During the past five years design has been recognised as a powerful innovation driver. Design methods and tools have also been applied in new fields. One of them is social innovation, which is aimed at developing new ideas and solutions in response to social needs. While different initiatives have demonstrated how design can be a powerful approach in social innovation, especially when it comes to systemic thinking, prototyping and visualising, some concerns have been raised regarding the limitations of applying design in this field. Through a specific case, this paper will discuss and suggest some approaches and concepts related to design for social innovation. Coming from a participatory design tradition, we focus on the idea of infrastructuring as a way to approach social innovation that differs from project-based design. The activities that are carried out are aimed at building long-term relationships with stakeholders in order to create networks from which design opportunities can emerge. We also discuss the role of prototyping as a way to explore opportunities but we also highlight dilemmas.
Promoting an official who ran an overseas ‘black site' is an outrageous idea.
CIA Director John Brennan is reportedly considering promoting an official who ran an overseas “black site” where suspected terrorists were interrogated and who was involved in the decision to destroy videotapes of waterboarding. It's an outrageous idea. Installing that official as head of the agency's National Clandestine Service would undermine the Obama administration's insistence that it has repudiated the abuses of the George W. Bush administration's war on terror.
The long-serving CIA official, whose name can't be disclosed because of her covert status, is one of several candidates to head the clandestine service, which is responsible for espionage and operations abroad. The fact that she is being considered, as reported this week by the Washington Post, suggests that Brennan — who has disputed suggestions that he himself was involved in so-called enhanced interrogations during a previous stint in the agency — doesn't fully appreciate how demoralizing her appointment would be.
Sorcha Faal (David Booth), a known fabricator with a gift for connecting dots, has published below warning. It is most interesting for the connection it draws between climate and air pressure as triggers for earthquakes.
An interesting Ministry of Defence (MOD) “urgent bulletin” being sent to all Russian naval forces operating in the Pacific Ocean region is warning that there is a “moderate to high” likelihood of a “significant seismic event” ready to occur on the North American Plate, particularly on the Western coastal regions of The United States, Canada or Mexico.
According to this bulletin, Russian military scientists have become increasingly concerned over the past fortnight of the events occurring with the Arctic Oscillation (AO) which has plunged nearly the entire Northern Hemisphere into harsh cold conditions and which Western scientists are blaming on melting sea ice which, they report, hit a record low this past autumn.
Of greatest concern, this bulletin continues, is the massive anticyclone that has formed over Greenland bringing to our planet the highest barometric pressure ever recorded in human history, and which American scientists warned last year would intensify.
Three men arrested by the Egyptian army for ‘cutting undersea cable'
If the bid was successful it could have taken an ‘entire continent offline'
It comes after one of the biggest cyber-attacks ever launched
This is getting some attention across the Internet. Some are saying the wording is that if the info is published ,the people have been informed. So, that would give the OK to use chemicals such as with the chemtrails and such.
Several nuggets of interest are presented in the latest biennial report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, summarizing the Committee's oversight activities in the 112th Congress:
* The Director of National Intelligence abruptly cancelled a multi-year effort to establish a single consolidated data center for the entire Intelligence Community a year or so ago, in favor of a migration to cloud computing.
* Under criticism that the number of intelligence contractor personnel has grown too high, too fast, intelligence agencies have been cutting the number of contractors they employ or converting contractors to government employees. But some of those agencies have continued to hire additional contractors at the same time, resulting in net growth in the size of the intelligence contractor workforce.
* A written report on each covert action that is being carried out under a presidential finding is provided to the congressional committees every quarter.
The March 22 report also provides some fresh details of the long-awaited and still unreleased Committee study on CIA's detention and interrogation program. That 6,000 page study, which was completed in July 2012 and approved by the Committee in December 2012, is divided into three volumes, as described in the report:
“I. History and Operation of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program. This volume is divided chronologically into sections addressing the establishment, development, and evolution of the CIA detention and interrogation program.”
“II. Intelligence Acquired and CIA Representations on the Effectiveness of the CIA's Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. This volume addresses the intelligence attributed to CIA detainees and the use of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques, specifically focusing on CIA representations on how the CIA detention and interrogation program was operated and managed, as well as the effectiveness of the interrogation program. It includes sections on CIA representations to the Congress, the Department of Justice, and the media.”
“III. Detention and Interrogation of Detainees. This volume addresses the detention and interrogation of all known CIA detainees, from the program's inception to its official end, on January 22, 2009, to include information on their capture, detention, interrogation, and conditions of confinement. It also includes extensive information on the CIA's management, oversight, and day-to-day operation of the CIA's detention and interrogation program,” according to the report's description.
“I have read the first volume, which is 300 pages,” said CIA Director John O. Brennan at his February 7 confirmation hearing. “There clearly were a number of things, many things, that I read in that report that were very concerning and disturbing to me, and ones that I would want to look into immediately, if I were to be confirmed as CIA Director.”
Look at this astonishing visualization of deaths in Pakistan from drones, it was made by a professional studio that specializes in visualizations: “The visualization, seen below, tracks the victims of the strikes using data from the Bureau for Investigative Journalism, specifically noting children and civilian collateral damage. Note the sharp uptick after President Obama takes office in 2009″:
Also note at the top right corner the number of “high-profile” or “bad guys” killed, which amounts to 1.5%, or 47 out of a total of 3,105 killed. The rest killed, 98.5%, should not have been, are innocents. Watch a brief interview of the creator of this amazing graphic (which is regularly updated):
Drones Visualization: Every U.S. Drone Strike In Pakistan Since 2004 (GRAPHIC)
“We want to shock people,” Grubbs said. “What we tried to do though with this was not just shock people with the number of casualties, but to shock people with the amount of information that we really don't know.”
This is an insightful comment about the visualization that appears in the link:
