Reviews (Books & DVD) – Page 349 – Public Intelligence Blog

2001/03/312009/12/04

Review: Resource Wars–The New Landscape of Global Conflict

5 Star, Congress (Failure, Reform), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Politics, War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Ground Truth That Will Be Ignored,

May 31, 2001

Michael T. Klare

This is a very thoughtful and well-documented book that has been 20 years in the making–although it was actually researched and written in the past three years, the author is on record as having discussed water wars in 1980, and should be credited with anticipating the relationship between natural resources, ethnic conflict, and great power discomfort well before the pack.

He covers oil in particular, energy in more general terms (to my disappointment, not breaking natural gas out from oil, a very relevant distinction for commodities brokers), water, minerals, and timber. His footnotes are quite satisfactory and strike a very fine balance–unusually good–between policy, military, and academic or industry sources.

Sadly, I believe that this book, as with Laurie Garrett's book on the collapse of public health, will be ignored by the …Administration, which appears to have decided that real war is only between states, that energy is something to be increased, not moderated in use, and that real men do not concern themselves with ethnic conflict, small wars, or scarcity of any sort in the Third World.

As I reflect on this book, and its deep discussion of the details of existing and potential resources wars (it includes a very fine illustrative appendix of oil and natural gas conflicts, all current), I contemplate both my disappointment that the author and publisher did not choose to do more with geospatial visualization–a fold out map of the world with all the points plotted in color would have been an extraordinary value–and the immediate potential value of adding the knowledge represented by this book on resources and the Garrett book on public health threats–to the World Conflict & Human Rights Map 2000 published by PIOOM at Leiden University in The Netherlands.

What I really like about this book is its relevance, its authority, its utility. What I find frustrating about this book is that it is, like all books, an isolated fragment of knowledge that cannot easily be integrated and visualized. How helpful it would be, if US voters could see a geographic depiction of the world showing all that the author of this excellent work is trying to communicate, and on the same geographic depiction, see the military dollars versus the economic assistance dollars that the U.S. is or is not investing. The results would be shocking and could lead to political action as the community level, for what is clear to me from this book is that there is a huge disconnect between the real threat, our national security policies, and how we actually spend our foreign affairs, defense, and trade dollars from the taxpayers' pockets.

A trillion dollar tax cut, or a trillion dollar investment in deterrence through investments in natural resource stabilization and extension? Which would be of more lasting value to the seventh generation of our children? The author does not comment–one is left to read between the lines.

2001/03/312009/12/04

Review: Secrecy–The American Experience

5 Star, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), History, Information Society, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Extraordinary Contribution to National Sanity and Security,

May 31, 2001

The Honorable Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Senator Moynihan applies his intellect and his strong academic and historical bent to examine the U.S. experience with secrecy, beginning with its early distrust of ethnic minorities. He applies his social science frames of reference to discuss secrecy as a form of regulation and secrecy as a form of ritual, both ultimately resulting in a deepening of the inherent tendency of bureaucracy to create and keep secrets-secrecy as the cultural norm. His historical overview, current right up to 1998, is replete with documented examples of how secrecy may have facilitated selected national security decisions in the short-run, but in the long run these decisions were not only found to have been wrong for lack of accurate open information that was dismissed for being open, but also harmful to the democratic fabric, in that they tended to lead to conspiracy theories and other forms of public distancing from the federal government. He concludes: “The central fact is that we live today in an Information Age. Open sources give us the vast majority of what we need to know in order to make intelligent decisions. Decisions made by people at ease with disagreement and ambiguity and tentativeness. Decisions made by those who understand how to exploit the wealth and diversity of publicly available information, who no longer simply assume that clandestine collection-that is, ‘stealing secrets'-equals greater intelligence. Analysis, far more than secrecy, is the key to security….Secrecy is for losers.”

2001/03/192009/12/04

Review: Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships, The Future of Professional Services

5 Star, Best Practices in Management

Deceptively Simply, Seriously Valuable,

March 19, 2001

Ross Dawson

A great deal of work went into conceptualizing and crafting this book, and I give very high marks to the author, who does a really superb job of integrating insights from knowledge management, information technology, cognitive modeling, and client relationship or account management. This book makes the jump from airplane reading, to “hold and read several times more.”

At the heart of the book, and many appear to miss this on the first reading, is the author's distinction between commoditized information services and differentiated information services. The first, aided by automation, is on a downward spiral in terms of both value and pricing, and competition is fierce. The second, partially aided by automation but ultimately being unique for rising to a higher level of knowledge service delivery that can only be done by expert humans, is where value pricing and differentiation can be found, and where professional services need to go if they are to remain profitable.

The second urgent and valuable insight the author shares with us is the co-evolutionary nature of a service that evolves through constant knowledge transfer to the client and constant co-creation of new knowledge as the competitive advantage; and a very deep and broad relationship with the client at all levels of both organizations. One leads to the other, the other leads to finding new business with the same client, and the cycle repeats itself. This insight is especially relevant to all those who are using information technology to force single human account managers to handle more and more accounts remotely, all the while “losing touch” with their clients for lack of time to make the personal visit or personal telephone call. This is also explicitly contrary to the prevailing “black box” model where knowledge is withheld as proprietary–the author makes it clear that in this new era, withheld knowledge is much less valuable and much less survivable–this is a dying model.

Among the sections of the book that I found especially worthwhile, partly for their elegance of expression and partly because they represent a considerable professionalism in distilling vast arrays of writing by others, were those that itemized the seven processes for adding value to the client relationship by adding converting information into knowledge (filtering, validation, analysis, synthesis, presentation, ease of access and use, customization); the rare simplicity of the distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge and how to communicate both kinds of knowledge; the brief but sufficient discussion of four key humans in the loop: the senior representative, the relationship coordinator, the knowledge specialist, and the knowledge customer; and the more general discussion of the various means for communicating knowledge value to the client, both in terms of channels and in terms of events including scenarios and wargaming.

Contrary to the publicity, this is not a case study book, although the several “gray block” inserts are both helpful and credible. This book is an executive primer for managing value in the 21st Century, and it merits several readings, not one.

Where the book falls short, and it may be that this is deliberate and better left for another book, is in the section on pricing knowledge services. Despite a fine summary of the kinds of pricing that are used, from time and materials (both the predominant means and the least profitable) to retainer to contingency to commissions and tenders, one is left feeling that neither the author nor his otherwise excellent sources have really come to grips with the fact that clients are still mired in an industrial-age financial mindset that values fixed goods and is not yet ready to pay for intangible knowledge goods. My own research suggests that fully half of the competition for knowledge professionals comes from client middle managers and senior sales or production experts who believe that they know everything they need to know to make good decisions–the other half comes from niche providers of very fragmented services, from the aggregators of online information (Factiva, Lexis-Nexis, DIALOG) to the market research firms (FIND/SVP, Fuld, SIS) to private investigative groups (Arkin, Kroll, IGI) to academic consultants (Harvard, UT) to localized information brokers listed in the Burwell Directory…and many many other sources including commercial imagery and Russian military maps of third world regions that most knowledge specialists–as well as their clients–overlook completely. Somewhere in all this mix, the big accounting and legal firms are trying to leverage their access to clients by becoming portals to global knowledge, and they are *not* delivering the integrated value they should–a value that can only come when the author's wisdom becomes conventional, and every professional services person knows how to define the question, discover and validate the sources, discriminate and distill the many sources into a value-added compelling presentation, and do so in timely easy to use fashion.

Some will be deceived by the very easy to read and well-organized sections into thinking this book is slightly superficial. That is not the case. This is a very well researched book that represents enormous value-added because the author has creatively distilled and organized at least four separate literatures, and done so in a fashion that will repay multiple readings of the book by the new standard: at least twice the value of your time taken for each reading.

2001/03/182009/12/04

Review: The Cultural Creatives–How 50 Million People Are Changing the World

5 Star, Civil Society, Culture, Research, Democracy

Not Yet a Movement, But Showing Serious Potential,

March 18, 2001

Paul H. Ray Ph.D.

Edit of 11 Sep 08 to add links.

This book should be read together with Imagine: What America Could be in the 21st century, edited by Marianne Williamson. Taken together, the two books are inspirational while still being practical.

Cultural Creatives as a book, and some of the other reviews, tend to over-sell the success of the emergence of an alternative lifestyle to Traditionalists (stereotyped as somewhat red neckish and religious rightists) and Moderns (stereotyped as ravish the earth anything-goes corporate carpetbaggers). The reality is that there are as many “cultural creatives” as there are people with disabilities in the United States–50 million. Not one quarter of the population, as one reviewer claims.

Having said that, by way of somber stage-setting, I cannot say enough good things about this book. It should be required reading for every citizen, every student, and every public official. In a very real sense, this book strikes me as a truly seminal work that could help millions of individuals reframe their personal connection to one another, to their Republic, and to the earth.

This is neither a tree-hugger book nor a mantras R us book. This book provides a thoughtful review of how different movements–first the environmental movement, then the human rights movement, and finally the consciousness movement–have come together to define an alternative lifestyle and alternative paradigm for political and economic and social relationships in the larger context of a sustainable “whole” earth.

I found this book motivational and meaningful at both a personal level and a larger national level. At the personal level, its detailed and well-organized description of fifteen very distinct aspects of a “cultural creative” lifestyle helped me understand–as it has helped many others–that there is actually a category of people who have come to grips with and found solutions that enrich their lives–and this explains my great disappointment that the book does not offer a “resources” section at the end. I would have been very glad to discover, for example, a “Cultural Creative” journal or magazine that combined a strong book review section, art and culture, a consumer reports section tailored to the higher standards of the “CCs”, new innovations in home restoration and remodeling, vacation options known to be attractive to CCs, etcetera.

At the higher political level, I found the book constructive and just this side of a tipping point. An increasing number of people, all of them generally outside of Washington and not associated with Wall Street, clearly have some strong positive values and a real commitment to achieving reform through “many small actions”. What this group has lacked is a means of communicating and orchestrating itself on a scale sufficient to demand respect from politicians and corporation. The Internet now provides such a vehicle–and as the Internet explodes from 3.5M people worldwide to 3.5B people worldwide, in the next ten years, I am convinced that Cultural Creatives may finally come into their own as a new form of global political party. Cultural Creatives would sign the Kyoto Treaty (and know what it is); Cultural Creatives would demand a 100% increase–from a half-penny a dollar to a full penny a dollar–in America's foreign diplomatic and humanitarian assistance budget–and Cultural Creatives could conceivably give the Republican Party a real beating in the next Congressional elections if President Bush persists in breaking his campaign vow on reducing carbon emissions. A peaceful revolution in our national agenda may truly be a near-term reality.

This is not a book where a summary can do it justice. It needs to be experienced at an individual level and ideally also at a community level, where it could be understood and accepted as a common point of reference for individual choosing to live “in relation” to one another and to the world, at a level much higher and more satisfying than our current arrangements. When this book makes it to the best-seller list, America will have matured and there will be hope for our children's future quality of life.

Other books along these lines:
The leadership of civilization building: Administrative and civilization theory, symbolic dialogue, and citizen skills for the 21st century
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition
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
Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace (Helix Books)
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

2001/03/182009/12/04

Review: Imagine–What America Could Be in the 21st Century

5 Star, Civil Society, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Future, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Vastly More Practical (and Political) Than Title Suggests,

March 18, 2001

Marianne Williamson

I almost did not buy this book, and I say that because an awful lot of really smart folks might be inclined to turn away on the basis of the title and the possibility that this is a fairy tale wishful-thinking la la land kind of book. It is not. It is practical (and political), it is enriching, and it is over-all a very high quality endeavor that has been well executed.

Four “great truths” are articulated many times over across the various readings, and they merit listing here:

1) Campaign finance reform is the absolute non-negotiable first step that must precede every other reform. Until the people can reassert their great common sense for the common good, and restore the true democratic tradition, nothing else will happen.

2) Neighborhoods are the bedrock of both democracy and sustainable development, and we have spent fifty years building in the wrong direction. New legal and economic incentives must be found to redirect both urban and suburban real estate management back in the direction of self-contained neighborhoods.

3) Local production of everything, from electricity to food to major goods like automobiles) appears to be a pre-requisite for deconflicting high quality of life needs from limited resource availability. The book includes several very intelligent discussions of how this might come about.

4) Networking makes everything else possible, and by this the book means electronic networking. I was especially fascinated by some of the examples of near-real-time sharing that electronic networking makes possible–everything from a neighborhood car to scheduled hand-me-downs of winter coats from one family to another. We have not progressed one mile down the road of what the Internet makes possible at a personal and neighborhood level, and I would recommend this book for that perspective alone.

The creative editorial role must be applauded. From the identification and recruitment of the contributors, to the selection of the photographs that each tell their own story, to the quality of the paper used to create the book, all testify to the competence and knowledge of the editor.

Lastly, it merits comment that the book serves as a very fine calling card from something called The Global Renaissance Alliance, a spiritually-oriented group that nurtures Citizens Circles and uses a web site to provide pointers to resources and other like-minded folk.

2001/03/122009/12/04

Review: Insider’s Guide to the Future

1 Star, Future

Not a Book and Not by Insider's,

May 12, 2001

Edith Weiner

The title is misleading, and most people who buy this pamphlet misrepresented as a book are going to be very disappointed. This a 40 page stream of conscious review of various categories of life that lacks footnotes, a bibligraphy, or an index.

Based on my own broad experience and friendship with futurists of note, I consider this specific paper to be interesting if you don't read a lot and want a very shallow overview of numerous areas in the time it takes to fly from one state to another, but I find it very disturbing to read randomized references to ideas that I have seen developed and documented by others in a much more thorough fashion over the past 25 years or so.

2001/02/242009/12/04

Review: The Cluetrain Manifesto–The End of Business as Usual

4 Star, Best Practices in Management

One Great Thought Beat to Death 190 Times,

February 24, 2001

Christopher Locke

There is one great thought in this book, i.e. that the Web makes it possible for everyone to participate in the “great conversation”, and that it is the summing and slicing of these conversations that will drive business in the 21st Century.

The authors are quite correct, and helpful, when they point out that in the aggregate, the combined preferences, insights, and purchasing power of all Web denizens is vastly more valuable and relevant to business decisions about production, quality, and services than any “push” marketing hype or engineering presumptions about what people might need.

Sadly, the authors' neither provide an integrated understanding of the true terrain over which the great conversation takes place, nor do they provide any substantive suggestions for how web content managers might improve our access to the knowledge and desires that are now buried within the web of babel. Their cute “tell a story” and equally cute advice to have big boxes for customer stories in the forms provided for input, simply do not cut it with me.

This book is a 5 for the one great idea, a 2 for beating the idea to death, a 3 for presentation, and a 4 overall because it was just good enough to keep me reading to the last page.