Education (General) – Page 15 – Public Intelligence Blog

2009/12/052009/12/05

Review: Holistic Darwinism: Synergy, Cybernetics, and the Bioeconomics of Evolution

6 Star Top 10%, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Communications, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Education (Universities), Environment (Solutions), Future, Games, Models, & Simulations, History, Information Operations, Information Society, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Beyond 6 Stars–And a Seventh for Accessible Pricing

December 5, 2009

Peter A. Corning

I could spend a lifetime reading and re-reading this book, and each of the cited sources, and not waste the time at all. This is one of the most extraordinary works I have encountered, and while I cannot do it justice, I will summarize it. Four other books that join this one in framing my third and last stage of life:
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny
A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Revised and Updated 5th Anniversary Edition: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits

Bottom line: Humanity can evolve, must evolve, and the Whole Earth, Co-Evolution concepts that Stewart Brand and others pioneered (not mentioned here), that indigenous people's everywhere have understood for centuries, are a natural path for us all. We *can* create a prosperous world at peace.

Short version of the book: Synergy is cool again, synergy and self-organization complement each other and are distinct; bioeconomics is hugely important and supports the premise that the whole is larger than the sum of the parts and that interactions and exchanges can and should be done for the whole, “beyond selfishness,” cybernetics rules, information is the space between, and ethics is both a form of cybernetics and a cultural adaptation that helps the whole evolve and persist.

Continue reading “Review: Holistic Darwinism: Synergy, Cybernetics, and the Bioeconomics of Evolution”

2009/12/042009/12/04

Review: The Real Global Warming Disaster

6 Star Top 10%, Associations & Foundations, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Budget Process & Politics, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Economics, Education (General), Education (Universities), Environment (Problems), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Future, Games, Models, & Simulations, History, Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology, Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Public), Media, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Science & Politics of Science, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, United Nations & NGOs, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Beyond 6 Stars–Could Help Destroy Strong, Gore, & IPCC

December 4, 2009

This is a preliminary review as there are no others. I will spend the week-end creating a timeline, sorting out the good guys and the bad guys, and charting the costs real and projected.

Short version: bad science, bad media, bad politics, bad finance.

Two other books I have reviewed that support this one:
The Resilient Earth: Science, Global Warming and the Fate of Humanity
Global Warming False Alarm: The Bad Science Behind the United Nations' Assertion that Man-made CO2 Causes Global Warming

This book also helps reinstate Lomborg, whom I am ashamed to say I doubted after he was first denounced (publicly) and then redeemed (quietly) in Denmark. See my reviews of:
The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World
Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming (Vintage)

I list these–and point to others at the end of this preliminary review–to make the point that this author's stellar and very complete work with very good notes is the coup de grace–the final bullet in the head of the IPCC, a mercy killing long over-due. [Disclosure: I funded the first three years of the Earth Intelligence Network, a 501c3 Public Charity that accepts the ten high-level threats to humanity for action, and places climate change within priority #3, Environmental Degradation–we also place a very high priority on clarity, diversity, integrity, and sustainability of effort.

Continue reading “Review: The Real Global Warming Disaster”

2009/11/302009/12/02

Review: The Vanishing of a Species? A Look at Modern Man’s Predicament by a Geologist (Hardcover)

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Economics, Education (General), Education (Universities), Environment (Problems), Future, History, Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Posthumous Reflections of Extraordinary Value

November 30, 2009

Peter Gretener

QUOTES:

“The system has had it.”

“Environmental science–or engineering–is at best a misnomer and at worst a fraud.” This author, like the author of The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the Obsession with “Climate Change” Turning Out to Be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder in History? anticipate ClimateGate and the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) being a totally dishonest organization.

“We need all the brainpower we can get.”

“Any human revolution must be preceded by an intellectual revitalization.”

“Education is an integrated concept. Thus a truly educated person has integrity.”

“The enemy in achieving a global solution is the fragmentation of knowledge. The interdisciplinary dialog is a step toward addressing this fragmentation.”

Continue reading “Review: The Vanishing of a Species? A Look at Modern Man's Predicament by a Geologist (Hardcover)”

2009/11/292009/11/29

Review: Ecological Intelligence–How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything (Hardcover)

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Economics, Education (General), Environment (Solutions), Information Operations, Information Society, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Survival & Sustainment, True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

From 4 to Five for Gifted Story and Amazon Price Cut

November 29, 2009

Daniel Goleman

I chose this book over Ecological Intelligence: Rediscovering Ourselves in Nature and seeing the author's note about this other book “by a physician, Jungian analyst, and poet” am certain I made the right choice.

