Information Technology – Page 7 – Public Intelligence Blog

Michael Saylor

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.

Continue reading “Review: The Mobile Wave”

2012/06/24

Review (Guest): The Open Source Everything Manifesto – Transparency, Truth & Trust

#OSE Open Source Everything, 5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Budget Process & Politics, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Civil Affairs, Civil Society, Communications, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Cosmos & Destiny, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Education (Universities), Electoral Reform USA, Environment (Solutions), Games, Models, & Simulations, Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Extra-Terrestrial), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Justice (Failure, Reform), Leadership, Manifesto Extracts, Media, Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Privacy, Public Administration, Science & Politics of Science, Secession & Nullification, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Security (Including Immigration), Stabilization & Reconstruction, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Robert David Steele

PREPARE TO HAVE YOUR MIND BLOWN!,June 24, 2012

B. Tweed DeLions “B.T.”

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.

Continue reading “Review (Guest): The Open Source Everything Manifesto – Transparency, Truth & Trust”

2012/05/132012/05/13

Review: NET SMART – How to Thrive Online

5 Star, Communications, Consciousness & Social IQ, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Education (General), Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Misinformation & Propaganda

Howard Rheingold

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.

Strategic. At the strategic level Howard sees the convergence of many minds connected and empowered by the Internet and related applications to create infinite wealth. He himself cites Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom to which I would add Alvin Toffler's superb wrap up Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives.

Operational. At the operational level Howard is easily on of the top practitioners of “who you know is what you know” and I know of no one who better melds the tools from the tactical level and the vision from the strategic level to achieve the personal and communal efficacy embodied in a “smart community.” This book is a blend of how to make the most of who you know, what applications you use, and how you apply your own mind to include being super alert to the fact that 80% of the Internet is garbage. At this level I would point to two books, the first by David Weinberger, Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room and the second by Tom Atlee, Empowering Public Wisdom: A Practical Vision of Citizen-Led Politics.

Continue reading “Review: NET SMART – How to Thrive Online”

2011/11/062011/11/06

Reference: The Privatization [Corruption] of Democracy – Honoring & Documenting the Work of Eva Waskell

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Censorship & Denial of Access, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Country/Regional, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Information Technology, Intelligence (Public), Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

I am honored that Eva Waskell has entrusted me to present The Privatization of Our Democracy, a work that I regard as her Profile in Courage. For 25 years she has labored to correct what is possibly the most significant public policy failure of the computer age—the privatization of vote counting carried out under the rationale that computers are simply automatic calculators that can tabulate votes more cost effectively than old analogue machines. I have known her for 19 of those years.

. . . . . .

People think they know that something is wrong with the way elections are conducted in this country. They are correct. There is. But readers only now will get access to a full history of the abuse of public trust by the elected politicians of the United States of America. That’s a large claim to make, but see for yourself.

I believe that there are multiple publications here in what Eva has to say. The scholarly monograph. An Elections for Dummies paperback. A paperback of humorous tabby cat photos where the kitties are running elections. Eva is a national treasure and I am proud to be able to use the Internet to make her story known. Fortunately, there are many, many public spirited citizens left.

Full Report (PDF 160 Pages)

Cook Report Home

Table of Contents and Selected Quotes Below the Line –

A SPECTACULAR Piece of Work

Continue reading “Reference: The Privatization [Corruption] of Democracy – Honoring & Documenting the Work of Eva Waskell”

2011/08/132011/08/16

Review: Keeping Watch – Monitoring Technology and Innovation in UN Peace Operations

5 Star, Information Operations, Information Technology, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Stabilization & Reconstruction, United Nations & NGOs, War & Face of Battle

Walter Dorn

Phenomenal Contribution to UN and to Literature,August 13, 2011

Professor Walter Dorn is the de facto dean of the small number of scholars who study the specific topic of peacekeeping intelligence, or intelligence support to United Nations (UN) operations. Since his pioneering early studies of UN successes in the Congo in the 1960's to his more recent articles on the introduction of the Joint Military Analysis Centre (JMAC) in Haiti, he is both the closest academic observer, and the most well-written in this area.

I read this book with great interest. It is the first comprehensive look at technologies that are directly applicable to the fulfillment of UN mandates, the design and security of multinational forces, the effective management of tactical campaigns, and of course being technical, it is the first and last word on surveillance technologies vital to peacekeeping and peace enforcement across vast regions.

