Information Society – Page 26 – Public Intelligence Blog

2008/01/192009/12/04

Review: The Social Life of Information

6 Star Top 10%, Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology, Misinformation & Propaganda, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Superb Primer for Any Age

January 19, 2008

John Seely Brown

I come to this book eight years after it was first published, and with all the accolades and superb reviews that it has already accummulated, my primary focus here, apart from flagging the book for those that follow my reviews, is to suggest that it is one of the finest overviews available and easily exploited as a primer for undergraduates, graduates, or adults pursuing their own continuing education via Amazon, which is now the hub of the World Brain.

As is my custom, I provide here a few highlights from my flyleaf notes, and then link to ten books that can be used to study discrete aspects of the digital age as I have come to understand it.

This is one of the best books I have found that makes the case that “fiber to the forehead” is next to worthless, it is not about acquiring more information, but rather about the nuanced networking and social interpretations of information in context.

Indeed, they say that with all the technologies now pushing and creating digital information, consumption of this information is only increasing among individuals by 1.7 percent a year.

I value this book, in part because I have seen the U.S. secret intelligence community lose its mind, today spending $60 billion a year of the taxpayer's hard-earned money, to create monstrous and often counter-productive technical program that access the 4% of the information we can steal, while ignoring the 94% that is in 183 languages we do not speak, and more often than not, NOT online.

The authors write well, and gifted turns of phrase about, such as “the radical instability of infopunditry.”

They do a superb job of addressing the ills of technology-centered tunnel vision, a point that Peter Drucker made in Forbes ASAP 28 Aug 98, and I repeated in my keynote in Vegas to the National Security Agency (NSA) IT conference, in the early 2000 timeframe. We've spent the past 50 years on the T in IT, we need to start focusing on the I now.

The authors are eloquent in saying that more of the same is not the answer, and I totally agree. Returning to the secret world, I paraphrase an Australian journalist commenting on the pathologies of secret programs, who said that giving more money to dysfunctional secret agencies is like pouring gasoline on a fire. Right on. I want to reduce the secret budget to $12 billion a year, and redirect everything else to US education, global access to open sources in all languages, and free on demand education to the five billion poor via a network of 100 million volunteers with skype and internet access who can answer a cell phone question in any of 183 languages: education “one cell call at a time.”

The authors point out that at its best, technology augments and enhances human capabilities, it does not replace them (less the truly repetitive mechanical aspects).

They observe (in 2000) that 1-2 exabytes of information per year are created, but that much of this is not useful, and there is a major short-fall in sense-making and precision access.

They discuss, most usefully, the reality that designers underestimate what people do (and I would add, what they want or need).

“Information fetishism” is defined as the belief that information and information technology can replaced nuanced relations among people and their individual and shared insights. In Body of Secrets, link below, Jim Bamford ends his second book on NSA by saying that with all the trillions they have spent, they have still not built the ultimate computer, one that runs on a tiny amount of energy, weighs less than a few pounds, and can make petabyte calculations per second: “the human brain.”

The authors respond to earlier criticism about not addressing LINUX, and point out that LINUX is social innovation, not technical innovation. See Wealth of Networks below.

They note that the primary advantage of IT is that it enhances both local and global access. On the downside, it neglects periphery and context.

The authors reassert, compellingly, the value of intermediation, and I am reminded of our earlier criticisms of the Internet, still valid, in that most information is unedited, unformatted, unpaginated, undated, and lacking in source bias insight. This is still true, and Google is making it worse.

By the authors own account, this book addresses:
1) Limits of infopunditry
2) Challenges of software agents
3) Social character of work and learning
4) Limits of management theory
5) Resources for innovation
6) Unnoticed aspects of the document
7) Implications for design
8) Future of information, especially for university

I have a couple of nits, but not enough to warrant removal of one star. This is clearly a seminal work of lasting value.

Nit #1: Organizational Intelligence (Wilensky, 1967) is not to be found in this book. The authors do not go past Quadrant III (see loaded images).

Nit #2: While they have a superb bibliography and include works by Barlow, Kelly, Strassmann, Toffler, and Turkle, they do NOT include the seminal works directly relevant to this book, specifically, Barlow's seminal manifesto, and the following:

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World
Information Payoff
Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Power at the Edge of the 21st Century
The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit , Twentieth Anniversary Edition

Amazon limits us to ten links. See my earlier lists (the first ten) for 300+ books covering information and intelligence. Here are six more:
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

I regret the limitation on links. See also such gems as Forbidden Knowledge; Voltaire's Bastards; Age of Missing Information; etc etc.

2008/01/072014/03/28

Review: Teaching to Transgress–Education as the Practice of Freedom

5 Star, Education (General), Information Society, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum)

Extremely Good Segue to Freire, January 7, 2008

This is the third of three books on liberation pedagogy that I picked up, the other two being Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage (Critical Perspectives Series) and Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

This book is a collection of essays by a woman of color who studied with Freire and found in his works her own liberation and her inspiration to take his ideas and practices further.

I am shocked early on to realize that her description of black schools prior to desegregation as better, because their teachers were passionate about helping them excel, whereas in integrated schools they were treated as second class citizens and taught obedience, rings true.

I see feminist pedagogy in a new more positive light.

The author represents a unique interplay among anticolonial, critical, and feminist pedagogies.

She resonates with me when she speaks of the crisis in education; of our need for a totally renewed educational environment in which biases must be confronted and students liberated.

Her strong statement that education should be the practice of freedom is repeated in many different ways throughout the book.

She states, and I have three sons in public school who would agree, that transgressing wrong-headed boundaries is liberating and entirely called for. She discusses teachers as healers, and throughout this book I gain a deeper broader sense of the pain that minorities and women take pains to repress or conceal because the educational environment is not safe for revelation, only obedience.

I am quite taken by her discussion of the importance of wholeness in teaching, and her engaging discussion of how many professors, especially white mailes, are social misfits who think they can separate their teaching (one-way, authoritarian) without having to engage with students of be whole themselves. She is especially hard on the manner in which they treat the classroom as personal fiefdoms where they can exercise unchallenged authority.

She says that resistance must include the unconvering of lost knowledge. I am reminded of Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth'.

She quotes Martin Luther King in emphasizing, as he did, that shared values and a focus on people are essential is we are to contain, in his words, “the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism.”

She teaches that cultural diversity is INCLUSIVE, and it is not about substituting one culture over another in the relation pecking order. I am reminded of two books I recently reviewed, The Web of Inclusion: Architecture for Building Great Organizations and The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies.

She states that teaching that does not include explicit awareness of race, sex, or class, lacks liberating context.

She cites Terry Eagleton who says “Children make the best theorists,” for not being indoctrinated, and I am reminded of how many arguments I have lost to my 18-year-old when “because I say so” just does not suffice.

I am fascinated by her discussion of how standards can suppresses, norms can neutralize.

She spends time on the importance of theory as a space, a place, for sense-making and reconciliation.

She cites Full in noting that the boundaries between insiders and outsiders contain information rather than allowing the dissemination of knowledge. I am reminded of The Pathology of Power – A Challenge to Human Freedom and Safety.

The author offers a very effective critique of the ignorance, stereotyping, and lack of understanding with which white professors wrote about black reality.

I am not doing justice to the essays on existentialism and on black-white women in relation and in critique of one another, but she notes that resolution between them demands joint collective dialog.

As the book of essays winds down I have a few notes:

+ Habit versus voice

+ Must teach students how to LISTEN

+ Being a teacher is about BEING with people

+ Pedagogy can be, should be, political activism

+ Queens in New York City has 17,000 people speaking 66 languages

+ Class matters, and is too often left unaddressed. I am reminded of Global Class War

Her final note: Learning is a place where paradise can be created. We must learn to transgress freely, and thereby demonstrate that education IS freedom. I am reminded of Improper behavior.

I would not have appreciated this book and the author's insights as easily had I not first read t he two works by Friere that I cite above. The author honors and exceeds her model, this is a very fine book, and I would add in passing that I also found Cornell West's Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism to be a Nobel-level reflection.

Very highly recommended.

2007/12/012010/01/30

Review: INFORMATION WARFARE–Chaos on the Electronic Superhighway

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology

5 Stars Still a Best in Class Endeavor

December 1, 2007

Winn Schwartau

I continue to believe this is one of the best in class original references. Winn, Peter Black (RIP) and I were among the first to warn of electronic Pearl Harbors, with Winn being the most knowledeable and the only one invited to brief Congress, where it went in one ear and out the others.

Winn Schwartau was one of the first, along with Peter Black (RIP), to warn Congress and the business world that digital systems would be extremely vulnerable. No one listened.

This book is still in my library. It is the non-fiction “first book” in this area.

For the fictional version that will stun with its surprise ending:
Terminal Compromise

For the best movie showing how easy it is to bring a society down:
Live Free or Die Hard (Full Screen Edition)

Other Hacker Books:
The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit , Twentieth Anniversary Edition
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
The Hacker Crackdown: Law And Disorder On The Electronic Frontier
The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security

Other Hacker DVD:
Hackers
Hackers – Wizards of the Electronic Age

2007/10/192009/10/17

Review: Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution

5 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ, Cosmos & Destiny, Culture, Research, Education (Universities), Environment (Solutions), Future, Information Society, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Superbly Crafted Primer on “The Next Step”

October 19, 2007

Steve McIntosh

My first note is: “the next step.”

The two Appendices are, in my view, a better starting place for the book as a whole.

The author synthesizes natural sciences, developmental psychology, political thought, philosophy, and spiritual traditions. I have a note later in the book on “this helps to understand the DNA of the body-mind-soul.”

The author tells us that integral philosophy can and should be used to design a world federation Constitution, and later on in the book tells us that philosophy should be the bridge between science and religion and later on suggests that philosophy, science, and spirituality (the opposite of rote religion) should retain their distinct values, and not be “blended” inappropriately.

The author is confident that a global self-governance network, while moving some powers up from the national level, will also result in moving many more powers *down* to the local and provincial levels, and this struck me as a point that needs to be developed further if we are to reunite the 27 secessionist movements in the US and the 5,000 secessionist and indigenous splinter groups around the world. That could be a second book in the making!

The author posits (and provides) a universal declaration of human rights, and suggests that tiered membership in a World Federation could start with the US, Europe, Australia, and Japan, and gradually absorb others who are at differing levels of consciousness.

If I had one criticism of the author's work, it is his ready confusion of American and European consciousness and the naked amorality of American policy-makers, including an abjectly dysfunctional and corrupt Congress, with the 50 million plus cultural creatives or the 80-110 million members whose parent organizations belong to Reuniting America. This needs more dissection and remediation.

He tells us that most institutions are artifacts, and this is consistent with the view in Conversations with God and other works about how religions as intermediaries have become false gods, while government and economic and media institutions have become corrupt and mis-representative.

The Wilburian distinction of the it, the I, and the we–nature, self, and culture–is helpful, and the author takes this a step further with his discussion of a cross-cultural spiral.

He provides superb tables and text describing each of the different levels of socio-cultural consciousness, and I now begin to see his view of how integral consciousness can embrace, welcome, and deconflict among differing levels of consciousness, including warrior consciousness among the Islamic fundamentalists, and the modernist and post-modernist consciousness of more developed societies (again, he neglects to address the sharp imbalance between the American people and their terribly retarded government).

He discusses cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence, and values intelligence, and stresses that science without values is not complete. He acknowledges E. O. Wilson's contribution of Consilience, but does not cite John … who gave us Voltaire's Bastards.

Importantly, he outlines how “what is truth” changes at each level of consciousness, and I find this to be among his most important insights. This is one of the author's most vital contributions, and one that future Administrations would do well to recognize: reality really is socially-constructed, and one must not only see reality as the other person sees it, but see it as a parallel universe that must be respected if one is to engage constructively.

The book works toward a conclusion by noting that integral politics transcends the schism between left and right, and here he cites Paul Ray's work reported out in 1995 on the distinctions in America between the traditionals, moderns, and cultural creatives. He says the degree of transcendence is determined by the scope of *inclusion* and that our challenge is to harmonize and integrate distinct cultures, not subdue them!

Integral consciousness finds *new* solutions via “vision-logic” centered in volition (good intention) rather than cognition, and this is very consistent with the spiritual literature that puts being (action) before planning (cognition). This is a 100-year path of value metabolism equal to the 100-year path since the last Enlightenment.

The author furthers my belief that religions should be rejected as we all adopt direct spiritual relationships with ourselves, others, our societies, and God expressed as the community of man. Beauty, truth, and goodness are the commonalities across cultures and consciousness, windows on the divine, and the place where we examine how values impact on evolution.

A rapid survey of past pioneers if offered:
* Hegel: dialectic of consciousness
* Bergson: intuition, unmediated knowledge
* Whitehead: philosophy as mediator between science and religion
* Teilhard de Chardin: evolutionary thresholds, physiosphere, biosphere, noosphere
* Gebster: coined term “integral consciousness”
* Baldwin: development psychology and genetic logic
* Graves: bio-psycho-social
* Habermas: founder of integral philosophy
* Wilbur: framer of integral philosophy, “big picture”
* McIntosh: need to distinguish, not blend, science, philosophy, spirituality

The author goes on to address the integral reality frame, the spiral of development, and the evolutionary goal of global (but not natural) governances. I was reminded of the “Salmon Nation” and wondered how species representation would play here.

VALUES are what link and nurture the inner and the outer, while making visible previously invisible structures of consciousness and culture across societies and civilizations.

Toward the end the author brings up the Koestner concept of holons, and the view that individual organisms and their social networks co-exist and help define one another in ways that cannot be isolated.

The bottom line: we are moving toward increased complexity and increased unity, and I would add that the author posits a new solution that addresses the reasons why complex societies collapse, when their institutional artifacts fail to rise to the higher consciousness and social network “community mind and soul” that is necessary to scale.

The general direction of truth is the way forward and the transcendent purpose, evolution is sacred (I am reminded of Michael Dowd).

My last comment: “WOW.”

2007/09/182009/10/17

Review: Humanizing the Digital Age

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Communications, Information Society, Information Technology, United Nations & NGOs

First Rate Executive Level Overview

September 18, 2007

United Nations

First off, this book is available for under $20 in hard-cover at the UN Bookstore and other selected online outlets. For some reason the UN does not offer it directly, so a third party makes it possible to order with one click at an added cost that was acceptable to me.

This is a really important and helpful book for those of us that have been thinking about “Information Peacekeeping” (using information to deter and reduce conflict) and “Information Arbitrage” (converting information into intelligence and intelligence into wealth). Nine authors and the editor each contribute extremely well-written, well-structured chapters.

Highlights that I noted for inclusion in my new book, WAR AND PEACE in the Digital Era: Multinational Information Sharing & Decision Support:

ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) has created a new era. Jeff Bezos told the TED conference that we are at the very beginning of innovation in ICT, and I agree. In the Overview of this book we learn:

1) Transnational movements of information and financial capital are a dominant force in the global economy;
2) Worldwide financial exchanges outweigh trade in goods by 60 to 1;
3) ICT services are estimated to be 65% of the total gross national product of the world;
4) Informatics capacity doubles every 18 to 24 while communications capacity doubles every six months (this is one reason the Earth Intelligence Network emphasizes the need for 100 million volunteers to teach the five billion poor “one cell call at a time”);
5) Information that could have been transferred through fiber optics in one month in 1997 can now be transferred in just one second in 2007.

I would add to point five above that I am starting to see massive leaps in processing and machine-speed analysis, to the point that even ugly x-rays can be processed to a point ten times better than previously available to the human eye. This is going to change everything, including security, as a “smart network” helps isolate the anomalous for closer scrutiny.

The chapter on entrepreneurial perspective tells us that education is vital to spawning innovation and entrepreneurial activity, and cited Robert Sternberg (1998) in identifying Analytical Intelligence, Creative Intelligence, and Practical Intelligence as the “three abilities.”

To this I would add the observation that the five billion poor have neither the time nor the luxury of spending 18 years in an archaic educational system that is part child-care and part-prison. See must move quickly to make free education in 183 languages available to anyone with access to a cell phone, and we must redirect ALL of our discarded cell phones and computers, as the book suggests, to the less fortunate.

The sooner we connect the poor, the sooner they can create infinite wealth, and this has the salutary benefit of assuring the rich that their existing wealth is safe from confiscation.

Although I was aware of the World Information Summits, this book provides something I did not have before, a very convenient overview of the efforts by various parties to address the “Governance Deficit” through collaboration. I read the Brahimi Report; I admire what MajGen Patrick Cammaert did with the Joint Military Analysis Centers (JMAC), and believe that the UN System–as well as all Member Nations, are now ready for the next big leap forward, what I call the United Nations Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network (UNODIN).

For those that may not be aware, the UN has asked the Nordic countries to expand on the very successful Peacekeeping Intelligence course developed by Sweden in the aftermath of our peacekeeping intelligence conference there in 2004. At the same time, non-profit organizations are developing inexpensive reference materials to help anyone make the most of open sources of information and open software tools, including TOOZL, which fits on a flash drive.

The book concludes with case studies, among which I found the India case study most compelling. India now provides the bulk of the better call centers, and India-based “Homework Help” costs just $18 an hour. Imagine if we had 100 million volunteers, each fluent in one of 183 languages, and able to take calls from anywhere in the world, and use their Internet access to answer a question or teach “one call at a time.” C.K. Prahalad's book persuaded me that there is no higher calling in life than to help connect the poor to knowledge. This book is a superb beginning for anyone wishing to join this mission.

Other books I recommend:
Edutopia: Success Stories for Learning in the Digital Age
Promoting Peace with Information: Transparency as a Tool of Security Regimes
Peacekeeping and Public Information: Caught in the Crossfire (Cass Series on Peacekeeping, 5)
Peacekeeping Intelligence: Emerging Concepts for the Future
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political–Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time

2007/09/172009/10/17

Review: Edutopia–Success Stories for Learning in the Digital Age

5 Star, Education (General), Information Society, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Critical Starting Point for Global Transformation

September 17, 2007

George Lucas Educational Foundation

edutopia is a true gift to humanity from the George Lucas foundation. I consider the book and the DVD to be a superb starting pointfor the necessary global transformation.

Chapter Nine discusses a dozen promising practices that work:
01 Peer Instruction
02 Cross-age tutoring
03 Bringing local experts into the classroom
04 Multi-age classrooms
05 Cooperative learning
06 Class-size reduction
07 Team teaching
08 Looping (teachers stay with same students for several years)
09 Block scheduling
10 Schools within schools
11 School teams
12 Community service

This is a superbly crafted multi-media teaching tool that every teacher, parent, and administrator will learn from and be strengthened by.

My only disappointment is that the book's sponsors and authors focused so narrowly on just the USA and how the wisdom in this book might be applied within our existing academic and vocational infrastructure. My own focus is on the five billion poor who do not have the time for 18 years of rote education. Simply by subsidizing cells phones and creating a global network of 100 million volunteers using Telelanguage.com, we could offer free education to the five billion poor, and our own population, “one cell call at a time.” Education is the only way we can create stabilizing wealth–this excellent book set its sights too low.

2007/09/062009/12/04

Review: Introduction to Paradigms–Overview, Definitions, Categories, Basics, Optimizing Paradigms & Paradigm Engines

6 Star Top 10%, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Education (General), Information Operations, Information Society, Intelligence (Public), Science & Politics of Science

Nobel-Level Introduction, Can Be Read at Advanced Level

September 6, 2007

Manfred Stansfield

In my view, this is a Nobel Peace Prize level of reflection that demands broad digestion. This is USEFUL.

I was immediately impressed by the early portion of the book, at which point I went to the back and reviewed the bibliography, which is an impressive mix of philosophical, scientific, documented conspiracy, and systems thinking.

The author takes the trouble to describe his bouncing around different school systems, which is a completely credible way of explaining how he came early on to understand that most teachers are teaching belief rather than reality.

The book provides an easily-read clear-cut solution for eradicating the ten high-level threats identified by the United Nations (LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft representing the USA). This book is a perfect complement to [Collapse of Complex Societies]. I am especially taken with how the author shows paradigms in all their relevance to the human condition and to optimizing society.

There are 23 figures, all of them helpful to the architects of the EarthGame(tm) who wish to focus on reality including the charting of belief systems as they differ from reality.

The author teaches us that paradigms, and the ability to think in paradigmatic terms, are essential to:

1) Achieve the desired outcomes efficiently; and

2) AVOID the bias, corruption, disinformation, manipulation, and withholding of information that is so characteristic of Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids and The Pathology of Power – A Challenge to Human Freedom and Safety.

The purpose of paradigms is to help human manipulate (sic) the environment. The author states and only one in ten thousand understands what a paradigm is, and laments the reality that when a paradigm in power (e.g. the neoconservative paradigm) does not parallel reality, humanity suffers in catastrophic terms.

The author points out that the prevailing Machiavellian paradigm of exploiting people continues to displace the more appropriate non-violent collaborative community paradigms of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela.

His list of failing paradigms is extraordinary; in the comments section I provide a link to my own Op-Ed on this matter written before I bought this book. He specifies:

* Education
* Employment
* National Debt
* Environment
* Food Supply
* Sick Care
* Exclusive versus Inclusive Society
* Failure of the Communist Model (allows immoral capitalism to avoid social costs)
* Event manipulation, disinformation, and cover-up.

Separately the author discusses the failure of the US financial paradigm of debt, arms subsidies, and foreign adventurism that are all unaffordable and unsustainable. The Comptroller General of the USA agrees with him, and recently informed Congress that the USA is officially “insolvent.” I am NOT making this up.

The author describes paradigms as essential sense-making, pattern detecting, anomaly isolating frames of reference, and tells us there are four categories:
1) Action
2) Communication
3) Information
4) Societal

Paradigms, the author tells us, consist of factors and relationships and are best maintained by:
1) Optimizing the Truth Quotient
2) Keeping it current
3) Eliminating bias
4) Retiring & replacing as needed

Only paradigmatic thinking (along with reading, writing, mathematics, and ethics) should be taught. People need to learn how to take a “360° look” at any issue, and to recognize competing paradigms and belief systems.

The author tells us that today's real battle is not over or between paradigms, but among the larger existential challenges to Humanity:
1) Truth versus Deception
2) Survival versus Extinction
3) Enlightenment versus Exploitation
4) Living the Dream versus the Nightmare of Subsistence
5) Doing Your Thing versus Doing Someone Else's Thing

Human integrate four distinct forms of knowing and doing:
1) Body
2) Mind
3) Spirit
4) Emotion

Perceptions are biases by
1) Dimensionality
2) Paradigm filters
3) Perceptors
4) Vested interests

Efficacy is the only proof of a paradigm. The following are NOT “proof” of a paradigm: authority, legislation, logic, conviction, eloquence, poetry, rhetoric, polemics, magic tricks, ridicule, ad hominum attacks, cartoons, art, theatrics, hysteria, religion, terrorism, extortion, monopoly, fanaticism, science, law suits, nor mathematics.

Four primary paradigms that are in competition but can also be blended:
1) Authoritarian
2) Scientist
3) Empiricist (engineer that “does”)
4) New Age

The author states that children have a right to be taught the truth and be taught unbiased paradigms.

Among the most terribly failed paradigms in USA the author cites, in addition to health, the Federal Reserve which usurps the Constitutional role of the US Treasury; the abdication by Congress of its Article 1 responsibilities (see The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy) andBreach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders; and the war on drugs, which is actually a profit-making enterprise for off the books operations (see Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth')

The author ends on an optimistic note, but states that at this time more information is being withheld (unlawfully) from citizens, than is available to citizens. Quite right.

He posits the need to balance among the social roles of dreamer, seeker, exploiter, consumer, referee, and operator, while hoping for the eradication of the perverter (see The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 and Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency)

He ends by defining how to optimize society, suggesting that only four basic skills are needed: reading & writing; mathematics; computer & communications technology end-user skill; and the ability to recognize & evaluate paradigms. He lists 12 occupational categories of importance to a society:
1) Food producer
2) Shelter builder
3) Species reproducer/maintainer
4) Dimensionality increaser
5) Paradigm teacher
6) Environmental preserver
7) Artifact builder
8) External societal defender
9) Internal societal greaser
10) Trader
11) Entertainer
12) Personal fixer (in his view, an honest society with open books and proper health care would eliminate the need for most doctors, lawyers, and accountants).

This is a very serious book by a very serious intellect. It could have “break-out” consequences as we move forward with the EarthGame(tm) and I certainly commend the book to anyone seeking to reflect on how we can displace all the liars and thieves that we have elected or allowed to run corporations that are publicly traded.