The more I read, the less I know and the more frustrated I grow with the insanity of academic, government, corporate, and non-governmental stovepipes of knowledge in isolation.
Opening quote on page 5: “Fedor Dostoevsky once said, `A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else.” What an epitaph for partisan governance based on lies.
Before I lay out my fly-leaf notes, a comment spanning all the books I have read:
5.0 out of 5 starsPhenomenal Reference with a Priceless CD,
September 25, 2009
Jerome Glenn, Theodore Gordon, and Elizabeth Florescu
This book, which includes a CD with a ton of additional information and visualization, is worth every penny of the asking price. It brings together global statistics, illustrations, and expert depictions of alternative scenarios.
Although it focuses primarily on Energy & Economies, it is closely tied in with achieving all of the Millenium Goals set by the Member Nations of the United Nations, and cacn easily be scaled up and out as more resources are applied.
The author, a Nobel Peace laureate for the Green Belt Movement, delivers a very straight-forward, practical “woman's voice” account of both the past troubles, present tribulations, and future potential of Africa. This book is replete with “street-level” common sense as well as a real sense of nobility.
Early on the author addresses the reality that uninformed subsistence farming, what 65% of all Africans do, is destroying the commons. I find that ignorance–and the need to educate and inform in their own local language (no easy task when speaking of thousands of local languages)–is a recurring theme in this book. I see *enormous* potential for the application of what the Swedish military calls M4IS2 (multinational, multiagency, multidisciplinary, multidomain information-sharing and sense-making).
The author provides an ample tour of the horizon of aid, trade, and debt imbalances, of the dangers of culture and confidence of decline, of the need to restore cultural and environmental diversity, and of the need to reprioritize agricultural, education, and environmental services instead of bleeding each country to pay for the military and internal security (and of course corruption).
CORE POINT: The *individual* African is the center of gravity, and only Africans can save Africa–blaming colonialism is *over*. The author's vision for a revolution in leadership calls for integrity at the top, and activism at the bottom, along with a resurgence of civil society and a demand that governments embrace civil society as a full partner.
CORE POINT: The environment must be central to all development decisions, both for foster preservation and permit exploitation without degradation. Later in the book the author returns to this theme in speaking of the Congo forests, pointing out that only equity for all those who are local will allow all those who are foreign to exploit AND preserve.
I am fascinated by the author's expected discussion of the ills of colonialism including the Berlin division, the elevation of elites, arbitrary confiscations of lands, and proxy wars, what I was NOT expecting was a profound yet practical discussion of how the church in combination with colonialism was a double-whammy on the collective community culture of Africa.
The author observes that any move away from aid, which has been an enabler of massive corruption at the top, and toward capitalization and bonds [as the author of Dead Aid proposes in part] will be just as likely to lead to corruption absent a regional awakening of integrity.
The author discusses China, observing that China has used its Security Council veto to protect African interests, and the author observes that the West continues to destroy Africa with arms sales, France and Russia especially, followed by China, with the US a low fourth.
I learn that patronage and the need for protection are the other side of corruption as a deep-seated rationalization for keeping power, and I learn that pensions in Africa are so fragile that retirement is fraught with risk, another reason to seek long-term power holding. I am inspired to think of a regional pension fund guaranteed by Brotherly Leader Muuamar Al-Gathafi.
On a hopeful note the author praises the election of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf as leader of Liberia, and sees real promise in the AU leadership summits that she attends.
CORE IDEA: Leadership training at all levels must keep pace with the changes in technology and the complexity of Africa's engagements. Civil Society in particular must be understood and embraced by government leaders at all levels.
The author spends time around page 134 discussing her pilot project to create local empowerment, devolving decision-making to create a multi-layered structure that establishes priorities while also providing accountability and transparency, minimizing corruption. Using a trained facilitator, the author brought together around 40 fifteen-person committees to create a strategic plan, and that is now useful as a map regardless of turn-over.
On page 158 the author briefly discusses ECOSOC (Economic, Social, and Cultural Council of the African Union) founded in 2005 to bring the voices of the people into the AU deliberations; to educate the peoples of Africa on all aspects of African affairs; and to encourage civil society throughout Africa.
