Afghanistan-Iran-India: Since 8 December a strategic readjustment has taken place in South Asia, at least on the surface. Afghanistan has entered potentially significant agreements with Iran and India.
Robert Steele: Kick-Ass Next Level in Big Data Visualization & Exploitation
Advanced Cyber/IO
I've been getting cranky as I have been reading and hearing all the hype over big data — data sets created by 1950's mindsets on top of 1970's technology and largely irrelevant to 21st Century solutions. I've also been looking at a few “solutions” packages — SILOBREAKER is still my favorite and Palantir is a complete disappointment. Cheering me up, considerably, are the below two sites.
The first, ANTz is some of the most brilliant data visualization I have ever seen. I spent two hours with it this morning and it literally blew my mind. This stuff is so good it could potentially change how we govern and manage everything, within a decade. Visit them at http://www.edworlds.com/antz/toroids/.
The second, SynglyphX, is a new company that will in my view transform the information industry within the decade.
They are bringing the ANTz technologies (open source, by the way) to market, and have in the process created an entire new analytic language that is multidisciplinary, language-independent, and hence a kick ass cross-domain application architecture. If I were standing up the Open Source Agency (OSA) today, this would be the foundation for M4IS2 (multinational, multiagency, multidisciplinary, multidomain information-sharing and sense-making). Visit them at http://www.synglyphx.com/. They have loaded four demonstration videos, see those here.
One realization hit me this morning: what we have today in the way of data steams is retarded. Wrong data, wrong focus. Sensing is not where it's at. A huge amount of work — much of it leveraging volunteer cognitive surplus, needs to be done. They will have to take models such as I and others have spent a lifetime developing, and “operationalize” those models. That means identify the specific data elements that must be collected, develop the true cost economic attributes for every behavior, product, and service, and then create a visual depiction of the disparity between what is possible, what is needed, and what is funded.
Somewhere in here every politician and every corporation and every non-profit is going to be held accountable for any separation of their programs from “ground truth.” PPBS, now defined by the 5% kick-backs, will become IPPBSV where I equals public intelligence and V equals public visualization. Creating a prosperous world at peace (eradication of corruption, generation infinite wealth) just got a boost. 1976-2013: Intelligence Models 2.1
See Also:
Welcome to the Memory Hole – Don’t Kill the Leaker, Just Make Their Leaked Information “Invisible”
07 Other Atrocities, Commerce, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War
Don't kill the Leaker, Kill the Leaker's Information
The particularly nasty end of the spear of IC clandestine services, the part that kills people, may be out of a big part of their job thanks to technology, in the light of the terrifying but deeply interesting article by Peter Van Buren. They don't don't have to kill Snowden or any other whistle blower who leaks information critical for the public to know. They just have to get Google and others to automate the deletion and deep-sixing of any new or old leaked information: don't kill the leaker, kill the leaker's information.
“What if Edward Snowden was made to disappear? No, I’m not suggesting some future CIA rendition effort or a who-killed-Snowden conspiracy theory of a disappearance, but a more ominous kind.What if everything a whistleblower had ever exposed could simply be made to go away? What if every National Security Agency (NSA) document Snowden released, every interview he gave, every documented trace of a national security state careening out of control could be made to disappear in real-time? What if the very posting of such revelations could be turned into a fruitless, record-less endeavor?”
Some examples of what he is talking about:
SmartPlanet: Google Planning to Dominate Ubiquitous Sensor Processing
Advanced Cyber/IO
Why Google bought robot-maker Boston Dynamics
Google has bought Boston Dynamics, the maker of futuristic military-grade robots including the galloping “WildCat” and the Sandflea, which can jump more than nine metres into the air.
Boston Dynamics is the eighth robotics company Google has purchased in the past six months.
CBC business commentator Kevin O'Leary, chair of O'Leary Funds, said Monday that the strategy makes sense, given the majority of “smart and new money going to startups today” is targeting sensor technology.
“These robots are basically a bundle of sensors,” he added. “What Google is doing here is simply buying a company that's extremely advanced at writing software to interface with sensors.”
Google confirmed the purchase to the New York Times late last week.
Chuck Spinney: Risks of EU’s Blowing Up Ukraine on the Cheap
Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence
Included in this interesting essay about the situation in Ukraine is a useful reminder of how the West succumbed to the short-term temptations of triumphalism when Gorbachev ended the Cold War in the early 1990s.
The Risks of the EU's Geopolitics on the Cheap in Ukraine
by Vadim Nikitin, Agence-Global
Released: 09 Dec 2013
A clear sense of déjà vu shrouds the Ukrainian protests. The demonstrators’ relentless calls for Western-style democracy evoke the idealism of the political rallies during the last years of the USSR, when thousands took to the streets of Moscow demanding freedom and opportunity. Then as now, citizens hungry to escape low living standards, a stagnant economy and a corrupt and cynical regime looked to Europe for hope.
Yet that experience ended in bitter disappointment when the West took advantage of Russia’s liberalisation without delivering on the newly free Russian citizens’ hope for a better life. The resulting backlash helped pave the way for Russia’s current authoritarianism. By playing on the exaggerated expectations of Kiev’s current protesters in order to achieve its economic and geopolitical objectives while giving Ukraine only vague assurances in return, the EU risks making a similar mistake with potentially even graver consequences.
Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Risks of EU's Blowing Up Ukraine on the Cheap”
Berto Jongman: Bits, Bytes, & Stuff 1.1
Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence
Eagle: Charles Hugh Smith on What’s Real? What’s Fake?
Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency
Is the unemployment rate real or fake? It is obviously fake, but we want to believe the fake is real for a variety of reasons.
We like to think we know the difference between what's real and what's fake. When we're fooled by a fake Rolex watch purchased for $20 on some humid Asian street corner, we shrug it off: it's no big deal because the fake isn't harming anyone.
And when it's difficult to discern the fake from the legitimate, as in fine art paintings and financial policy, we rely on experts to differentiate between the two.
But what if the “experts” are as clueless as the rest of us? What if they've been corrupted by easy money to authenticate the fake as legitimate? Consider ObamaCare, an extraordinarily complex policy that “experts” assure us is a phenomenal advancement that is “working well.”
But what if ObamaCare is a fake? What if it is really not insurance at all, but a giant skimming machine designed to enrich and solidify the power of the state-cartel that operates the sickcare system?
Continue reading “Eagle: Charles Hugh Smith on What's Real? What's Fake?”
