Posted on

Jean Lieven: Local Motors Replay — Transformation of Design, Manufacture, and Sale of Personal Transport Vehicles

Crowd-Sourcing, Design, Economics/True Cost, Manufacturing, Money
0Shares
Jean Lievens
Jean Lievens

Green innovation: how Local Motors is revolutionalising the way cars and bikes are designed, manufactured and sold

Alan Moore, Guardian Sustainable Business

22nd May 2013

Local Motors shares its innovations and lets customers be part of the car-building process, while keeping it local.

Last year, I spoke at Shanghai's Radical Design Week about the transformational design of business. I talked about car manufacturing and how, with state of the art 3D fabrication tools, a networked participatory culture and rapid innovation, the car company Local Motors claims to build cars five times faster at one hundred times less the capital cost of conventional manufacturers.

Local Motors is perhaps one of the most comprehensive examples of a revolutionary approach to the design, engineering, manufacturing, sales and marketing of cars. But don't worry if you are not in the automotive industry, the Local Motors story is one about the firms of the future.

Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

Designing high performance organisations
Companies today can change their shape, capability and performance by rethinking and redesigning core processes. In the case of Local Motors, its factories (the Local Motors micro-factory was rated by Jalopnik as one of the world's top 10 most impressive car factories), R&D, sales, marketing and production represents a design system that is an industrial ecology, rather than a series of boxes and silos. Moreover it is much less costly to set up, run and maintain, which enables the company to invest its energies into high quality design and production.

An open networked innovation platform
Local Motors runs competitions to find innovations. For its first vehicle competition, 44,000 designs were submitted and 3,600 innovators shared their knowledge and insights. No one company can hire that many people and there was no cash prize. So, what inspired so many people to participate?

Through its open participatory platform called The Forge, Local Motors has collaborated in automotive innovation with DARPA, the US military research agency, co-designing and building a fully functional prototype of a combat support vehicle in three and a half months. Even large car manufacturers have turned to Local Motors, such as BMW, which is currently running an urban driving experience challenge.

So Local Motors becomes more than just a car manufacturing company – it's an automotive innovation platform and a true community. Local Motors attracts innovators because it is creating and releasing social and intellectual capital into a common pool. This open innovation platform is counter intuitive to many assumptions about how businesses are run, and how intellectual products are created and protected.

Continue reading “Jean Lieven: Local Motors Replay — Transformation of Design, Manufacture, and Sale of Personal Transport Vehicles”

Posted on

SchwartzReport: LEAKED: US Government Spending Millions on Behalf of Monsanto, Bribing and Blocking Foreign Bio-Tech

01 Agriculture, 07 Health, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government
0Shares

schwartz reportIf you had any doubts about how corrupt the government has become, and how much it is an extension of the Non-geographical Corporate States, this story should settle the matter.

Leak: US Using Taxpayer Dollars To Promote Monsanto GMOs Overseas
ANTHONY GUCCIARDI – Natural Society

Just when you thought the latest Supreme Court ruling in favor of Monsanto’s anti-farmer patent policy was enough evidence of Monsanto’s deep relationship with the US government, hundreds of new cables from the State Department and embassies around the world reveal that your taxpayer dollars are being used to push Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds.

Even mainstream news websites like Reuters are now reporting on the cable details, as it becomes more than crystal clear that the United States government is literally assisting Monsanto in promoting it’s health-crushing genetically modified seeds and escalating the corporation above the law. The same corporation busted for running slave-like work rings where ‘employees’ were required to work on the GMO corn fields for up to 14 hours a day or have their pay withheld.

As it turns out, taxpayer dollars are being funneled into the pockets of international lobbyists who specifically negotiated deals that benefited Monsanto – not even the government itself. This even included crushing the biotech competition in many countries where Monsanto wanted the edge. All performed by the U.S. State Department with the taxes you pay each year from your own salary. What great use, huh? This leak is very similar to the one I discussed back in January of 2012, where the US threatened ‘trade wars’ against nations opposing Monsanto.

One circumstance from 2009 regarding Spain is particularly telling, as the cable tells us that the embassy was demanding ”high-level U.S. government intervention” at the ‘urgent request” of Monsanto to squash biotech competitors in the country so that Monsanto could come scoop up the market for itself. The organization Food & Water Watch has released a detailed report on the cables. A representative from the organization explained how this isn’t even just the promotion of Monsanto but a truly insane initiative by the US government to bend over backwards for the GMO juggernaut:

‘It really goes beyond promoting the U.S.’s biotech industry and agriculture,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. ‘It really gets down to twisting the arms of countries and working to undermine local democratic movements that may be opposed to biotech crops, and pressuring foreign governments to also reduce the oversight of biotech crops.”

This revelation is truly amazing, even to me. I am rarely surprised with the latest Monsanto news, but the leaks reveal that the State Department even sent out pamphlets and DVDs to promote Monsanto. They even offered to help troubleshoot any problems that the countries had with letting Monsanto in for business.

Monsanto truly has the United States government in the palm of its bloody proverbial hand.

Posted on

NIGHTWATCH: China Spanks North Korea, Taliban Targeting Trainers in Middle of Kabul, Syria Continues to Pound Foreign-Sponsored Insurgents

02 China, 08 Wild Cards, Peace Intelligence
0Shares

China South Korea: At the regular daily press briefing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry disclosed, “Upon the invitation of President Xi Jinping, South Korean President Park Geun Hye is to visit China at the end of June.”

Park's spokesperson Kim Haing also told reporters in Seoul. “South Korea and China plan to announce details, including the length of the visit, at an appropriate time in the future.”

Comment: Park's will be a formal state visit. The timing of this announcement is a diplomatic block buster that humiliates North Korea. It occurred on the same day that North Korean Vice Marshal Choe was receiving guidance from President Xi. Choe departed Beijing with no invitation for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who has never been invited to Beijing.

China has “tilted” to South Korea in public.

– – – – – – –

Afghanistan: Explosions and gunfire rocked central Kabul Friday as the Taliban launched an attack close to an Afghan intelligence facility and the headquarters of a government force that protects foreign firms. The Taliban said they were targeting CIA trainers. Two people died and 13 were injured in the attack. Six to eight attackers were killed in the firefight that lasted nine hours, according to press service reports.

Comment: This fighting occurred in the center of Kabul, indicating a major lapse in security. . It is another example of the ability of anti-government fighting groups to attack any target they choose at will. The damage and losses were not large, but the demonstration of the anti-government group's ability to strike at the seat of power and the international quarter is a significant terror effect.

Phi Beta Iota:  See correction from the field, DefDog: Kabul Update – Media Gets It Wrong … Again

– – – – – – –

Syria: Syrian troops have captured much of the rebel stronghold of al-Qusayr, in central Homs province, squeezing opposition fighters into the north of the strategic town, a military officer said on Friday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog said regime forces supported by Hizballah fighters were attacking northern areas of the city, encircling rebel fighters there.

Comment: Capture of al-Qusayr by government forces cuts the main supply route to Homs, which is the next target in the government/Hizballah offensive. Loss of Homs would eviscerate the uprising.

The recent successes will strengthen the government's position in forthcoming talks. As the leader of a successful offensive, it will be difficult to persuade Asad that he must step down or even make many concessions.

See Also:

Syria’s failure to lose

Posted on

Search: phd topics on the role of intelligence in peace support operation + Peacekeeping RECAP

Searches
0Shares
Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

Had to Stop.  WordPress Cannot Handle So Many Links, and Entire Phi Beta Iota Site is About Peace and Prosperity Through Intelligence with Integrity.  Links Below Line Estimated 25% of Relevant Links Across all 12,000+ Posts.

Excellent search and badly needed PhD thesis that could “write the book” on the role of intelligence in support of peace operations.  The top three living experts are:

MajGen Patrick Cammaert, RN NL (Ret)

Col Jan-Inge Svensson, Land Forces Sweden (Ret)

Dr. Walter Dorn, CA

Others including Robert Steele have a great deal to contribute to aspects of the research.  A proper study has never been done, and a book that is oriented toward and useful not just to the UN, which is a mess, but also to NATO, the EU, China into Africa, etcetera, would be most valuable.

The hardest part of dealing with peacekeeping is similar to the challenge that the US Special Operations Command and its renewed emphasis on White SOF faces: it is not possible to create a prosperous world at peace through preventive measures at the tactical levels, if the strategic level is totally corrupt and WANTS war.  The Western system we have in place right now is a “war-based” system of, by, and for the banks and the 1%.  Even the economic “treaties” and agreements are war-based in their motivation (persistent under-market access to resources) and war-typed (secret, corrupt, predatory).

Waging peace cannot be achieved by reforming the present structures.  A transformation is required.  This makes it an ethical, financial, and intellectual challenge of the first order.

