Strongly Recommended by BGen McMaster in Talk at ODNI
January 20, 2010
Abdulkader H. Sinno
This is one of two books strongly recommended, with deep admiration, by BGen McMaster, USA (Ret) speaking to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on 19 January. The four page trip report on his remarks about improving intelligence in support of the multinational mission in Afghanistan has been posted to Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog.
I have bought this book and will review it within two weeks. The key point that General McMaster made in referencing the book is that the author of this book has it right, there is no such thing as a leaderless jihad, and it is vital to be able to identify, understand, and interdict the often obscure means by which a jihad “organization” is formed and operated.
The most important point in the book is not one the author intended to make. He inadvertently but most helpfully points to the fact that at no time did the U.S. government, in lacking a policy on Afghanistan across several Administrations, think about the strategic implications of “big money movements.” I refer to Saudi Oil, Afghan Drugs, and CIA Cash.
The greatest failure of the CIA comes across throughout early in the book: the CIA missed the radicalization of Islam and its implications for global destabilization. It did so for three reasons: 1) CIA obsession with hard targets to the detriment of global coverage; 2) CIA obsession with technical secrets rather than human overt and covert information; and 3) CIA laziness and political naiveté in relying on foreign liaison, and especially on Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful
“A sweeping visionary yet highly pragmatic book! Beth Noveck concretely shows how to leverage the participatory nature of web 2.0 technologies to build a new kind of participatory democracy and a smart, lean government. She speaks from experience. A must read not just for policy folks and the digerati but for any of us wanting to understand how to tap the collective and diverse wisdom of the America to create a better, more connected style of democracy.”
Phi Beta Iota: Focuses on the patent process–use Look Inside to study contents before making a purchase decisioin. We have ordered the book and will review it within the week.
Amazon Page
The Myth of Digital Democracy
Both utopian and dystopian interpretations have been made of the Internet's influence on many spheres of life–and democracy is no exception. . . . Absent from much of this debate is evidence-based analysis of the effects of the Internet on the business of politics. Many theories have been built on nothing more than anecdote, inference and assertion. In The Myth of Digital Democracy, political scientist Matthew Hindman fills important gaps in the evidence base, and does so accessibly.
This is a magnum opus from a very specific point of view that overlooks both major consciousness figures and major biosphere figures. Herman Daly gets one note, Tom Atlee, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Steve McIntosh are not in this book. Buckminster Fuller, Paul Hawken, the Meadows, E. O. Wilson on Consilience, J. F Rischard on HIGH NOON, etcetera, are not in this book. My review begins after the Table of Contents, which the publisher failed to provide using standard Amazon tools for publishers.
Table of Contents
I The Hidden Paradox of Human History
HOMO EMPATHICUS
2 The New View of Human Nature
3 A Sentient Interpretation of Biological Evolution
4 Becoming Human
5 Rethinking the Meaning of the Human Journey
EMPATHY AND CIVILIZATION
6 The Ancient Theological Brain and Patriarchal Economy
7 Cosmopolitan Rome and the Rise of Urban Christianity
8 The Soft Industrial Revolution of the Late Medieval era and the Birth of Humanism
9 Ideological Thinking in a Modern Market Economy
10 Psychological Consciousness in a postmodern Existential world
THE AGE OF EMPATHY
11 The Climb to Global Peak Empathy
12 The Planetary Entropic Abyss
13 The Emerging Era of Distributed Capitalism
14 The Theatrical Self in an Improvisational Society
15 Biosphere Consciousness in a Climax Economy
– – – – – – – –
If this book is reprinted, it should be single-spaced. The massive bulk (675 pages) is pretentious and not necessary, especially for those of us that read when traveling, and for students having to carry books around. As noted earlier the author leaves out a great deal and I will offer ten links below (and over 300 links at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog where I have posted “Worth a Look: Book Review Lists”). This review focuses on the righteous theme the author has pursued across multiple literatures.
The book's bottom line is well summarized in the jacket flaps and comes at the very end as the author aspires for a combination of biosphere consciousness and distributed capitalism, the latter made possible by a combination of backyard energy and global information and communications technologies (ICT). Early in the book the author discusses how the wealthy dominated water power in the Medieval Period, but the poor were able to use windmills anywhere–this makes an impression on me as it did on the author.
The author has a story to tell and as I go through the book I am constantly reminded of books and points not in this book, but I abandoned my first draft of my review because it focused too much on work by others and not enough on the enormous task this author has taken on. In a nutshell, the author believes that the same revolutions in energy and communications that lead to a growth in human consciousness also lead to a commensurate crisis in earth or biosphere viability. In today's era the potential crisis (widely anticipated in the 1970's and deliberately ignored by the White House and the Senate for selfish corrupt reasons) is playing a forcing function, potentially catalyzing the rethinking of philosophy, economics, and our social models.
There are three negatives to this book that for any other author or theme would have dropped the book to a four, but I feel a five is still warranted for both the heroic personal effort of the author, and the importance of the theme.
#1. There is no appreciation that I can see of the fact that we are returning to the wisdom of the indigenous cultures that we have genocided since 1941, not only in the USA but in Australia, Africa, and elsewhere. This is not new wisdom that the author is bringing to bear, but old wisdom that is being rediscovered.
#2. The author fell prey to the Climate Change manipulation of data and hyperbole as well as nine documented errors in the British law suit against Al Gore, who has been asked to return his Academy Award. I won't belabor this now that the fraud of Climate Change has been adequately exposed, I will just say this: the UN High Level Panel on Threats, Challenge, and Change is the more honest and substantive endeavor, and Environmental Degradation, #3 of 10 after Poverty and Infectious Disease, is properly ranked. Climate Change is less than 10% of that, and within Climate Change carbon emissions are 10% at most, and much less important than sulfur or mercury. Carbon trades are fraud–a form of phantom wealth engineered by Maurice Strong and shilled by Al Gore, with the International Panel on Climate Change director–a railway engineer, not a scientist–happily lining his pockets by making the science fit. Learn more at the ClimateGate Rolling Update at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog.
#3. This is a book for the one billion rich, and it does not really address the five billion poor, and so I felt a continuing sense of annoyance as I read, recognizing this as a “salon” work for funders and the well-off, rather than a grass roots books focused on bottom-up social change. For that, see the books I list below.
Having disclosed those three “nits,” I am hugely positive on this book and its theme. The author observes that historians tend to document the negatives–the wars and the conflicts–and gloss over the periods of peace and prosperity and I buy into that. We don't do enough to isolate and extend the “good news.”
Here are other fly-leaf notes:
+ Empathy is rooted in selfhood, enables dialog that in turn allows reconciliation.
+ Today transparency and cooperation are displacing secrecy and competition.
+ Importance of touch, of reversing the isolation of the individual as a cog in the machine.
+ Herding of humans began in 4000 BC with hydraulic civilizations, not with the Industrial Revolution as some have suggested
+ Energy advances appear to stimulate changes in communications (including computing and intelligence)
+ Mothers and mothering matter, root of selfhood and stability that enables exploring and innovation
+ Darwin's later work looked at empathy among animals and between different species
+ Faith and emotion are an important part of “humanity” and of “intelligence”
+ Religions are NOT inherently empathetic, tend to both focus on the other worldly and to exclude those not of the same religion
+ The author does well as a single individual researcher but there is a lot in this book that is simplistic for lack of access to deeper works by others
+ Soil salinity has collapsed civilizations before ours including the Romans
+ Nice discussion of the Gnostics who felt that the real sin of man was in not understanding self and the human potential for divinity (Barbara Marx Hubbard and Buckminster Fuller have focused on this in more recent times)
+ Medieval Period ran out of wood the way we are running out of oil
+ Interesting discussion of print as a facilitator for both individuality and the scientific method
+ Light discussion of schools, not connected with the broader literature on pedagogy and mass instruction.
+ Energy changes impact on space and time perceptions. Electricity and Morse code took global communications and connectivity to a whole new level
+ Child development runs throughout this book in an interesting manner
+ Disconcerting notes include English as the universal language (Chinese over-taking fast followed by Hindi); everyone is a tourist (this would be news to the five billion poor); no more aliens, decline of religion (not from where I sit).