My reaction: ECOSOCC is a center of gravity and could be the lever needed to create a regional M4IS2 network that substitutes information for violence, capital, time, and space. A harmonization of investments to address regional cell phone access (Nokia ambient energy devices), regional radio stations using solar power; and a regional public information program on the basics of mosquito control and other key public health topics, all call out for action in partnership with ECOSOCC.
Later in the book the author equates misinformation with alcohol and drugs. Ignorance is a recurring theme.
The conclusion of the book is full of deep wisdom on re-imagining community, restoring family by returning the men, stopping the brain drain, and making it easier for remittances to return; of the need to create micro-nation forums within each macro-nation; of the need to create local radio stations in each of the local languages and dialects; of the need to address energy shortfalls while stopping the march of the desert; and finally, of the need to address the pressing twin issues of land ownership and tourism management so as to restore the primacy of African interests.
The book ends on a hugely positive note calling for Africans to reclaim their land; reclaim their culture; and reclaim themselves.
The corruption of the leaders and the complacency of the West in accepting that corruption is a recurring theme. If the USA does not stop supporting dictators and embracing corruption as part of the “status quo” then no amount of good will or aid will suffice.
Although I heard Fuller speak at Muhlenberg College in 1973 or so, I had not read his books and for me Critical Path was a very healthy reminder that long before many of the current authors, Buckminster Fuller had a grip on the basics:
1) Economic theory of scarcity and secrecy is evil, benefitting the few at the expense of the many
2) Earth is NOT a zero sum Darwinian game for humans, in fact it is the human role–the human mind's role–to “synergize” Earth into a win-win for all.
3) Money is not wealth only an artifact that is representative of empty bank vaults and gross misrepresentation by the alleged wealthy. Only time-energy accounting and “true cost” of goods and services should be used.
4) Obstacles to displacing rule by scarcity and secrecy are the public ignorance of natural science and the collaboration among governments, corporations and large organizations such as religions and labor unions that “divide and keep conquered.”
5) Computers–and Fuller was clearly envisioning today's computers, not those of his time–if properly fed all of the relevant data can alter perceptions on a just enough, just in time basis. This coincides with my own view that we can and must educate the five billion poor one cell call at a time, but it also favors the ideas gaining currency of connecting the one billion rich (80% of whom do not give to charity) directly with the needs of the five billion poor at the household level of need.
I am hugely impressed with both specific actionable visions and specific actionable facts:
1) Now possible to create a global electrical grid that runs across Alaska into Canada and China, and eliminate the electrical shortfalls in both those countries and in Canada and the US West Coast.
2) In time-energy “true cost” accounting, every gallon of oil that we use cost $1 million (in 1981 dollars, which is to say, around $10 after the current Administration finished with its massive devaluation plans).
3) There are two critical paths that are not understood by the public or those who profess to represent the public: path one is those natural trends that proceed with or without human errors, omissions, and interventions; path two is the human path both local and as a global aggregate.
4) Considered in time-energy terms, both our industrial-era schools and our industrial-era office buildings are lunacy. He provides a fascinating discussion of inland versus island dwellers, concludes that most urban office buildings should be converted into mixed dwelling-telecommuting centers and is generally brutal about our national policies being 50 years out of date (in 1981–that would make them 80 years out of date today, and I agree).
5) He provides a BRUTAL discussion of banking and government bail-outs of banking as well as mortgage fraud that led to the Great Depression, how banks dispossessed the farmers not realizing that the land was over-valued AND that no one else wanted to do the hard work of farming, and I am generally thunder-struck by how history has repeated itself.
I am especially impressed by his “cosmic costing” which does not allow for hoarding (he joins others in cursing money as both a hoardable good and one that can draw interest beyond reason).
A goodly portion of the book covers the art of doing more with less; doing it faster; and ultimately benefitting increasing numbers of humans with the same technologies.
His discussion of “precession” revolves around not competing with anyone else, instead attending to the unattended. He has a gift for “comprehensive consideration” that we could all draw upon for inspiration.
I am completely absorbed by this book, which includes in the final third:
1) The challenge is to educate all humans, and to teach humans to learn in the shortest possible time–my kids have two answers: cell phones and video games. This is a no-brainer.
2) I offer some quotes below but am totally engaged with his discussion of the Geoscope, what some today might call an Earth Monitoring System, and his view that we can create a 200 foot version of the Earth where one inch equals three miles, and using computers, be able to illuminate for any human–however poorly educated or ideologically stunted–what actually IS the reality.
