Phi Beta Iota: This really excellent article is highly recommended along with a look at the only book in English out just now, Geo-Engineering Climate Change: Environmental Necessity or Pandora's Box?. The fragmentation of knowledge, the corruption of governments and industry, and the abuse of secrecy to conceal the real dimensions of earthquake and tsunami creating technologies–High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program or HAARP being one set–all suggest that precautionary science has been set aside, and catastrophic initiatives are being undertaken on a foundation of very inadequate understanding. This is the kind of global challenge and response that should be within the purview of a Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making (M4IS2) Centre that can be relied upon to produce “The Virgin Truth.”
The book includes chapters by several colleagues of mine like Mike Best on “Mobile Phones in Conflict Stressed Environments”, Ken Banks on “Appropriate Mobile Technologies,” Oscar Salazar and Jorge Soto on “How to Crowdsource Election Monitoring in 30 Days,” Jacok Korenblum and Bieta Andemariam on “How Souktel Uses SMS Technology to Empower and Aid in Conflict-Affected Communities,” and Emily Jacobi on “Burma: A Modern Anomaly.”
My colleagues Jessica Heinzelman, Rachel Brown and myself also contributed one of the chapters, “Mobile Technology, Crowdsourcing and Peace Mapping: New Theory and Applications for Conflict Management.”
Rarely do the post-industrial stars align so well for an entrepreneurial enterprise hellbent on market revolution. Between the ongoing digitalization, consumerization, and personalization of health care delivery, Google was supremely well-positioned to have as big an innovative impact on medical informatics as it's had on mass media. Admittedly, Google Health's original conception and execution as a ‘personal health records' portal wasn't particularly sexy or exciting. But then, that's what many naysayers had said about search and maps. Google had the skills and resources to iterate its way greater impact. Everyone understood that organizing the world's health care information was a worthy business ambition squarely in Google's innovation sweet spot.
The market reality proved sour. Nothing much happened. Barely three years after the service launched, Google announced its demise. Health officially dies in January; all whimper, no bang. By virtually every metric that matters, it's been a stunning disappointment. The service may not have lost Google much money but, relative to opportunities and expectations, Google Health transformed nothing. No paradigms were nicked or even nudged. Genuinely talented people with top management support and technological brilliance don't even have the satisfaction of a successful failure. (Google Wave, for example, may have been a market failure but even its critics acknowledged its innovation chops.) One of the world's most innovative companies didn't just fail to innovate as a business, it dramatically underachieved even as a technical innovator in one of the world's biggest, most dynamic, and most important industries. What happened?
Phi Beta Iota: Hugely important observations applicable to Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, etcetera. They are all in the Industrial Era pattern of fringe innovation and doing the wrong things righter, confusing money with insight. Stephen E. Arnold has been saying similar things in more depth (see his Google Trilogy) for years. No large organization with deep human and capital resources appears ready to create the World Brain & Global Game.
From a Human Intelligence perspective, below is a very strong signal that the Arab Spring and its “Days of Rage” are spreading; even well-managed countries such as Malaysia (and one speculates, badly-managed ones like the USA) appear to be in line for Electoral Reform protests and perhaps Open Source Insurgency.
Demonstrators march in defiance of ban, call for electoral reform
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Police fired repeated rounds of tear gas and detained more than 1,600 people in the capital on Saturday as thousands of activists evaded roadblocks and barbed wire to hold a street protest against Prime Minister Najib Razak's government.
Phi Beta Iota: All governments are in the process of collapse as credible sole focal points for governance. None are gearing up for the inevitable emergence of bio-regional hybrid governance networks based on accountability, information-sharing, transparency, and a common interest in sustainable peace and prosperity.
A former Microsoft exec, who has experienced C-level meetings with CEO Steve Ballmer, said he doesn't think Microsoft would have bought Skype to help Facebook compete with Google. “Steve is one of the smartest people you'll meet, processing-power smart,” he said. “But he's not a complex multivariate thinker, meaning he doesn't think 15 chess moves out. So that's why I don't think anything more complex went into the decision, other than they thought the company would make a strong asset.”
The new defense chief says intelligence uncovered in the Bin Laden raid showed that 10 years of U.S. operations against the terror network had left it with fewer than two dozen key operatives. Panetta is visiting Afghanistan for the first time as defense secretary.
Phi Beta Iota: Panetta had so much potential at CIA, and failed to rise to the possibilities. Now at Defense there would be no more sublime illustration of lunacy than this. As we recall, Al Qaeda started in 1988 with fewer than two dozen key operatives. Four trillion borrowed dollars later, this is the best he has to offer as a success story? The US military is bad for real business.
