2007 Winston Maike — In Memory — EIN Topic Summaries & Forecasts

Knowledge
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Winston Maike (RIP)
Winston Maike (RIP)

Winston Maike (RIP) was the earliest adopter of the OSS.Net concepts and contributed in many ways over the years from 1993 onwards.  He corrected the Latin in the first motto, E Vertiate Potens (From Truth, We the People Are Made Powerful), and was the principal mind and drafter of the Earth Intelligence Network topic summaries and forecasts, offered below, as well as the consolidator of headlines across all 30 topics that were then distilled into a weekly report, one sample of which is provided below.

PDBweekly20070129 PDF

We are loading all of the top cited authors, top centers of excellence with web sites, and forecasts, at the original Earth Intelligence Network website, which is offered as a humble example of one very low-cost approach to thinking about the future as a whole.

TOPIC Reports – Topic History and Forecast

Agriculture

Debt

Diplomacy

Economy

Education

Energy

Family

Health

Immigration

Justice

Security

Society

Water

———-

note: <Debt> merged with <Economy> 20070304

John Robb: How Drones Can Recharge from Power Lines and Remain Active for Years

Drones & UAVs
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John Robb
John Robb

How Drones Can Live off the Land for Years

Cyberweapons and synthetic biological weapons (GMOs) can self provision.

They have the ability to live off the land (hosts, like human bodies and PCs) once they are unleashed.

NOTE:  In many cases, they can also make perfect copies of themselves (copies in the trillions).

But what about drones?

Aren't they limited by quantity of energy in their batteries?

Yes, drones do have the capacity to self provision too.  One of the more elegent ways is for a drone to use power lines to “induct” the energy it needs.

drone forever croppedA drone that can recharge itself from a power line has the potential to operate for years — monitoring, relaying, etc. — without returning to base.

If the decision making software is good enough it could source its energy and target data for years without referencing any command system.

In fact, with wireless access to the Internet (including RSS feeds), GPS, and other easily accessible data sources… it decision making can be very dynamic.

Here's a video showing some US DoD contractors working on making that a reality, right now:

Anthony Judge: Psychosocial Implication in Gamma Animation Epimemetics for a Brave New World

Cultural Intelligence
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Anthony Judge
Anthony Judge

Psychosocial Implication in Gamma Animation
Epimemetics for a Brave New World

Introduction
Current genetic concerns as a metaphor for current memetic realities
Divisive caricatures of complex psychosocial processes
Fourfold generic visual pattern of psychosocial dynamics
Reframing the scope for creative gamma animation
Genetic patterns as an indicative template for memetic patterns
Requisite confusion to engender an elusive functional literacy?
Epimemetics, biomimetics, epimimetics and biomemetics
Fruitful gamma resonance within a pattern of mnemonic associations?
Gamma as change in the rate of change of value
Unsustained awareness implied by gamma inversion
Relational insight dynamics in terms of a “gamma” perspective
Extending the alphabet and its representation?
Conclusion
References

Michel Bauwens: Internet Defense League

Autonomous Internet
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Michel Bauwens
Michel Bauwens

Movement of the Day: Internet Defense League

Franco Iacomella, 26th June 2012

“Alexis Ohanian, the 29-year old founder of social news site Reddit, has partnered with the online advocacy group Fight for the Future to create what they’re calling the “Internet Defense League.” Ohanian describes the project, which they plan to officially launch next month, as a “Bat-Signal for the Internet.” Any website owner can sign up on the group’s website to add a bit of code to his or her site–or receive that code by email at the time of a certain campaign–that can be triggered in the case of a political crisis like SOPA, adding an activist call-to-action to all the sites involved, such as a widget or banner asking users to sign petitions, call lawmakers, or boycott companies.

“People who wish to be tapped can see, oh look, the Bat-Signal is up. Time to do something,” says Ohanian. “Whatever website you own, this is a way for you to be notified if something comes up and take some basic actions…If we aggregate everyone that’s doing it, the numbers start exploding.”

The embedded code on participating sites might do more than just display a mere banner ad, says Tiffiniy Cheng, co-director of Internet-focused political advocacy group Fight for the Future, and could even go as far as the blackout technique that Web activists used to successfully turn the tide against SOPA. “We’ll invent something at the time, and it will be some really unified and shocking action,” she says, hinting at techniques that would temporarily take over the entire appearance of willing sites. ”We’re creating the tools and the forms of protest that allow for viral organizing. That’s how the SOPA protests were able to get started and grow to the level they did.”

So far, Cheng says Reddit, imaging hosting site Imgur, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, viral content company Cheezburger Network, Mozilla and the non-profit Public Knowledge have all signed up. The group hopes that eventually thousands of sites–including those as small as a single user’s Tumblr page–will join the project.

Fight for the Future and Ohanian have both been focused most recently on defeating CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protect Act. The bill, originally designed to allow sharing of information between the private sector and government agencies like the National Security Agency for cybersecurity purposes, was amended just before being passed in the House last month to allow companies to hand over any user data they wish to the government without regard for existing privacy laws, for reasons as vague as preventing computer “crime,” or “the protection of individuals from the danger of death or serious bodily harm.” One of two Senate versions of the bill is expected to come up for a vote in early June.

Fight for the Future last week launched an anti-CISPA site, Privacy is Awesome, asking users to call their senators and demand meetings to discuss the bill. And Ohanian has spoken out against the legislation as well, asking investors not to buy shares of Facebook’s newly-public stock to protest the company’s support for CISPA.

But CISPA protests have yet to match the fever pitch of anti-SOPA and anti-PIPA protests in January that led to boycotts of SOPA-supporting Web host GoDaddy, attacks by Anonymous against the Recording Industry of Association of America and the Motion Picture Assocation of America, and the blackout protests that included sites as popular as Reddit and Wikipedia. Most of Silicon Valley continues to support CISPA, including Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Oracle and Symantec, with Google refusing to take a stand on either side of the issue.

Ohanian argues the challenge in maintaining political vigilance against laws that would harm the Internet is long-term endurance, rather than the ability to defeat any one piece of legislation.”You can only cry ‘Oh my gosh, they’re going to shut down the Internet’ so often,” he says. “We’ve scared [Congress] from doing anything as egregious as SOPA and PIPA again. But the new challenge is this endless series of smaller bills that try to unravel internet rights.”

The answer, Ohanian believes, is to foster a new level of engagement between Internet users and Congress that emphasizes digital rights and either educates ignorant lawmakers on Internet issues or helps to push them out of office. He cites an idea that he attributes to Cheezburger Network chief executive Ben Huh, that every Internet user should have their legislators’ phone numbers saved on their cell phone and ready to use on a regular basis.”

SmartPlanet: The $10 Cell Phone Has Arrived….Plus Open Cell Meta-RECAP

#OSE Open Source Everything, Autonomous Internet, BTS (Base Transciever Station), Cloud
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smartplanet logoThe $10 cell phone has arrived – and with it, economic opportunity

By | March 18, 2013, 3:10 AM PDT

On a recent trip to Shenzhen, China, a group of MIT students discovered that you can buy a cell phone there for as little as $10. While the cost of mobile phones has continued to decrease over time, the fact that you can buy a gadget that can make phone calls and send text messages (and has a working battery) for that price is pretty astonishing. The head of MIT’s Media Lab, Joi Ito, reckons that these are likely the world’s cheapest phones.

A $10 price tag means that virtually anyone in the world can afford a mobile phone. Moreover, in parts of the world where basic phones are still more predominant than the “smart” variety gaining steam in the developed world, local infrastructure makes these gadgets more powerful than even smartphones in rich countries.

In Kenya, more than 30 percent of its GDP is fueled by M-Pesa, a mobile payments system that operates via text message. (See a video about M-Pesa here.) Though they may make life easier, smartphones in developed countries have not yet become anywhere near as important to driving economic growth.

Despite the rapid proliferation of smartphones in many countries, basic mobile phones still account for the majority of those used around the world. And given the tremendous economic possibilities for mobile payment systems to create economic growth, perhaps the most basic, cheapest cell phone might make it the world’s most useful.

Continue reading “SmartPlanet: The $10 Cell Phone Has Arrived….Plus Open Cell Meta-RECAP”

Chuck Spinney: The Truth About the Cuban Missile Crisis

Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Peace Intelligence
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Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

The below article, which appeared in the Atlantic last January, is a very important illustration of how domestic politics determine foreign policy.  Bear in mind, the behaviour described below occurred when there was (and still is) a consensus among the pol-mil intellectuals that domestic politics stops at the water's edge and that foreign policy was and should be bi-partisan — the conclusion is a good analysis of where this kind of romantic intellectualization leads.

The Real Cuban Missile Crisis

EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT THOSE 13 DAYS IS WRONG.

By Benjamin Schwarz, The Atlantic, 11 January 1913

EXTRACT

On that very first day of the ExComm meetings, McNamara provided a wider perspective on the missiles’ significance: “I’ll be quite frank. I don’t think there is a military problem here … This is a domestic, political problem.” In a 1987 interview, McNamara explained: “You have to remember that, right from the beginning, it was President Kennedy who said that it was politically unacceptable for us to leave those missile sites alone. He didn’t say militarily, he said politically.” What largely made the missiles politically unacceptable was Kennedy’s conspicuous and fervent hostility toward the Castro regime—a stance, Kennedy admitted at an ExComm meeting, that America’s European allies thought was “a fixation” and “slightly demented.”

Read full article.

 

NIGHTWATCH: China Declares Peace with US, Taiwan, and the Region — The Chinese Dream is About Retrenchment & Revitalization

02 China, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government, Peace Intelligence
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Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

China: The National People's Congress ended on the 17th with a press conference by Premier Li Keqiang. Before the closing, however, President Xi Jinping delivered his first address to the Congress. The central theme was The Chinese Dream.

Eight of the 17 paragraphs of the text were devoted to, or carried forward the application of, the dream. One of them reiterated the guidance Xi gave to the People's Liberation Army delegates on the 11th: obey the party, win wars and behave well.

Xi introduced the dream immediately after four paragraphs of thanks and preamble. The concluding, sentence of the second paragraph of the introduction is significant.

“Today, our people's republic is standing on the East of the world with a spirited posture.”

Comment: The point is that Xi did not describe China's posture as rising, but as standing. The period of rising has ended.

After the fourth paragraph of introduction, Xi began the discussion and for the Chinese dream.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: China Declares Peace with US, Taiwan, and the Region — The Chinese Dream is About Retrenchment & Revitalization”