Pending the “Inside the Book” feature being available for this just published book, here is the table of contents from my own copy.

1 Introduction
2 The Evolution of Peacekeeping
3 Monitoring: The Constant Need
4 Survey of Technologies
5 Aerial Surveillance: Eye in the Sky
6 Traditional Peacekeeping: Cases
7 Modern Multidimensional Peacekeeping: Cases
8 Current UN Standards: Starting from Near Zero
9 Challenges and Problems
10 Recommendations
11 Conclusions

I recently attending a conference on the history and future of UN Air Power, and in both my own presentations and those of others, “Peace from Above” was a recurring theme. The importance of assuring that UN elements have the best possible human and technical surveillance technologies cannot be understated–for modest investments–including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles–the UN can save lives, money, and time–on the latter point, Colin Gray, in Modern Strategy, observes that time is the one strategic variable that can neither be purchased nor replaced.

A word on pricing: as those who follow my reviews know, I will occasionally single out extraordinary books that are so grotesquely priced as to dishonor the entire publishing world. This book is perfectly priced, close to my standard of page count with one decimal. I salute the UN Press for bringing this book into the world. It should become a standard volume, not only for UN training classes, but for all war colleges as well as for commercial security training and operations.

2011/07/222011/07/22

Review: Critical Choices – The United Nations, Networks, and the Future of Global Goverance

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Diplomacy, Economics, Environment (Solutions), Future, Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Priorities, Public Administration, Security (Including Immigration), Stabilization & Reconstruction, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment

Wolfgang H. Reinicke (Editor), Francis Deng (Editor), Jan Martin Witte (Editor), Thorsten Benner (Editor), Beth Whitaker (Editor), John Gershman (Editor)

5.0 out of 5 stars Global Hybrid Network Governance Primer for UN+, July 21, 2011

By Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) – See all my reviews

Last week I reviewed the first book on this topic by the first author (Wolfgang Reinicke), Global Public Policy: Governing Without Government. I overlooked that book published in 1998, and this book in 2000, for lack of consciousness. Evidently others did as well given the lack of reviews. What makes both these books even more important now is the appointment of the primary author, Wolfgang Reinicke, to the position of inaugural dean of the school of public policy at the Central European University founded and richly endowed by George Soros. To understand how much George Soros has broken away from the government-financial crime axis, his essay free online and also the first fifty-seven pages of The Philanthropy of George Soros: Building Open Societies is essential reading.

I read this book at three levels: for content on its merits; for insight into the specific individuals and agencies behind the book; and for insight into where George Soros might be hoping that Dean Reinicke will go with network governance, what some of us call Panarchy, which is rooted in what we call M4IS2 (Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making). In other words, secrecy is out, transparent true cost information about everything is in–transparency breeds truth, truth breeds trust, and this is how we achieve a non-zero prosperous world at peace that works for all, not just the top 1%.

On page 91 one finds a quote better suited to the front matter, from Kofi Annan:

QUOTE (91): The United Nations once dealt only with governments. By now we know that peace and prosperity cannot be achieved without partnerships involving governments, international organizations, the business community, and civil society.

Continue reading “Review: Critical Choices – The United Nations, Networks, and the Future of Global Goverance”

2011/05/272011/05/27

Review (Guest): Alone Together — Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other

4 Star, Civil Society, Communications, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Information Society, Information Technology, Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design

Sherry Turkle

4.0 out of 5 stars Whoa! Let's not get carried away, February 6, 2011

By Martin Zook “Martin Zook” (Virginia) – See all my reviews

There is much insight to be gained about our relationship with digital technology in reading Alone Together…but it's equally informative to consider some of what's not covered in Turkle's book. When viewed through a broader perspective, perhaps we needn't be as alarmed as one might think after finishing AT.

Sherry Turkle's research indicates a loop. People design digital machines that make demands on us, their users. But people program digital technology such as robots and games to appeal to vulnerabilities. Turkle is most concerned with demands digital makes on our vulnerabilities, to the extent that some people are so attracted to the digital world that they run the risk of not being able to differentiate between reality 101 and digital illusions.

Continue reading “Review (Guest): Alone Together — Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other”