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The One Book That Can Save Capitalism & The Planet,

December 12, 2006

Paul Hawken

Edit of 19 Jan 08 to add links.

This book is pro-business, pro-market, and pro-life. It outlines how profits can be made by going green and getting in touch with the actual cost of goods and services. It demonstrates how efficiencies can produce a 71% per year after tax Return on Investment (ROI).

On page 261, the following quote summarizes the intellectual victory that this book represents over economic fundamentalism: “That theology treats living things as dead, nature as a nuisance, several billion years' design experience as casually discard able, and the future as worthless.”

The three authors are “originals” whose genius dates back to the 1980's, and I am finding that the books written in the 1970's and 1980's were a quarter-century before their time of acceptance, and now pressing urgent and relevant.

They advocate a shift from a production economy that disregards the actual costs of goods, toward a service economy in which durability, ease of repair, and the elimination of waste transforms commerce so that we have sustainable profit, not short-term destructive profit.

The basic premise of the book is that in the next 100 years the population will double while available natural resources will drop by one half to three quarters.

The authors are damningly trenchant when they point out that we have taken just 300 years to consume 3.8 billion years of natural capital by turning scarce resources into permanent waste.

I am at one with these authors when they suggest that labor is now abundant–I for one believe that national leaders must demand full employment and cease substituting technology, which requires natural capital, for human capital. We need to reverse the process and restore full employment, community-based resource allocation.

In the course of two days with this book, I pulled 21 key ideas that I list here in tribute to these authors and their work:

1) Cars can generate electricity during the 90% of the time they are parked, and this will allow the replacement of ALL coal and nuclear plants

2) We waste 1 million pounds per person per year in the USA

3) Authors are saving business, not fighting business

4) Two trillion out of nine trillion in the total economy per year is waste of no value, including time spent in automobile gridlock

5) Real-time feedback is the number one resource saver

6) Biological processes create Kevlar strength silk (spiders) and walls (oysters)–we should emulate them instead of continuing our toxic ways.

7) Green buildings increase human productivity while reducing waste

8) Continuous education of designers and engineers is the single best investment for continually updating our ability to eliminate waste

9) Point to point air travel in smaller more numerous aircraft is a much more efficient alterative to the hub systems

10) We must end our perverse subsidies of wasteful agricultural, energy, forestry, fishery and other harmful practices by publicizing the foolish budget allocations

11) We should tax pollution and waste rather than income

12) Agricultural residues can be used to make paper, which can be recycled and substituted (e.g. electronic). We must end junk mail and unneeded packaging that outlasts its contents.

13) Restore localized agriculture, deep sustainable farming that does not deplete topsoil, get smart on water and fuel consumption.

14) Get a national water policy and water education, recover all rain (which can meet all of Africa's needs), use gray water; get a grip on toilets to include separate capture of urine and feces.

15) Protect the climate

16) Conserving energy is cheaper, faster, better than trying to produce more

17) Canceling or updating antiquated laws long overdue (for example, giving away billions of gold based on 1800 laws, for pennies)

18) Adjust prices to reflect external costs

19) Implement no fault insurance purchased at the pump

20) Create information feedback loops at all levels

21) Need systemic approach (what I call the ten threats, twelve policies, eight challengers) to avoid unintended spill-over consequences

22) The market cannot do it all. We need government.

Above all intelligence and information can make this happen. Simply labeling switches allows localized awareness and individual actions to save energy. The lack of accurate and up to date information is the largest correctible deficiency

I put this book down hoping that I might one day be able to take the secret intelligence budget of $60 billion a year, cut it by two thirds, and apply one third of that budget to implementing this book's ideas, and one third to creating a new form of global education that is continuous, free, online, in every language, and equally balanced between structured human teaching, interactive social networking, and self-paced online learning through serious games.

There is plenty of money and plenty of brainpower to save our planet and our quality of life while elevating the five billion poor, what we lack is inspired political transpartisan leadership, and a model, perhaps a model to be created in British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon.

I want to be part of this “big push” and am in awe of these authors and the big ideas they represent.