The author's “big idea” is called “Radical Transparency,” what the rest of us have been calling “Open Books for decades. I like it, and in the context of his elegant story-telling, I buy in. This book also goes to a five because it is an Information Operations (IO) books, ably focused on data, information, and information-sharing as well as collective sense-making. He author anticipates most of us becoming “active agents” for change, armed with information as Thomas Jefferson understood so well.

CORE NUGGET: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is not done for most things, but when done right, it is mainly data and it tracks impacts on human health, ecosystems, climate change, and resource draw-down, for every single component and every single process including transport, packaging, etcetera. Toward the end of the book when the author talks about how an LCA commons is emerging, and quotes Andy Ruben of normally ultra-evil Wal-Mart as saying that LCA innovation “is the largest strategic opportunity companies will see for the next fifty years,” I am seriously impressed.

2009/11/282019/09/06

Review: Nonzero–The Logic of Human Destiny

7 Star Top 1%, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Communications, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Cosmos & Destiny, Culture, Research, Economics, Education (General), Education (Universities), Environment (Solutions), Future, Games, Models, & Simulations, History, Information Operations, Information Society, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Media, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Religion & Politics of Religion, Science & Politics of Science, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

7 Stars–Nobel Prize (Of Old, Before Devalued) – Life Transformative Insights

November 28, 2009

Robert Wright

QUOTE: “Non-zero-sumness is a kind of potential–a potential for overall gain, or for overall loss, depending on how the game is played.”

This book is one of the most sophisticated, deep, documented, and influential I have ever read, right up there with Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Published in 2000, this book has NOT received the marketing promotion or the public attention it merits.

THIS BOOK HAS SUBSTANTIALLY ALTERED MY PERCEPTION OF EVERYTHING ELSE.

Continue reading “Review: Nonzero–The Logic of Human Destiny”

2009/11/262009/11/26

Review: The Practice of Peace

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Education (Universities), Environment (Solutions), Future, Games, Models, & Simulations, Information Operations, Information Society, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Priorities, Public Administration, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Peace Through Open Space

November 26, 2009

Harrison Owen

The author gave me a copy of this book as a gift, after inviting me to lunch to discuss my review of Wave Rider (EasyRead Large Edition): Leadership for High Performance In a Self-Organizing World.

This book needs to be re-issued. It is a perfect complement to Tom Atlee's forthcoming Refelctions on Evolutionary Activism (Tom is the author of The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All–read my review of EA at Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog.]

Although I knew the author was the founder of the Open Space Technology (OST) process, and recommend his book Open Space Technology: A User's Guide, I learn in this book that the other essential reader is his earlier book, The Power of Spirit: How Organizations Transform.

This book does something I was not expecting: it directly relates, in a tight DNA-like spiral, the use of open space technology (process is really a better word) to the practice of peace. This is not a book on Quakerism–the author has made an original contribution that has moved me further down the road toward Evolutionary Activism (focus on connecting all humans to all information, not on arriving as specific answers)-but I better understand the value of such books as Practicing Peace: A Devotional Walk Through the Quaker Tradition as a result of this reading.

ALSO unexpected, I found this book to be a handbook for a “Whole Systems” approach to peace and prosperity. The author writes of “Multi-Factorial Development” attempting to do that, but i have the margin notation that putting a bunch of singular discipline experts (one from each discipline) in a room together does not create in any of them the ability to *do* systems thinking (or sustainable design). See Critical Path and The Philosophy of Sustainable Design.

Continue reading “Review: The Practice of Peace”

2009/10/312009/10/31

Review: Business Stripped Bare–Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur

5 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Best Practices in Management, Biography & Memoirs, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Disease & Health, Economics, Education (General), Environment (Solutions), Leadership, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Priorities, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Inspirational and Practical as Well

October 31, 2009

Richard Branson

I picked this up half-price at Copenhagen airport, and I liked it so much I have ordered Screw It, Let's Do It (Expanded Edition): 14 Lessons on Making It to the Top While Having Fun & Staying Green.

I must note that normally I would reduce one star–Virgin Books evidently has no clue–or no interest–in using the many Amazon tools provided to publishers (I am one) and therefore we are not seeing so little as a Table of Contents and the Index (always huge for me in evaluating a non-fiction book for possible purchase) or even better, “Look Inside the Book,” which is no harder than uploading the book pdf via Amazon Advantage. Bad dog.

Here are my fly-leaf notes.

Continue reading “Review: Business Stripped Bare–Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur”