Information Society – Page 30 – Public Intelligence Blog

Dated but Superb Introduction to New Possibilities,

December 9, 2005

Bruce Damer

I am quite surprised by the mean-spirited reviews of this book. Perhaps the individuals writing them consider themselves “gods” in cyberspace, which causes me to wonder, if they know so much, why did they buy the book in the first place?

Published in 1998, the book is certainly outdated by the phenomenal advances in interactive multi-media technology, but I never-the-less consider it a superb introduction to new possibilities.

For me, although I have some exposure to technology, this book was an eye-opener. Initially I wondered why people would spend so much time in cyberspace “avatar-acting” but then I had two “aha” experiences from the book that easily earn it five stars:

1) In a similar vein to the early work in “cyber-cafe's” where interactive audio-visual was put into gathering places for Hispanics and for Negros (and perhaps whites and Asians also, but these are the two I remember), avatars break down barriers to sincere interaction. Of course they open paths for deception as well, but the key point here is that if in cyberspace no one knows you are ugly, you can focus on substance.

2) The second “aha” experience occured when I turned this book upside down and asked myself, if we can create avatars that are imaginary, can we go the other way? Can we feed real-time real-world information into a “serious” game and go to the next level, where the public can literally “be” the President, “see” all intelligence about anything that is available to Google, and experiment with alternative behaviors, policies and investment options?

I spend a lot of time reading (#66 over-all, #1 for non-fiction about global issues) and this book was a real pleasure to read, and an extremely valuable catalyst to my thinking. Dated or not, I recommend it very highly.

2005/11/262009/12/04

Review: Information Proficiency–Your Key to the Information Age (Industrial Engineering) (Hardcover)

5 Star, Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology

Quite Extraordinary–Handbook for Creating Wealth Though Information,

November 26, 2005

Thomas J. Buckholtz

The publisher has done a very poor job of communicating the value and depth of this book. It is superb. Easy to read, clear-cut concepts, well-defined chapter order, and above all, solid gold thinking.

As someone who specializes in fostering effective public intelligence and reducing wasteful ineffective secret intelligence, I could not help but marvel at how useful this book is in evaluating two completely opposite approaches to decision-support: Google, and the U.S. Intelligence Community.

The author's chapters run logically from developing a framework to setting goals to improving personal information proficiency and then organizational learning, and thence to managing information as a resource to help make better decisions that yield profit, cut costs, and result in mission accomplishment.

This is a book that should be read by every leader of any type of organization, large and small. What I like most about the book, even though the author is partial to maximizing investments in information technology, is his dual understanding that 1) the point is to make better decisions not buy more technology; and 2) information and information technology that are considered out of context and in isolation from other relevant information, are inherently flawed.

Wow. Google fails this test, and so does the CIA. Google gives you a million hits on “Colombia,” without any visualization, synthesis, etc., while CIA tells you either that they don't know, or what they know is too secret to tell you.

The heart of the book is about actually measuring information proficiency along multiple scales. I will not belabor the point, and will only stress this once that on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being ignorant incompetence, 2 being ad hoc isolated processes, and 5 being fully integrated and optimized data collection (including historical and parallel data), processing, analysis, decision, AND implementation, both Google and the CIA got an average of 2. That's a 40%, folks, a failing grade in any school district. Now, since the U.S. Intelligence Community costs $70 billion a year and serves only the President, and Google costs nothing to the end-user and serves hundreds of millions, we give them the advantage. We're betting Google will grow faster than CIA and the IC can reform.

It merits comment, in passing, that this book is a very elegant recycling of earlier work by the author within the U.S. Government, subsequently published in earlier versions. This version is the best, and potentially revolutionary. I recommend that it be read in conjunction with Robert Buckman's Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization and if you really want to get into it, Margaret Wheatley's Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World; Thomas Stewart's The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organization Barry Carter's Infinite Wealth: A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era my own Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time as well as Alvin and Heidi Toffler's new book, Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives, and the work praised by Lawrence Lessig among others, Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom.

2005/11/242009/12/04

Review: How to Do Everything with Google (Paperback)

5 Star, Information Society, Information Technology

People's “Primer” for 21st Century,

November 24, 2005

Fritz Schneider

I completely disagreed with the “know it alls” that trash this book. This is in fact the people's “primer” for the 21st Century. In the industrial era one needed to learn reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic. Today one needs to know how to find the needle in the haystack. While Google is still in the 4th grade, it will evolve quickly in the next few years, and the Google founders appear well on their way to making all of the world's information available to anyone anywhere. This will itself change the world.

This is a tremendous resource, and I do not consider it outdated because it is still the best available orientation to Google. I do agree that there are online supplements that can update the knowledge in this book and cover emerging capabilities from Google.

Bottom line: Google is central to all our lives now, this book is a useful jump start to anyone who wishes to leverage all of Google, not just the 10% most people see. For advanced IT people, I recommend Stephen Arnold's book, “The Google Legacy,” available from Infonortics.co.uk, or at IOP '06 in January 2006.

2005/11/242009/12/04

Review: India and the Knowledge Econom– Leveraging Strengths and Opportunities (Wbi Learning Resources Series) (Paperback)

5 Star, Economics, Information Society, Information Technology

These guys are creative and business geniuses,

November 24, 2005

Carl J. Dahlman

This is a seriously powerful volume. Published by the World Bank Institute, it lays out a strategy for leveraging strengths and opportunities within India's emerging knowledge economy.

This book is so well written and clearly organized that it could be a strategy document for any country, from China to Venezuela. Indeed, what I see in this book is the possibility of India becoming a knowledge “hub” nation, where its call centers make the leap up to becoming intelligence analysis centers, with Indians skilled in all languages, having access to all information all the time, and able to create distilled synethic knowledge–answers on demand–across all topics for all levels of users.

The six chapters, 12 appendices, and numerous figures and tables reflect the very highest quality of thinking, clarity, and purpose. This is an extraordinary reference, and I will read it again on my way to India in December, where we will be discussing the creation of a global Information Merchant Bank that builds on and exceeds what Google has been able to accomplish, by adding the human element–human translators, human finders, human analysts, human reporters.

2005/10/302009/12/04

Review: Spychips–How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID (Hardcover)

4 Star, Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology, Privacy

Excellent Review, Somewhat Hyped, Tries to Scare,

October 30, 2005

Katherine Albrecht

This is a tremendous, absolutely superb example of what “citizen intelligence” can mean in the world today. Two individuals have come together to thoroughly investigate the RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) marketplace, and they have published a book that is nothing short of brilliant in its detail, its notes, its photos, and its objectives.

They have even embedded in the book the fundamentals of mass psychology, and found two “hooks” for spreading fear of RFID among Jews (calling it the modern equivalent of the Yellow Star, which makes light of the Holocaust in this context) and fundamentalist Christians (calling it the Mark of the Beast that preceeds the apocalypse, also a step too far, in my view). My goodness-a two-woman CIA/Special Operations PSYOP unit!

On balance, the book is a superb technical review of what is possible and what is planned, and it is also seriously oversold and out of context. There is no question but that many companies, aided by the US Government, are planning for very intrusive tracking of individuals and their purchases. At the same time, the book ignores what is called a “path loss” obstacle (need for short-range transmitter to plugged in receiver), they ignore the ready availability of counter-measures (including aluminum foil, which they do mention in passing), and they fail to understand the severe challenges to massive data mining.

The book is somewhat out of context. While it enjoyes a superb Foreword from one of my five hacker/snowcrash heros, author Bruce Sterling, and it is full of unquestionably serious information, it is also oblivious to books like “The Long Emergency,” or “PowerDown,” and hence it fails to see that while RFID may be a pervert's dream and a Hitler-esque opportunity, the coming Great Depression is likely to bury most RFID applications as unaffordable.

There is much that is good about RFID that the authors leave unsaid. As companies like BreakAwayLtd.com advance reality games, RFID could allow citizens to understand how many child labor hours went into a product, or how much cheap oil was wasted on a product, or–as WIRED Magazine noted a few issues ago–actually tell a potential buyer “If you eat me I will kill you.”

The authors have performed a brilliant public service–I am absolutely totally admiring of what they have done–but the book must be understood to be somewhat unbalanced. Apart from not discussing the good of RFID as a logistics and cost of goods/return on investment capability, the authors also do not discuss the greatest danger within RFID data, that of ignorant programmers and stupid assumptions.

They do a very fine job of discussing how RFID can lead to a depersonification of services–a “smart” medical cabinet replacing a nurse, for example.

Throughout the book they offer quotes from great works or great speakers that are very good contributions to their work, and they also do a superb job of summarizing the RFID industry's spin and slur defenses against the kind of fact-finding and public disclosure that this excellent work embodies.

They conclude that the US Senate and the US Executive have “sold out” to the RFID industry, but that the consumer taxpayer can indeed stop RFID in its tracks by boycotting. They offer a thoughtful list of possible actions by any individual at the end of the book, and if they have one lament, it is that the RFID industry may be right about anticipating the “apathy” of the citizen taxpayer, and being able to implement it vision of persistent surveillance of all individuals and all things.

As an intelligence professional, long critical of the excessive investments in satellite collection (for example, the moronic current new system that will cost $9 billion and not add any substantive new capability), I have a note to myself that RFID is the private sector's tarpit–RFID is to industry what secret satellites were to government: a sucking chest wound into unreal amounts of cash will go, with little to show for it beyond the the logistics routing function.

The authors accept financial contributions but are not a 501c3. I believe that the best way we can honor them and help them is by buying their book. I have done so. Very worthwhile.

2005/10/232009/12/04

Review: Fog Facts –Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin (Nation Books) (Hardcover)

5 Star, Censorship & Denial of Access, Education (General), Education (Universities), Information Operations, Information Society, Media, Misinformation & Propaganda

Makes the case for a People's Bank-Union-Intelligence Agency,

October 23, 2005

Larry Beinhart

This is quite an extraordinary book, one of five I picked up while browsing at Barnes & Noble today. It gets a full five stars for elegant writing, logical presentation, and a lovely index. I read it together with Noam Chomsky's Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World (American Empire Project) interviews, and the two complement one another.

“Fog facts” are facts that are out in the open, but “invisible” in the sense that no one acts on them. The stolen Florida election–30,000 plus disenfranchised blacks *and* “overcount” votes where Al Gore was both checked and written, rejected as invalid instead of returned for verification–the specious claims against Iraq; the 9-11 Commission apologia; the list goes on. For myself, the most interesting fog facts dealt with the number of terrorists caught and jailed by France and other nations, as a tiny fraction of the cost of invading Afghanistan and Iraq, and with little to show for it excepts casualties, including significant numbers of US amputations being concealed from the public.

The author “outs” Judith Miller as an agent of Karl Rove in the run-up to the war in Iraq, earnestly selling the Administration's line on weapons of mass destruction, and perhaps one reason she was both favored by Rove in the current Valerie Plume case, and also sought to protect Rove.

THe author gets the jump on the current scandal of the disappearing billions in Iraq–not just the billions for Halliburton in sole source contracts, but the outright theft and squandering of the $19 billion in Iraqi bank credits that Paul Bremer managed to fritter away–and they still do not have running water or electricity.

THe author quotes several times from Mein Kamph in discussing the extremist Republican use of “the big lie” and the comparisons are disconcertingly clear. He weaves a tale of draft-dodging hypocrisy among the Bush Junior and Cheney gang that is all too distasteful when combined with their corruption in favoring Halliburton–his listing of Cheney's ignominious failures as CEO of HAlliburton are fun–and also a sign that Halliburton knew what it was doing in suffering the fool that would deliver the people's treasure. His accounting of Bush Juniors many failures in business, each time living on his father's name and getting bailed out by the forgiving rich that he has repaid many times over with tax cuts and exemptions from asbestos claims, among other loopholes, is dismaying in the extreme. We “know” these things, but we do not act.

On page 82 he repeats what is now perhaps the most famous quote to come out of the Bush Junior White House, where an arrogant aide dismisses a “reality-based” person and says that the U.S. is an empire now, and makes its own reality. That the reality we are making is one of our own destruction escapes this witless aide to the President, so full of himself is he.

The books adds to my understanding of the current Social Security arrangements as a pass through system (each generation funds the next) as opposed to the Administration's proposal for privatization, which converts it to a pension fund that dies with each generation. I am persuaded that we must defend Social Security, it is present form, to the death, and that we must remove the caps and make the wealthy contribute for every dollar, not just up to $90,000.

The author concludes that there is a war today, not between civilizations, but between faith-based and reality-based communities.

I put the book down reflecting to myself that it is time for the American labor union pension funds to lead a revolution. It is time for the people to form their own bank, their own credit card company, their own intelligence agency, and their own media. Although this is happening in fits and starts with the Internet, it is disjointed. We need to marry up money, willpower, and honest information, and we need to out these carpetbaggers and regain control of the commonwealth.

Truth and morality are here to be found, but the question that remains is: will the people act? This is a very fine book for anyone who cares about future generations and resents being robbed.

Ten Other Recommended Books (Five Bad News, Five Good News):
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
Escaping the Matrix: How We the People can change the world
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

2005/10/202009/12/04

Review: A Whole New Mind–Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age (Hardcover)

4 Star, Information Society

Simplistic but Useful Guide to Global Dialog,

October 20, 2005

Daniel H. Pink

This book, like Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself is written for people who live in an ivory tower, a gated community, or a corporate palace. It is completely out of touch with the 90% of humanity that is comprised of the Working Poor in America, or the destitute and disenfranchised everywhere else. For that it loses one star.

However, and this is high praise from me, it is a “must read” for any knowledge worker, and I am particularly recommending it to the new breed of warrior in the U.S. Government, the Information Operations specialist. A **major** part of our government's failure at foreign policy and national security–including its failure at homeland security and its mis-steps in the global war on terror, going back to the Viet-Nam era, can be traced to a combination of excessive reliance on “metrics” (remember the “body counts?”) diluted by ideological preferences absent historical or cultural contexts.

This book, while simplistic, is a superb over-view of the alternative methods of **perception**, integration, understanding, and outreach–empathy and strategic communication to others in terms they can “receive,” and for that reason I consider it a “must read.”

The six senses, design, story-telling (see Steve Dunning), symphony, Empathy (none to be found in this White House), Play (intertwing work and play, mixing it up to energize both), and Meaning, are well covered by this book, and in a way that makes sense, where the value of listening is clear to the reader.

It is a well-put-together book, with the right amount of white space, good illustrations, good notes and recommended readings, and over-all a pleasant and instructive contribution to my library and my reflections.

Category: Information Society

Review: Avatars–Exploring and Building Virtual Worlds on the Internet [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)