My top ten green to gold books:
The Limits to Growth
Seven Tomorrows
Silent Spring
Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications
High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them
The Future of Life
Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Third Edition
Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

I would also point with enormous respect to books on green chemistry, beneficial bacteria, sustainable design, and what I think of as the “home rule” literature: an end to corporate personality, localized agriculture, localized credit (e.g. Interra Project), and an end to absentee landlords and mega farms that produce indigestible corn for cattle whose waste gets into our spinach, and for fuel (one tank of ethanol consumes enough corn to feed an individual for an entire year).

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2006/09/082009/08/03

2006 State of the Future

6 Star Top 10%, Complexity & Resilience, Environment (Solutions), Future, Games, Models, & Simulations, Intelligence (Public), Strategy, Survival & Sustainment

Clear Map of the Future and What We Do Wrong Now,

September 8, 2006

Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. Gordon

I have been much taken with the integrity and wisdom of the Honorable David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States, who has been telling Congress that they are not providing for the future and that today's budget is inconsistent with sustainable national security and enduring national prosperity. He is right. This is the book he should buy and give to every Senator and every Representative, along with E. O. Wilson's “The Future of Life” and J. F. Richard's “HIGH NOON: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them.”

The book is actually in two pieces. 129 black and white pages that is comprised of an Executive Summary, a section on Global Challenges, a State of the Future Index, 40 pages on four global energy scenarios, a separate chapter on emerging environmental security issues (see my review of Max Manwaring's “Environmental Security and Global Stability”), and a final chapter on reflections as the project achieves its tenth anniversary.

The printed book also includes a table of contents for the CD-ROM of 5,400 pages with color graphics and global maps that are quite good, and the publishers are to be complemented for providing the CD material in both PDF form and Document form, the latter for ease of extraction of pictures and text for repurposing.

As I get ready to publish a book by Thomas J. Buckholtz entitled “INFORMATION METRICS: The GIST (Gain Impact, Save Time) of Successful Intelligence,” I cannot help but admire the manner in which the authors have leveraged the measurement of political, social, economic, and other indicators of quality and sustainability, a process that was first pioneered by Professors Banks and Textor in the 1970's.

The day will come when this book and the CD are available in a Serious Game that is both receiving near-real-time information feeds from all open sources in all languages, AND is connected to the real-world budgets of all governments and non-governmental organizations and private sector parties so that any individual can type in their zip code and their issue, and see the color-coded “threat condition” corresponding to whether or not their level of government or their organization is spending wisely, what I call “reality-based budgeting.”

The authors have done a superb job of documenting reality, and as I went through the book, I could not help but feel that we need a second book that evaluated national-level budgets in detail, to publicize the erroneous trade-offs that are being made without the public's real understanding or approval–too much money for a heavy-metal military and corporate tax loopholes, not enough for a global educational Marshall Plan and free telecommunications for the five billion poor (easily affordable for the half trillion the USA has wasted on the elective invasion and sustained heavy-handed occupation of Iraq).

In brief, this book, the CD, this project, are a *cornerstone* for building our future. Worth every penny, and worth several hours of a good read and reflection.

2005/12/182009/12/04

Review: The Chinese Century–The Rising Chinese Economy and Its Impact on the Global Economy, the Balance of Power, and Your Job (Hardcover)

5 Star, Economics, Future

Balanced, Helpful, Historical, Covers Values, Piracy, & Commoditization,

December 18, 2005

Oded Shenkar

This is a very fine book that is narrowly focused on the topic of Chinese economic competition over the course of the next 100 years. In his effort to simplify the book, which is helpful from a straight trade/economic competitiveness point of view, the author has been forced to lose context, not the least of which are the impact on China of the end of cheap oil, the end of free water (they have 300 water-stressed cities see De Villier “WATER”), and the rise of pandemic disease.

What most impressed me about the book, something other reviewers have not noted, is the author's emphasis on values. He clearly understands the historical context for China's evolution, and he clearly understands that China wants to adopt Western technologies without being obliged to adopt Western values. I could not help but realize that the USA–a 200+ year upstart–is now challenged by multiple major powers each thousands of years old, whose common view is that they do not like US values in the negative sense (see Jimmy Carter's new book).

