4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Book That Could Be Made Better, April 7, 2013
I received this book as a gift and was glad to get it. As a professional intelligence officer I have been fascinated for decades by the mystery of why smart people make stupid decisions — completely apart from outight corruption. This book is most helpful in addressing nine specific contexts within which good decisions gets sidetracked into bad decisions, and I certainly recommend it as a gift for any thinking person, perhaps for a long airplane ride. It does not address my larger focus on “information pathologies”
The book is structured to address three forces impacting on the how of our decisions:
01 Forces from within
02 Forces from our relationships
03 Forces from the outside
The author concludes with a summary of the “nine step program” for not getting sidetracked:
Momentous social events result from the sum of micro-level changes in daily individual life, and by observing and fusing publicly available data, such as web searches and other internet traffic, it is possible to anticipate events such as disease outbreaks. However, this ability is not without risks, and public concern about the possible consequences of improper use of this technology cannot be ignored. Opportunities for open discussion and democratic scrutiny are required
This book has its origins in the workshop Internet-Based Intelligence for Public Health Emergencies and Disease Outbreak: Technical, Medical, and Regulatory Issues, held in Haifa, Israel, in March 2011. The workshop was attended by 28 invited delegates from nine countries, representing various disciplines such as public health, ethics, sociology, informatics, policy-making, intelligence and security, and was supported by the NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme. Its starting point was the 2009 outbreak of swine flu in Mexico. The book includes both scientific contributions presented during the meeting and some additional articles that were submitted later.
Interactions between public health and information and communication technologies are destined to be of great importance in the future. This book is a contribution to the ongoing dialogue between scholars and practitioners, which will be essential to public acceptance and safety as we rely more and more on the internet for predicting trends, decision-making and communication with the public.
4.0 out of 5 stars A Useful Contribution–See the Table of Contents, January 30, 2013
This review is from: Open Source Intelligence Techniques: Resources for Searching and Analyzing Online Information (Paperback)
I started the modern Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) movement in 1988, picking up where earlier pioneers such as Jan Herring, former NIO for S&T, left off. We are still fighting this battle. The CIA Open Source Center (OSC) is retarded — it does less than 10% of what could be done by a proper Open Source Agency (see tiny url forward slash OSA2011), and compounds their ignorance by classifying what they produce.
I *like* this book. If you have any doubts at all, use the superb Inside the Book feature that is one of Amazon's signal innovations. If you believe — as the OSC believes — that OSINT is all about online surfing in English, this is a great book. It is a good complement to Ran Hock's stuff, or Arno Reuser's stuff, and Ben Benavides stuff, and I certainly also recommend the Super-Searcher series and anything by Mary Ellen Bates.
4.0 out of 5 stars Analysis in Isolation from Reality, January 6, 2013
This book is insanely expensive. The author of the book has material published online that I recommend be accessed and considered before making any investment here. One starting point is my list to 2011 article and my lengthy comment, easily found by looking for
This is a book, that like economists trapped on a desert island with a can of food and no can-opener, begin their plan with “assume a can-opener.” Now having said that, I must also give the author credit: this is as good as it gets at the PhD level when writing in isolation from decades of experience. This is the “clean room” version of the craft of analysis.
Here is a short extract from my review of the article that was built into this book:
ROBERT STEELE: Interesting, certainly worth reading, but divorced from the fundamentals and out of touch with the real masters. Any publication that fails to cite Jack Davis, the dean of analytic tradecraft in the English language, is fatally flawed. Of course it would help if one were also in touch with the “new rules for the new craft of intelligence,” but that may be too much to expect from a junior academic with limited real-world analytic experience who seems intent on citing only “approved” sources-a lack of source integrity that is also fatal. The article assumes that the four preconditions for sound analytics exist, and since they do not, at least in the US and UK and most other government intelligence communities, it is necessary to spell them out. Analysts are toads absent the following:
4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent First Step, Four Disappointments, January 2, 2013
This is one of the more useful reports to come out of the US Institute of Peace and its collaborative effort with the National Academy of Engineering and I highly recommend it for either free reading online at the National Academies Press (individual) or for library purchase for the information, intelligence, diplomacy, civil-military, stabilization & reconstruction, and decision-support sections.
The goals are worthy but overly scientific & technical (the cultural part always comes first): to apply science and technology to the process of peacebuilding and stabilization; to promote systematic communications among organizations across political and other boundaries; and to apply science and technology to pressing conflict issues. La di dah. I just want to know if there is a dead donkey at the bottom of this particular well.
Secondary and equally ambitious goals that their current staffing model cannot support:
1. Adopt the agricultural extension services model to peacebuilding
2. Use data sharing to improve coordination in peacebuilding
3. Sense emerging conflicts (at least they realize the secret intelligence world does NOT do this)
4. Harness systems methods for delivery of peacebuilding services.
FOUR STRONG THEMES MAKE THIS BOOK VALUABLE:
1. Data sharing requires working across a technology-culture divide
2. Information sharing requires building and maintaining trust
3. Information sharing requires linking civilian-military policy discussions to technology
4. Collaboration software needs to be aligned with user needs.
I have known Medard Gabel for close to a decade, and while disclosing that he is one of the contributors to the non-profit Earth Intelligence Network that I funded when I had money, I consider him, as the co-creator with Buckminster Fuller of the analog World Game, and as the designer of both the digital Earth Dashboard for the UN and the digital EarthGame for all of us, to be in a class of his own. He is unique.
Medard Gabel is modest–the blurbs do not do justice to him or his work or the incredibly talented and imaginative individuals (not just youth, but mid-career professionals) that he attracts to this calling.
I have participated in two of his design labs and recommend them to one an all. Everyone enters with their own issue area (urban planning, energy, whatever) and halfway through they experience the “aha” moment (epiphany for Republicans)–everything is connected and NOTHING can be planned, programmed, budgeted, or executed without integrating everything.
As Russell Ackoff likes to say, what is good for one part of the system might be very bad for all the other parts. Comprehensive architecture and prime design–all threats, all policies, all demographics–are the future.
Other high-level books that I recommend with this one are:
Tom provides both an appendix of key concepts with links for each that I have remixed and posted to Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, and an excellent list of books that I am also posting with links. The triad is easily found online by searching for Tom Atlee Public Wisdom Trilogy.
