the law, shallow emotions, and a history of victimizing others.'
– Robert Hare, Ph.D

I've been hooked on Jon Ronson's writing since ‘The Men Who Stare at Goats' was first published. Ronson cuts right to the heart of important topics by having the guts to ask the difficult questions. His literary style is equal parts journalistic rigour, deep compassion and incisive observational humour that often shines the light of ridicule on darker human behaviours. ‘The Psychopath Test' explores psychiatry, psychopathology, medication and incarceration of ‘dangerous' individuals. The book reads like a mystery novel, which – driven by Ronson's compelling prose – makes it difficult to put down.

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