In the flyleaf, inspired by the author but drawing on the many other books I have reviewed here, I drew the USA and then the following surrounding it in clockwise direction, all with arrows pointed at the heart of the USA: India (9), China (10), Earth (11), God (12), Russia (1), Islam (2), Cuba (3), Venezuela (4), and Brazil (5).

Reflecting on the following pages from the author, I found it quite interesting (the dramatic corruption in China not-with-standing) that the Chinese were intent on achieving some form of “communal capitalism” (my new term) that spawned innovation and created the needed 15 million new jobs each year, while avoiding what happened to Russia, where Harvard helped a few oligarchs loot the Russian people, and took its endowment from $3B to $19B as a reward.

The author takes pains to discuss China's shortcomings from an economic and political point of view, but completely avoids any discussion of the severe ethnic and environmental (energy, water, disease) challenges facing the Chinese.

Over-all the author succeeds at making the point that China is not analogous to Japan or Korea or the European Union because it is vastly larger in terms of achieving scale quickly, with a growing reputation for low-cost reliability that is burying brands and substituting Chinese generic offerings using Wal-Mart among others for global placement. The book also makes the point that the Chinese will not give up their low-cost labor advantage (30 to 1 advantage in hourly cost, displacing USA's 5 to 1 productivity advantage) as they move up the value chain to high technology production.

I was very pleased to see an earnest and complete discussion of Chinese piracy (unauthorized sales) and counterfeiting (passing off a false replica). Together with his discussion of Chinese corruption, the near fatal state of Chinese banking and the near comatose nature of Chinese law, he provides a very troubling account that suggests that the Chinese will be able to flagrantly violate intellectual property laws as part of their growth. However, the author is equally balanced in noting that most nations of the world will have little sympathy for the USA and its multinational corporations that have spent 50 years looting the Third World.

One other point the author makes is that it will be the lesser developed countries such as Lesotho and the countries in the Caribbean and Central America that will suffer most from being displaced by the Chinese.

The author specifically suggests that China is non-expansionist in military and political terms, while likely to have enormous influence, perhaps displacing the USA, through its dispersed economic activities that will explode in the next quarter-century.

I put the book down pensive. In combination with “Future Jihad” and “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid” and “The Soul of Capitalism” and “Unconquerable World” and “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,”, what I see in China is hope. Despite its corruption, it is just barely possible that the Chinese government might realize there is a meld of communism and capitalism that is not socialism, not communism, certainly not fascism or immoral capitalism. I coined the term “communal capitalism.” I envision communal capitalism as a system that is transparent, limiting interest rates to 10%, limiting executive compensation to 1000 times that of the lowest paid worker, but allowing for any one individual to accumulate up to $1B. Such a society would have extremely severe penalties for corruption, crime, drug trafficking, tax avoidance, and usury. It is a system that could focus on “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.” I am influenced in my view by the author of “Crossing the Rubicon” who has pointed out that with the end of cheap oil, the Amish and the Cubans are the model for the future in the sense of pioneering sustainable agriculture and full employment without the reliance on pesticides and other energy/oil intensive interventions.

Most interestingly, and the author is to be thanked for pointing this out, such as society would reserve the traditional Mandate of Heaven: if the regime in charge fails to achieve prosperity for the majority of the Chinese, they get booted out. Values and education-whether we face the Chinese, or the Russians or the Islamic fundamentalists or the populists of Latin America, it comes down to values that are supportable, and education that is sensible. America needs to take a close look at its cards-right now they are not a winning hand.

One final note: by coincidence of interest I have read four Wharton School Publishing (WPS) books, and I have a note to myself that the four books are characterized by exceptionally detailed tables of contents, and that there is a clearly a publisher's hand visible hear (unlike some books I have reviewed, where great substance is trashed by poor presentation). I will more attentive to WSP offerings in the future.

