4.0 out of 5 stars 5 for Elegant Simplicity, 3 for Dumbed Down,July 12, 2012
For a guy who once said he was worth $600,000 a hour, I was expecting a great deal more. This is a Classic Comic for the masses–now I used to own all of the Classic Comics [for those under 60, these were the Great Books of Western Civilization, in comic book form, all the rage in the 1960's].
The author starts off by saying that everything is becoming software, but there is no mention of Marc Andersson's famous article, “Why Software is Eating the World” (Wall Street Journal, 20 August 2011), and across the book I notice other inconsistencies. I conclude this is a book researched and written by staff to the signed author's general specifications. It is a good outline, and worth reading, but it is also disappointing. This is not the book that Michael Saylor could have and should have written. Having said that, I give the staff high marks for a clean intelligible coherent book good enough for the 80% that do not think about these topics very much.
The central premise of the book is that mobile plus social equals radical change; that application hand-helds (as opposed to cell phones) are hugely disruptive, and that if we have 5.3 billion with phones right now (out of 9 billion plus), imagine what happens when everyone has a cell phone.
Since Look Inside the Book is not provided for this extraordinary work, I will list the 9 chapter here (each with over ten sub-titles not listed here):
If there's a single Founding Father of the Open Source movement, Robert D. Steele is it. Everyone else has been playing catchup. And if you don't know what the Open Source revolution is, you need to read this book. You don't even need to know why! You need to buy it, read it, and then you'll *know* why. No other book on Open Source can open your eyes the way this one can. That's because there's no potential use of Open Source intelligence that Steele hasn't anticipated. Collective Intelligence is coming! It's an unstoppable force. And it will change everything. So if you like to know about things like that in advance, you need to buy this book.
The information age that was created by personal computers was just a kiddie car with a squeaky horn. By comparison, the open source revolution is a freight train. Its potential to change your world is orders of magnitude greater. This is not hyperbole. In fact superlatives can't begin to express the ground-shaking potential of this next wave of human evolution.
Read this compact book in an evening–and think about it for a year. Robert Steele long as been one of our most interesting and challenging thinkers (although his writing is clear–a reflection of clear thought), and this book is a cri de couer, his “Give me liberty, or give me death!” demand that our government, our system and our citizenry rethink the far from benevolent disorder into which we have lured ourselves.
My review cannot do justice to the richness of thought compressed in this book. Nor do I agree with every proposition the author raises–that's not the point, which is to spur us to liberated, creative thought. But I very strongly recommend this book to every citizen, no matter his or her political hue, who is unafraid of facing the future and who dares to embrace change.
5.0 out of 5 stars End Result of Quarter Century Walk-About,June 5, 2012
Updated 27 June: Why on earth is this book in top 100 for Espionage? I can only speculate that because I am a former spy, trained over 7,500 intelligence professionals, and have been an arch critic of secret intelligence ever since my 1988 conversion experience, that those who know me or know of my work have tane an interest in the book. They are correct to do so. As the image I have loaded above with the cover, entitled “Intelligence Maturity,” clearly depicts, the craft of intelligence must evolve away from an obsession with spies and secrets and move rapidly through open sources and methods to M4IS2 (Multinational Multiagency Multidisciplinary Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making). Smart Nations and public intelligence in the public interest are the center of gravity for creating a world that works for all, not spies and secrecy that work more often than not for the 1% instead of the 99%.
Now that Look Inside the Book is up, I have deleted the table of contents and the list of opens I provided early on, and thank all those who went ahead with buying the book (Amazon has the lowest price I know of)—you helped put the book in Top 100 for Democracy most days since the book came out — Top 50 on 17 June. Although fleeting, these rankings are a small sign that the Open Source Everything meme has arrived.
The book evolved from my January 2007 keytone to Chris Prillo's Gnomedex in Seattle, the 64 minute video (and various shorter remixes including one that has gone around Anonymous circles) easily found by searching for < YouTube Steele Gnomedex 2007 > without the brackets. Contact Random House Special Markets to buy the book by the case at whatever discount is the norm for them. I am very eager to receive invitations to talk about this topic, especially in relation to the November 2007 “election” that pits one wing of the two-party tyranny against the other wing, with no difference for We the People.
I have to credit Tom Atlee, Jim Rough, Harrison Owen, Buckminster Fuller, Russell Ackoff, David Weinberger, Lawrence Lessig, Kent Myers, among many others, for the raw material that helped me flip the tortilla–this book is a rejection of tyranny, toxicity, and theft in favor of transparency, truth, and trust. I list a few books below, but point to all 1800+ of my non-fiction rewviews as relevant to the evolution of my thinking since I recognized the pathology of secret intelligence and rule by secrecy.
At Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog I have and will continue to post three short excerpts from each chapter (up to Chapter 5 as of this update), and also posted the 33 graphics as color slides, and an interview by Warren Pollock of myself, 11 minutes long. He is a gifted interviewer and video editor, extracted with precision and presented with flair.
This book completes the circle I started walking in 1988.
Robert Steele
ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World
5.0 out of 5 stars Author is THE Path-Finder for Assisted Thinking,May 13, 2012
I first discovered Howard Rheingold through his book Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology. This led to my inviting him and with him, John Perry Barlow, to a conference in 1992, where over 600 intelligence professionals got to realize how far behind they were in relation to the art of the possible. We have stayed in touch over the years, and among his many other books, I also recommend as a prequel to this one, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution.
Howard writes–and I read him–at multiple levels. Below I offer a couple of additional recommended readings for each level, with the assertion that you need this book in order to help your child learn what is not so obvious about the world–we can start with Google being math hacks on digital garbage.
PREPARE TO HAVE YOUR MIND BLOWN!,June 24, 2012