Hence, a proper PhD would address  the four levels of analysis:

Continue reading “Search: phd topics on the role of intelligence in peace support operation + Peacekeeping RECAP”

Posted on

John Maguire: Forbes on Independent Testing Of Rossi’s E-Cat Cold Fusion Device

05 Energy
0Shares
John Maguire
John Maguire

Finally! Independent Testing Of Rossi's E-Cat Cold Fusion Device: Maybe The World Will Change After All

Mark Gibbs

Forbes, 20 May 2013

Back in October 2011 I first wrote about Italian engineer, Andrea Rossi, and his E-Cat project, a device that produces heat through a process called a Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR).

Very briefly, LENR, otherwise called cold fusion, is a technique that generates energy through low temperature (far lower than hot fusion temperatures which are in the range of tens off thousands of degrees) reactions that are not chemical. Most importantly, LENR is, theoretically, much safer, much simpler, and many orders of magnitude cheaper than hot fusion. Rather than explaining LENR in detail here please see my original posting for a more complete explanation.

My next post on this topic was here on Forbes a few days later and, as the labyrinthine and occasionally ridiculous saga developed, I tried to sort fact from fiction in a series of posts (see the list at the end of this posting) which covered everything from unconvincing demos, through an Australian businessman offering Rossi $1 million to show independently tested proof, to other players in the LENR market showing interesting results.

Continue reading “John Maguire: Forbes on Independent Testing Of Rossi's E-Cat Cold Fusion Device”

Posted on

Marina Gorbis: The Future Of Education Eliminates The Classroom, Because The World Is Your Class — Provided You Have a Hand-Held Device

04 Education, Cultural Intelligence
0Shares
Marina Gorbis
Marina Gorbis

The Future Of Education Eliminates The Classroom, Because The World Is Your Class

Written by:

Massive Open Online Courses might seem like best way to use the Internet to open up education, but you’re thinking too small. Technology can turn our entire lives into learning experiences.

This probably sounds familiar: You are with a group of friends arguing about some piece of trivia or historical fact. Someone says, “Wait, let me look this up on Wikipedia,” and proceeds to read the information out loud to the whole group, thus resolving the argument. Don’t dismiss this as a trivial occasion. It represents a learning moment, or more precisely, a microlearning moment, and it foreshadows a much larger transformation–to what I call socialstructed learning.

Socialstructed learning is an aggregation of microlearning experiences drawn from a rich ecology of content and driven not by grades but by social and intrinsic rewards. The microlearning moment may last a few minutes, hours, or days (if you are absorbed in reading something, tinkering with something, or listening to something from which you just can’t walk away). Socialstructed learning may be the future, but the foundations of this kind of education lie far in the past. Leading philosophers of education–from Socrates to Plutarch, Rousseau to Dewey–talked about many of these ideals centuries ago. Today, we have a host of tools to make their vision reality.

Continue reading “Marina Gorbis: The Future Of Education Eliminates The Classroom, Because The World Is Your Class — Provided You Have a Hand-Held Device”

Posted on

29 May 2013 Protecting People with Technology – Modernizing UN Peacekeeping Operations

Uncategorized
0Shares
Dr. Walter Dorn
Dr. Walter Dorn

Protecting People with Technology: Modernizing U.N. Peacekeeping

A conversation with Dr. Walter Dorn, author of “Keeping Watch: Monitoring, Technology & Innovation in UN Peace Operations”

Date: Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Time: 2-3:30 p.m.
Location: The Stimson Center
1111 19th St., NW, 12th Floor
Washington, D.C.

RSVP HERE

Download PDF:  Dorn 29- Protecting People with Technology.Stimson-1

Featured Speaker:  Dr. Walter Dorn, professor of defence studies at the Royal Military College of Canada and the Canadian Forces College.

Moderator:  Sarah Williamson, managing director, Protect the People

As U.N. peace operations are asked and expected to do more in increasingly complex and dangerous environments, this discussion with Dr. Dorn will explore the challenges and opportunities of leveraging a broad spectrum of technologies to enable U.N. peace operations to more effectively and safely protect civilians.

Dr. Walter Dorn has also taught at the Pearson Centre and as a visiting professional in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He has served with the United Nations Mission in East Timor, the United Nations in Ethiopia, at U.N. headquarters as a training adviser and as a consultant with the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations. His book “Keeping Watch: Monitoring, Technology, and Innovation in UN Peace Operations” was published in 2011 by U.N. University Press. Copies of his book will be available for purchase and signing.

For more information, contact Aditi Gorur at agorur@stimson.org or 202-478-3445.