Review: Dear Hacker–Letters to the Editor of 2600

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Change & Innovation, Games, Models, & Simulations, Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Philosophy, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean)
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5.0 out of 5 stars Half of the Priceless Set

July 16, 2010

Emmanuel Goldstein

I've been browsing this marvelous collection–559 pages–all afternoon, and the afternoon has been broken up frequently with outrageous laughter and occasional gasps of disbelief. This book, organized as it is, is vastly more important and easier to read than the original 2600 Magazine letters that I have been glancing at since first helping and joining this group in 1994.

The other book, The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey now reprinted in a more expensive The Best of 2600, Collector's Edition: A Hacker Odyssey is absolutely essential and the other half of this set.

Hats off to Wiley for having the brains to see the value, and the editorial talent to select, edit, and present so perfectly. This book, thick as it is, has exactly the right amount of white space, the selection and use of fonts is just right, and the index, while not as extensive as I would have liked, is adequate.

“Look Inside the Book” has been set in motion, in the meantime, here is the table of contents that runs from the early days in the 1980's up through today, with absolutely phenomenal selections that provide priceless insights into the mindsets of BOTH bona fide hackers AND the clueless wanna-bes.

1. Question Upon Question
2. Tales from the Retail Front
3. The Challenges of Life as a Hacker
4. Technology
5. Our Biggest Fans
6. Behind the Walls
8. A Culture of Rebels
9. Strange Ramblings

Easily half if not more of the value of the book is to be found is the witty, acerbic, funny, insightful, surprising comments of the author Emmanuel Goldstein (not his real name), who has single-handedly but with many willing volunteers created the legitimate means of enabling information sharing and sense-making among hackers, who I am often at pains to describe as being the same as astronauts and pioneers, pushing the edge of the envelope.

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Review: Building Social Business–The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity’s Most Pressing Needs

6 Star Top 10%, Associations & Foundations, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Economics, Environment (Solutions), Humanitarian Assistance, Information Society, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Justice (Failure, Reform), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Priorities, Public Administration, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, United Nations & NGOs, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
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5.0 out of 5 stars 4 in isolation, beyond 6 in context–a cornerstone book

July 14, 2010

Muhammad Yunus and Karl Weber

While I sympathize with those who feel that the book lacks reference to prior art, that social business has been around for a very long time, and that much of the book is somewhat similar to his first book that I also reviewed, Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism, I am rating this book a five here and a “6 Star & Beyond” at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, for the simple reason that he is not just doing it, but doing it on a global scale, pushing the envelope across all boundaries, and setting the stage for realizing what Nobel-candidate C. K. Prahalad articulates in The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Revised and Updated 5th Anniversary Edition: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits.

The Nobel Prize to Yanus was a righteous one–unlike the political idiocy of awards to Al Gore and Barack Obama. I can only hope that the Norwegian public shames its overly political Nobel Committee into getting back on track with awards such as this one.

My friend Howard Bloom has a new book out that complements this one: The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism and of course there are others both recent and past, such as Capitalism at the Crossroads: Next Generation Business Strategies for a Post-Crisis World (3rd Edition).

Three things are changing that make this book a cornerstone book:

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Review : Global Shift–How A New Worldview Is Transforming Humanity

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Cosmos & Destiny, Culture, Research, Environment (Solutions), Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Priorities, Religion & Politics of Religion, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
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5.0 out of 5 stars Phenomenal Integration of Ideas–Superb “Once Over”

February 10, 2010 [final review 21 February 2010]

Edmund J. Bourne

I have sent INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainaabilty to the printer and it is on that foundation that I highly recommend this book for a simple easy to understand overview of the fifteen converging forces that the author lists and then discusses in superbly-crafted very easy to read overviews. He covers:

01 A conscious universe

02 Multidimensional reality

03 Interconnection of all minds

04 Complementarity of science and spirituality

05 Radical empiricism [revalidation of intuition and visioning]

06 Consciousness has a causal influence

07 Natural ethics [I really like this, hugely beneficial for all]

08 Reverence for nature and earth [in my book, diversity rocks]

09 A sense of inclusiveness toward all humanity [diversity again]

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Worth a Look: Books on Design for Rest of World

5 Star, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution
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Design Revolution: 100 Products That Empower People

Featuring more than 100 contemporary design products and systems–safer baby bottles, a high-tech waterless washing machine, low-cost prosthetics for landmine victims, Braille-based Lego-style building blocks for blind children, wheelchairs for rugged conditions, sugarcane charcoal, universal composting systems, DIY soccer balls–that are as fascinating as they are revolutionary, this exceptionally smart, friendly and well-designed volume makes the case for design as a tool to solve some of the world's biggest social problems in beautiful, sustainable and engaging ways–for global citizens in the developing world and in more developed economies alike. Particularly at a time when the weight of climate change, global poverty and population growth are impossible to ignore, Pilloton challenges designers to be changemakers instead of “stuff creators.” Urgent and optimistic, a compendium and a call to action,

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Design for the Other 90%

Of the world s total population of 6.5 billion, 90%, have little or no access to most of the products and services many of us take for granted; in fact, nearly half do not have regular access to food, clean water, or shelter. Design for the Other 90% explores more than thirty projects which reflect the growing movement among designers, engineers, students and professors, architects, and social entrepreneurs to design low-cost solutions for this other 90%. Published in conjunction with a major exhibition on view at the Smithsonian s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Design for the Other 90% highlights a wide variety of design innovations that address the basic challenges of survival and progress faced by the world s poor and marginalized.

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Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises

The greatest humanitarian challenge we face today is that of providing shelter. Currently one in seven people lives in a slum or refugee camp, and more than 3,000,000,000 people–nearly half the world's population–do not have access to clean water or adequate sanitation. The physical design of our homes, neighborhoods and communities shapes every aspect of our lives. Yet too often architects are desperately needed in the places where they can least be afforded.  Edited by Architecture for Humanity and now in its third printing, Design Like You Give a Damn is a compendium of innovative projects from around the world that demonstrate the power of design to improve lives. The first book to bring the best of humanitarian architecture and design to the printed page, Design Like You Give a Damn offers a history of the movement toward socially conscious design, and showcases more than 80 contemporary solutions to such urgent needs as basic shelter, healthcare, education and access to clean water, energy and sanitation.

Worth a Look: Digital Democracy–Possibilities

Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Culture, Research, Democracy, Intelligence (Public), Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
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Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful

“A sweeping visionary yet highly pragmatic book! Beth Noveck concretely shows how to leverage the participatory nature of web 2.0 technologies to build a new kind of participatory democracy and a smart, lean government. She speaks from experience. A must read not just for policy folks and the digerati but for any of us wanting to understand how to tap the collective and diverse wisdom of the America to create a better, more connected style of democracy.”

Phi Beta Iota: Focuses on the patent process–use Look Inside to study contents before making a purchase decisioin.  We have ordered the book and will review it within the week.

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The Myth of Digital Democracy

Both utopian and dystopian interpretations have been made of the Internet's influence on many spheres of life–and democracy is no exception. . . . Absent from much of this debate is evidence-based analysis of the effects of the Internet on the business of politics. Many theories have been built on nothing more than anecdote, inference and assertion. In The Myth of Digital Democracy, political scientist Matthew Hindman fills important gaps in the evidence base, and does so accessibly.

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Review: Threshold–The Crisis of Western Culture

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Censorship & Denial of Access, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Electoral Reform USA, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Environment (Problems), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Religion & Politics of Religion, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
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Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Five for the Voice, Four for the Substance

December 12, 2009
Thom Hartmann
Thom Hartmann is one of a handful of individuals that I consider to be true guides for the rest of us, and I consider two of his earlier books, Cracking the Code and SCREWED, to have been instrumental in my own transformation from recovering spy to intelligence officer to the public.

The book does cover a lot of ground lightly, but it is coherent, and because it is Thom Hartmann, whose voice is hugely important to all of us, I settle on a five instead of a four. Other books that complement this one include Tom Atlee's The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All, Jim Rough's Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People, and The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy.

Here are my notes:

+ Book may be missing pages, mine starts at page xi (Preface) so I am left wondering, what happened to i through x?

+ Book opens with quotes from Einstein and Schweitzer with respect to the urgency of widening our circle of compassion to include ALL living things, and explicitly ALL humanity.

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Review: Business Stripped Bare–Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur

5 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Best Practices in Management, Biography & Memoirs, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Disease & Health, Economics, Education (General), Environment (Solutions), Leadership, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Priorities, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
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Amazon Page
5.0 out of 5 stars Inspirational and Practical as Well
October 31, 2009
Richard Branson
I picked this up half-price at Copenhagen airport, and I liked it so much I have ordered Screw It, Let's Do It (Expanded Edition): 14 Lessons on Making It to the Top While Having Fun & Staying Green.

I must note that normally I would reduce one star–Virgin Books evidently has no clue–or no interest–in using the many Amazon tools provided to publishers (I am one) and therefore we are not seeing so little as a Table of Contents and the Index (always huge for me in evaluating a non-fiction book for possible purchase) or even better, “Look Inside the Book,” which is no harder than uploading the book pdf via Amazon Advantage. Bad dog.

Here are my fly-leaf notes.

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