Also Feb 25 (and Feb 26) at 7pm The Kairos Global Summit 2011, taking place February 25th-26th in NYC, is bringing together 350 of the most innovative and entrepreneurial students from the United States, China, India, and Europe to meet 150 of the world’s most influential and globally impactful leaders. Over the course of two days, these current and future world leaders will gather at the United Nations and New York Stock Exchange to explore humanity’s most pressing challenges, develop sustainable and entrepreneurial solutions to these problems, and unveil 50 of the most innovative student startups that are working to change the world.
Comment: An idea associated with Matt Taibbi's recent “Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail” is to produce a “most wanted” list with photos/profiles to circulate online and in print.
Google Search (Images) works just fine. The US Government has never been serious about anthropology or ethnic-religious or “peoples” instead of artificial states (the simpleton's approach to international relations).
Below are images for Algeria, Yemen, and Somalia, with source credits. As Panarchy becomes the primary mode of global self-organization, we should see a diminuition of “state” boundaries (most of them are failed states anyway) and a resurrection of traditional tribal-natural “zones of influence.” That is a good thing, but stupid governments replete with hubris and the arrogance of ignorance will no doubt fight it. Open Borders, Open Money, Open Everything. Coming soon.
LOS ANGELES – In a recent interview, United States Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner laid out his view of the nature of world economic growth and the role of the US financial sector. It is a deeply disturbing vision, one that amounts to a huge, uninformed gamble with the future of the American economy – and that suggests that Geithner remains the senior public official worldwide who is most in thrall to the self-serving ideology of big banks.
Geithner argues that the world will now experience a major “financial deepening,” owing to growing demand in emerging markets for financial products and services. He is thinking, of course, of “middle-income” countries like India, China, and Brazil. And he is right to emphasize that all have made terrific progress and now offer great opportunities for the rising middle class, which wants to accumulate savings, borrow more easily (for productive investment, home purchases, education, etc), and, more generally, smooth out consumption.
Phi Beta Iota: The persistent idiocy of the Administration can only be understood if one recognizes that the White House and Congress have been bought and paid for. They are NOT representing the American public interest, and they are a danger to the rest of the world. The silence of the goats in senior positions is reprehensible. Foreign countries should be banning US banks [and expelling US forces] entirely–the US has taken legalized corruption to extraordinary heights, and as Matt Taibbi has documented so well, “no one goes to jail“–the US Government and Wall Street have merged to become GRIFTOPIA.
Worth a reading, and if you have the time and the money, worth a walk-about. Typical of Industrial-Era events, lacks structure, but the sponsors, the location, and the general possibilities are all first rate.
In preparation for the Contact summit in NYC 20 October 2011, we want to understand the current landscape of projects/initiatives building a distributed internet and the fundamental requirements so we can better coordinate efforts.
Here is a proposed definition of conditions, in non-technical language:
What is a p2p infrastructure:
1) A P2P communications and cooperation infrastructure is a technological and social infrastructure which allows any individual to voluntarily aggregate with others for purposes of communication or the creation of common value
2) A P2P technological infrastructure allows any agent to initiate actions from any point within the network, on the basis of equality of communication (network neutrality) and without any censorship impeding free speech and the freedom of association and cooperation. It is a distributed infrastructure in which elements of decentralisation and centralisation can only serve the efficiency of the network, and not issues of control or profit.
This is a follow up to that 13 February Spinney piece on predicting the future, DARPA as Poster Child for Out of Control Budget. It belongs to the category of “we don't make this stuff up.” Speaking of this category, I think this latest incident in Pakistan (CIA contractor shoots two Pakistanis in broad daylight, CIA SUV going to his aid runs down a Pakistani motorcyclist) ought to be a signal to disestablish CIA.
Phi Beta Iota: FATAL FARCE just keeps on growing.
Algorithm: in computer terms, a finite set of coded instructions directing a computer to solve a specific problem or execute a specific process.
The term ‘algorithm’ is a prosaic word that has taken on an almost occult meaning to hosts of middle and senior managers in the intelligence and military sectors of the U.S. National Security Establishment.
It appears that anyone claiming to have developed an ‘algorithm’ to solve any of the many issues facing those sectors will find a receptive audience and usually a wad of cash to pursue development of that program.
This is a provocative search that yields nothing by machine response. It is an interesting question at multiple levels.
1) Within the intelligence profession, multisource generally is called “all source” except that secret communities are simply not serious about the most fundamental source of all, Open Source Intelligence (OSINT); they denigrate the Human Intelligence (HUMINT) by doing lip service (liaison from official cover, not real spying); and they don't process what they collect via the technical disciplines that are “out of control” (Imagery Intelligence or IMINT, Signals Intelligence or SIGINT, and Measurements and Signatures Intelligence or MASINT).
From a collection and processing and analytic standpoint, properly done “all source” intelligence demands competence at requirements definition (what do we need to know), collection management (how best to triage among possible sources), processing (machine speed and competent human translation and cultural nuance understanding), and analytics (deep contextual knowledge on the shelf, enhanced intuition, skilled blending and extrapolation). The US Intelligence Community does none of these. It is instead an archipelago in which everyone fights over inputs and no one is held accountable for outputs or a process that optimizes the timeliness and utility of outputs.
2) Outside the secret world, multisource intelligence could be, should be, concerned with assuring the collection and understanding of all possible points of view, what is called 360 degree analytics. To take the Spratley Islands as an example, a good understanding would require multi-lingual access to Chinese, Vietnamese, Philippine, and other sources, including external parties such as the US and Australia, and it should ideally also go back in time to study the consistency or inconsistency of policy and informal statements over the past 50-100 years.