+ Author is excessively dependent on Climate Change as a stimulus, I totally agree with the author's sense of urgency, but all ClimateGate has done is set science back in the public esteem by at least a decade.
+ The author provides an engaging discussion of the coming 3rd Industrial Revolution in which we will further embrace new indices of immaterial wealth and move from property to access and from co-optation to cooperation.
+ The book closes with a discussion of how social skills are changing and now half theater and half authentic, which may not be as odd as it sounds, as individuals must master both deep multi-cultural empathy and the ability to project open authenticity despite violent disagreement with “the other.”
This book is absolutely worth buying and reading–it would be better if it were single spaced and much less bulky. I hope the paperback version goes to single space; there is no justification for doubling the bulk of this content.
See all my other reviews relevant to this specific books and its focus at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, but specifically the “good news” books visible through Worth a Look: Book Review Lists.
I read a lot, and quite by accident (or courtesy of Dick Cheney who drove people back to books looking for answers) I am the top Amazon reviewer for non-fiction. I would have bought this book, along with the book I did buy today, Jeremy Rifkin's The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis but one look at the price and a one word decision: NO.
This book is CRIMINALLY priced. As a publisher myself, I can assure one and all that in lots of 1,500 in hard cover, it costs at most two cents a page including color cover and graphics. Using the Amazon on demand printing option, the cost is even less. Authors must STOP allowing publishers to price their precious work beyond the reach of most people with a brain. I offer all my books free online as well as via Amazon.
and many more. Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, provides easy access to all of my reviews (over 1,500) in each of 98 reading categories including Catastrophe & Resilience, Cosmos & Destiny, and so on.
If the author will post this book free online, or if the publisher can be shamed into pricing it at under $35, I will buy it and review it.
Superb From Right of Center–VERY Satisfying Competent Collection
January 10, 2010
Melvyn Leffler and Jeffrey Legro
Of the three books I bought to explore this particular theme, this was the best by far and the only one to earn five stars. Twelve chapters, twelve authors, not a single runt in this litter. The notes are outstanding.
Although this book's contributors are out of touch with the results of the UN High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change, whose report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (also free online) is now the global standard for any serious strategist and every globally-oriented intelligence professional, what this group knows and share is valuable and I found this book totally absorbing over two nights of reading. They do not, however, have a grip on intelligence or how deeply we have hurt–and have been perceived to have hurt–the rest of the world.
Early on as I go through the book fast I am impressed by the balance between skepticism of the traditional thinking and spending habits (one size fits all heavy metal military) and a focus on the importance of having a broad capability that can respond to and impact on a diversity of threats most of which cannot be easily anticipated.
Some highlights, generally identifying the specific author
This book is a work of undeniable genius and to that I would add peseverence–the author and his wife Gail Straub have been on the forefront of the personal empowerment movement from the late 1970's onward, and in many ways this book is a capstone work that bridges from the personal to the neighborhood and aspires to–but does not quite attain–the goal of being globally meaningful. I previously enjoyed and reviewed Low Carbon Diet: A 30 Day Program to Lose 5000 Pounds–Be Part of the Global Warming Solution! but this is the book that moves the author into my pantheon of a dozen world-class thinkers on social change.
Early on the book grabs me in a Buckminster Fuller sort of way when the author emphasizes that not only do we have to re-invent the world, we have to re-invent the process by which we re-invent the world. Of course Jonas Salk and others have addressed that with Epoch B leadership, but not for mention here.
I am totally impressed by the 30 years of hard work at the grass roots level that the author builds on in this book, one of the reasons it is a solid five stars on its own merits.
QUOTE from page 45: “The intial test results from the first 200 households were very promising. Those households on average reduced their annual solid waste by percent, water use by 32 percent, energy use by 17 percent, vehicle miles traveled by 8 percent, CO2 emissions by 15 percent, and achieved financial savings of $255.”
Those are HUGE accomplishments, and severely under-stated because the author does not factor in the “true cost” of the savings, probably closer to $10,000 a person if not vastly more (fuel is actually a million dollars a gallon if you really value the time it took to create the fossil base).
Strongly Recommended by BGen McMaster in Talk at ODNI
Criminal Pricing in Sharp Contrast to Content