2005/12/172009/12/04

Review: Future Jihad–Terrorist Strategies Against America (Hardcover)

5 Star, Future, Terrorism & Jihad

Uniquely brilliant on jihad, glosses over the larger context,

December 17, 2005

Walid Phares

Edit of 24 Feb 08 to add links responsive to the comment about me being a Marxist. Even a cursory look at the reviews of these other books will make clear the distinction between predatory immoral capitalism and ethical capitalism.

This is a truly extraordinary book that is absolutely essential to understanding the radical jihadist threat confronting America and the West. While the author is sponsored by a pro-Israel and extreme right foundation (Jean “Authoritarians are not Totalitarians” Kirkpatrick is prominent there), I never-the-less credit him with having placed before us a superb piece of deep analysis that is steeped in historical, cultural, and linguistic nuances that are simply not available inside the U.S. Government.

The heart of the book is his coherent articulation of the three main forms of jihadist movement–Al Qaeda from Saudi-sponsored Wahabism, Iran and Hezbollah, and the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood. He introduces the term neo-Wahabi and on page 137 begins to discuss six strategies being developed against America: 1) Economic jihad or oil as a weapon; 2) Ideological jihad through the co-optation of the entire U.S. Middle Eastern studies establishment funded by the Saudis; 3) Political jihad or mollification of the public (see my review of Fog Facts); 4) Intelligence jihad, infiltrating not just American neighborhoods but providing the translators and interpreters that the FBI and CIA and DIA rely on; 5) Subversive jihad, behind our lines and using our laws to hide; and 6) Diplomatic jihad, controlling U.S. foreign policy and in particular using Saudi influence to dissuade Clinton from reacting to seven specific tests of America by the varied jihadists, from Khobar to two embassies to the Cole to the World Trade Center.

I am greatly impressed by this book. There are some truly gifted turns of phrase scattered throughout; every page has something useful and instructive. This is an intelligent book, very well-structured, with arguments very ably presented.

The author blames the U.S. educational elite, the people who train future government analysts and diplomats, for selling out to Saudi money and essentially policing themselves, being apologists for jihadists, and blinding the nation at all levels to the threat. I share with the author great dismay over how some of the early warnings caused their authors to be banned from working for mainstream media–Steve Emerson's PBS broadcast on Jihad in America should have put us on red alert.

The author's most important point is that only the last 10% of jihadist activity within the American homeland is illegal, and that if you wait to that point, it is too late. I agree with him. Jihadist ideology, like racism, cannot be tolerated and it must be rooted out. Just as Australia did recently, if radicalized Muslims wish to demand a state run under Islamic law, they are free to go there. See my review of “Forbidden Knowledge.” The author paints the 100 year war as a war of ideas, and clearly discusses how we must first educate every citizen, and then move on to confront these dangerous jihadist calls for violence against the West, elsewhere.

The book is weakest for lack of context. It is almost as if the author set out to deliberately not mention Dick Cheney, to ignore Peak Oil and the value of laundered drug money to Wall Street (see my review of Crossing the Rubicon), and to overlook what may have been the most grotesque error early in the new global war on terror, Secretary Rumsfeld's allowing the Pakistani's to evaluate 3,000 Al Qaeda and Taliban from Tora Bora where they were surrounded. Generally the book suffers from the typical neo-con's view of America as perfect. There is no mention here of our supporting 44 dictators, or our practice of immoral capitalism, or our tolerance for $2 trillion a year in illicit trade. Indeed the author is positively delusional when he describes the U.S. as a completely open system. Not only is this contradicted by his correct and passionate denouncement of the Saudi blind-folding of the Middle Eastern studies establishment, but it begs on all the secrecy surrounding the Federal Reserve (which is NOT a government agency), the gold stolen from China and Japan (see my review of Gold Warriors), and the roughly $3 trillion looted by Wall Street from the American taxpayer.

There are a few minor errors, such as claiming that the Khobar investigation did not identify the perpetrators. As the recently retired director of the FBI tells us in his book, it was Iran, plain and simple, but Madeline Albright, Tony Lake, and Bill Clinton chose to ignore that attack on U.S. forces as well as attacks on two Embassies and the USS Cole. In each instance, the author points out that the jihadists were testing us, and we failed.

This is a really extraordinary and useful book. In its given area of interest, understanding jihadism, it is beyond 5 stars and a fundamental reference. It is am important–a very important–contribution to the debate, but it lacks the context that one can find in the many other books I have reviewed, and it is my hope that this book will be read in conjunction with those I mention above, as well as Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and also The Soul of Capitalism. The author clearly knows the enemy. I am not so sure he sees our flaws–if I were girding this nation for a long-term war, my first priority would be to recover the moral high ground by ceasing our support of dictators and arms merchants and corporate carpet-baggers; and my second would be educating the American people through an Open Source Agency and a Congressional Intelligence Office that prepared daily Public Intelligence Briefs and regular Public Intelligence Estimates that raised the bar for the mediocre secret intelligence we get now–but in raising the bar publicly, such public intelligence would also out the ideological fantasies and the mendacity of those who seek to profit from elective war. Jihadists are but one of at least seven major threats to the American way of life, and right now we are our own worst enemy. We are neglecting China, water, energy, disease, and poverty as well as ethics.

This is the most practical of the several books out now on understanding terrorism–but all of them fail to understand our tangible vulnerabilities that must be corrected before we can win the global war on terror.

2005/12/092009/12/04

Review: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid–Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Hardcover)

6 Star Top 10%, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Economics, Future, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Nobel Prize Material–Could Transform the Planet,

December 9, 2005

C.K. Prahalad

There are some excellent and lengthy reviews of this book so I will not repeat anything that has already been said. This book review should be read together with my review of Stuart Hart's “Capitalism at the Crossroads,” which points to several other related books, and Kenichi Ohmae's book, “The Next Global Stage.” All three are published by Wharton School Publishing, which has impressed me enormously with its gifted offerings.

Here's the math that I was surprised to not see in the book: the top billion people that business focuses on are worth less than a trillion in potential sales. The bottom four billion, with less than $1000 a year in disposable income, are worth four trillion in potential sales.

In combination, Prahalad and Hart make it clear that business suffers from the same pathologies as the Central Intelligence Agency and other bureaucracies: they are in a rut.

I will end by emphasizing that I believe this author merits the Nobel Peace Prize. As the U.S. Department of Defense is now discovering, its $500 billion a year budget is being spent on a heavy metal military useful only 10% of the time. Stabilizization and reconstruction are a much more constructive form of national defense, because if we do not address poverty and instability globally, it will inevitably impact on the home front. This author has presented the most common sense case for turning business upside down. He can be credited with a paradigm shift, those shifts that Kuhn tells us come all too infrequently, but when they come, they change the world. It may take years to see this genius implemented in the real world, but he has, without question, changed the world for the better with this book, and make global prosperity a possibility.

NOTE: This book comes with a DVD that is an extraordinary value all by itself. Wharton Publishing has really delivered a one-two intellectual punch, first with the book, and then with the DVD which as a short introductory presentation by the author, and then a series of 2-4 minute multi-media snap-shots of the various case studies and the “faces of poverty” transformed. I am really impressed–I've had Wharton MBAs work for me before (but please note, it was Michigan MBAs that excelled in the work I am reviewing(, examining OSS.Net and how to take it to the next level, but the work reflected in these case studies and by the author as a manager of budding intellects has taken my respect for Michagan (and Wharton) to a whole new level.

Note: while this book is totally unique, and inspired my idea to create the Earth Intelligence Network and be intelligence officer to the poor, organizing 100 million people to teach the five billion poor “one cell call at a time,” there are several other books that have given me enormous hope, and I list them below.
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
Democracy's Edge: Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life
Escaping the Matrix: How We the People can change the world
All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents)
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organization
Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives

2005/12/092009/12/04

Review: Next Global Stage–The: Challenges and Opportunities in Our Borderless World (Hardcover)

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Consciousness & Social IQ, Future

Exquisitely detailed and thoughtful–reinvention of economics & global profit centers,

December 9, 2005

Kenichi Ohmae

I have not in my lifetime seen a table of contents more exquisitely detailed and provocative. My very first note on this book reads: “TOC: Holy Cow!” This book earned five stars with the table of contents and got better from there.

I recommend that this book be read AFTER reading C.K. Prahalad's The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks) (a book that I earnestly hope wins the author the Nobel Peace Prize), and Stuart Hart's Capitalism at the Crossroads: Aligning Business, Earth, and Humanity (2nd Edition) (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks) Whereas those two books are essential background and strategically transformative, showing the four trillion in potential revenue from four billion people whose individual disposable income averages $10 a year, this book is more operational, a handbook for global profit.

The section on reinventing economics is a very useful preamble to the remainder of the book, where the author dissects both governments and business practices before going on to discuss platforms for progress inclusive of technologies and languages.

The last third of the book provides the “script” for future global prosperity. The most valuable and actionable pages are from 255-268, where the author concisely identifies the following areas as potential break-out zones for enormous profit: Hainan Island, Petropavlosk-Kamchatsily in Russia, Vancouver and British Columbia, the Baltic Corner, Ho Chi Minh City, Khabarovsk, Maritime (Primorye) Province and Sakhalin Island in Russia, Sau Paulo, and Kyushu in Japan. If I were a major multinational interested in doubling my gross and profit in the next ten years, I would immediately commission a single General Manager for each of these areas, and send them to build an indigenous networked business from scratch in each of these areas.

The author, who I am reminded wrote “The Mind of the Strategist” as a young man in the 1970's, has an extraordinay intellect that has been very ably applied to a most important topic: creating stabilizing wealth.

Wharton School Publishing has impressed me greatly with these three books. I have toyed with earning a third graduate degree in either environmental economics or Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) business management, and while I will probably not do so, what these three books make clear to me is that Wharton is a happening place and clearly making a difference. Good stuff!

2005/11/112009/12/04

Review: The Future of Work–How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style and Your Life (Hardcover)

4 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Future

Light, Western-bias, but worthwhile,

November 11, 2005

Thomas W. Malone

The bottom line in this book is on page 33, with a table showing how the cost of moving a page of text around the world and to an infinite number of people has gone from astronomical to zero. In the author's view, this changes everything.

The book is somewhat shallow, written for undergraduates, and very western in bias–as I ranted to Interval in 1993 (“God, Man, and Interval” easily found via Google), until these benefits can reach every impoverished individual in the world, so that they can begin using information access to create wealth, then we are simply in isolation.

Interestingly, the zero cost of communications comes at the same time that we pass the “peak oil” point and the end of cheap oil, the end of free water, and the rise of pandemic disease.

In that vein, I give the author high marks, taking the book to 4 stars from 3, for his emphasis on values. There is an ethical underpining to this book that is helpful. There is a broad literature, some recognized by the author, others not, that suggests that we made a very serious mistake when we disconnected work from kinship, and commoditized the human employee. The gutting of the pension funds and the destruction of local production in the face of Wal-Mart using cheap oil to ship US jobs overseas are just the latest examples of how our loss of perspective and ethics at the top of the food chain has hurt our economy and our people.

I believe that the author is on target with his emphasis on communications, but he does not address the other half of the equation, “sense-making” or collective intelligence. For that aspect I recommend Howard Rheingold's “Smart Mobs,” and Tom Atlee's “The Tao of Democracy.” General Alfred M. Gray, then Commandant of the Marine Corps, drove this point home to Congress in the late 1980's when he said that the Marine Corps, alone among the military services, had communications and intelligence under the same flag officer “because communications without intelligence is noise, and intelligence without communications is irrelevant.” You need both.

One important point the author does not cover since he avoids addressing the needs of the Third World is this: the Department of Defense has enormous stores of abandoned communications satellite “residual capability,” that last 10-20% of a satellite that has been junked in favor of a newer fancier model. My Air Force colleagues tell me that a national project to make that capability available free could support T-1 connectivity across Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Government is not yet in the information age, and not yet able to realize that it is Internet connectivity to all, not guns over all, that will bring peace and prosperity to the Earth. I do believe this author understands that, and I hope he expands his vision to embrace intelligence, and global access.

Category: Future

Review: Natural Capitalism–Creating the Next Industrial Revolution