3) He spends time describing the World Game and cites two books by Medard Gabel that are no longer available via Amazon (but see the EarthGame(TM) technical description offered by Earth Intelligence Network), and describes it as a problem-solving choice-making educational game.
On page 287 I am stunned by his anticipation of the “de-sovereignization” of the United States of America, coincident with the bankruptcy of the US Nation at the hands of its out of control federal government.
On the architectural side I am fascinated by his discussion of flat slab building as the worst possible time-energy construction, and his discussion of the alternatives that he created, including floating cities that I now regard as inevitable.
The book contains an unexpected gem, a compendium created by Fuller based on US contractor experiences in Russia that was delivered to Brazil. It is still valid and it is a model for the kind of clear thinking that government engineers should be able to, but cannot do. [With credit to Chuck Spinney, I have learned that “government specification cost plus engineering” has fried the brains of multiple generations of engineers who are unable to computer biomimicry, cradle to cradle, green to gold, etc. We must wait for our children to rule the world, they are the “digital natives” who will not tolerate rankism, secrecy, scarcity, or lies.
A few quotes are in the comment as I must respect Amazon's 1000 word limit.
xxv: “It is sa matter of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry.”
xxxvi: “The race is between a better-informed, hopefully inspired young world versus a running-scared, misinformed brain-conditioned, older world.”
xxxviii: “The political and economic systems and the political and economic leaders of humanity are not in the final examination; it is the integrity of each individual human that is in the final examination. On personal integrity hangs humanity's fate.”
118-119 “The USA is not run by its would-be “democratic” governance…..Nothing could be more pathetic than the role thats has to be played by the President of the United States, whose power is approximately zero.”
169 “The objective of the game would be to explore ways to make it possible for anybody and everybody in the human family to enjoy the total Earth without any human interfering with any other human and without any human gaining advantage at the expense of another.”
See also page 199, page 202, 208, 221, 225, 287, 346
Simple awesome. If you want your children and grand-children to have an intellectual advantage, nurture their thinking on sustainable development and read in yourself on Buckminster Fuller.
Exquisite in Every Respect, Two-Fifths Equations & Charts, April 3, 2008
Martin A. Nowak
I don't do math, so I must disclose right away that the math was lost on me, except in the context of this equisitely presented book, I am compelled to recognize that mathematics as well as computation science is going to be a major player is the EarthGame, in modeling alternative outcomes for social and cultural complexity, and in cross-fertilizing disciplines by creating a common language.
I tend to be hard on publishers, so in this instance I want to say right away that the Belknap Press of Harvard University has done an absolutely phenomenal job with this book. The paper, the use of color and white space, every aspect of this book is exquisitly presented, and at an affordable price. I therefore recommend this book for content as well as for its artistic context, for both those who love mathematics, and those who do not, but want to understand the promise of mathematics for the future of life.
The text across the book is elegant, clear, easy to understand, and coherent. The summaries at the end of each chapter are in English, and for me at least, obviate the fact that I am mathematically-challenged.
I have a number of notes that merit sharing as encouragement to buy and read this book, one of just two that I found in the right context and price range as I venture into the intersection of modeling social complexity and doing real-time science in the context of an EarthGame where everyone plays themselves. The other book I bought and will read shortly is Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life (Princeton Studies in Complexity). Too many otherwise worthwhile books are grotesquely over-priced, and the authors should release free PDFs online in protest and to have effect on this exciting emergent inter-disciplinary endeavor.
The author stresses early on that Information is what evolves–errors are mutations, mutation plus selection in a noisy (i.e. natural) environment is evolution. I like that idea, and point the reader to Hans Swegen's “The Global Mind: The Ultimate Information Process” (Minerva UK, 1995)which first made the connection for be from DNA to World Brain.
The author inspires with his view that the field of evolutionary dynamics is “on brink of unprecedented theoretical expansion.” I must say, as one who is focused on connecting all people to all information in all languages all the time, I have been slow to understand that while that is a wonderful baseline, only models can project alternative scenarios into the future, and hence, the modeling of the past is but a prelude to the shaping of the future by displaying compelling alternative paths.
The author sees mathematics as a common language that can help disciplines interact, and when they do so, progress occurs. He speaks specifically of disciplinary “cultures” that must understand each other.
Early on he delimits the book, and in the process notes that mathematical biology includes:
+ Reproduction
+ Mutation
+ Selection
+ Random Drift
+ Spatial Movement
Terms of interest (all explained in English not just mathematics):
+ Sequential space
+ Fitness landscape
+ Error threshold
+ Neutral versus random drift
Thoughts that grabbed me across the book (all from the author):
+ Evolutionary game theory is the most comprehensive way to look at the world.
+ Natural selection favors the defectors over the cooperators BUT if there are repeated interactions, cooperation is not assured, but is made possible.
+ Models show alternative scenarios–inclulding coexistence of all.
+ Evolutionary graph theory yields a remarkably simple rule for the evolution of cooperation.
+ Under natural selection the average fitness of the population continuously declines [we're there!]
+ Direct reciprocity is a mechanism for the evolution of cooperation (the collective intelligence world has been calling for reciprocal altruism and a shift to a gift economy with open money and an end to scarcity–I see all this converging).
+ War and peace strategies CAN be modeled (as my own books suggest, the problem is the information asymmetry that Charles Perrow speaks of. Elites make decisions that have consequences for all of us, but they lie to us (935 lies leading to the war on Iraq) and they also externalize costs into the future.)
+ A SINGLE INDIVIDUAL can move an entire population from war to peace.
+ 10 cooperators in a string comprise a sustainable “walker,” and is two such cooperative walkers meet, they can induce a “big bang” in which cooperatives sweep the game away from defectors.
+ Cooperators and defectors can co-exist for near-eternity.
+ Evolutionary graph theory can plot relationships (I think to myself, not only of people to people, but costs to things, time, and space).
+ Language makes infinite use of finite media–bulk of progress in last six hundred million years has been cultural, using language, not genetic.
+ The author credits Noam Chomsky with the Chomsky hierarchy relating language to mathematics. I read most of what Chomsky publishes, and had no idea he had done original work in mathematics back in the day.
+ Learning differs from memorization in that the learner is enabled to acquire generalizations that can then be applied in novel circumstances. I strongly believe that we must radically redirect education toward team learning, project learning, learning to learn, and learning in vivo, one reason I want to map every person, every dollar, every thing, every language, every idea, in Fairfax County.
+ Mathematical analysis of language must combine three fields (at least):
– Formal language theory
– Learning theory
– Evolutionary theory
The author concludes that mathematics is a way to think clearly. I cannot disagree, but as I put the book down, VERY PLEASED with the complete package of such very high quality, I was not convinced that mathematics can do intangible value and cultural nuance is multi-cultural context under stress and with time limitations.
The author provides both a bibliographic essay and a superb extensive bibliography, but if I could change one thing and one thing only in this book, it is that I would integrate the two. I have neither the time nor the inclination to look up each cryptic (Bloom, 1997) in the longer list. I would have preferred to see the actual bibliography organized by chapter, with all books on, for example, “Evolution of Virulence” listed there after the explicatory section. This is a nit.
I learned enough from this book to budget for and demand the full inclusion of evolutionary dynamics in all that the Earth Intelligence Network will strive to accomplish in the next twenty years.
Kudos again to the publisher. Nothing gives me more pleasure, apart from intelligent content, than very high-quality materials, thoughtful editing and lay-out, and honorable pricing. This book is a gem in all respects. BRAVO.
I did not appreciate Stephen Wolfam's A New Kind of Science but treasure the book (another enormous gift to mankind at an affordable price) and urge the mathematically-gifted to take a close look at that work.
I would also point the reader toward Pierre Levy's Information Economy Meta Language (IEML) as one approach to creating a universal dictionary of concepts, easily found on the Internet, and also Doug Englebart's Open Hypertextdocument System (OHS), easily found at the Bootstrap Institute.
Book End for Zero Waste, Brilliant Introduction, September 23, 2008
Janine M. Benyus
I was introduced to this concept at BIONEERS, an annual event with satellite nodes convenient to all, and was just blown away. This book is a superb introduction to the common sense recognition that nature has over all the billions of years, figured out how to not only do stuff with energy efficiency, but also with a zero waste footprint.
Check out World Index for Social and Environmental Responsibility (WISER) for many other leads.
Pushes the Re-Set Button on Both Gore and Lomborg
