MOVED to BigBatUSA [http://bigbatusa.org] / Electoral Reform
Review: The Monk and the Riddle–The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living
6 Star Top 10%, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Economics, Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology, Philosophy, Priorities, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution
Down to Earth, Absorbing, Perfectly Presented, “Must Read”
October 10, 2010
Randy Komisar with Kent Lineback
I'm putting this book into the 6 Star and Beyond category at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, for two reasons: it has a proper definition of what business should be about–creativity and humanity; and it strives to focus the innovator on passion versus drive, life versus “the kill.”
The book was first published in 2000, and I only get to it now because it was explicitly recommended to me by a Hackers Conference colleague to help me in grappling with my “what next” explorations.
The book impresses from the first page, the opening quote from Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (Oxford World's Classics) which I might have to read next. It took an enormous amount of creative focus to find this quote, I will just provide the first half here:
Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irrestibly real and attractive to us–for that moment only. Not the fruit of the experience, but experience itself, is the end.
For me, this was perfect prologue, and a have a note shortly into the book, “the zen of advanced information technology leadership.
This is a carefully crafted and elegantly presented book with exactly the right amount of white space, integrated emails, and real-life annecdote, and the bottom line is clear: bet on the vision and take the risk. Go for the big idea that changes the world or at least tries to change the world, do NOT “do” the web play as a path to being rich or anywhere other than being “there.”
Continue reading “Review: The Monk and the Riddle–The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living”
Journal: Nature-Hand-Held-Cloud-World Brain
Earth Intelligence, IO Mapping
New ecology app makes wildlife viewing a cultural sport
Project NOAH and its innovative app are about to go global with a media blitz.
Social media to some is the antithesis of all things nature. With people’s heads often bent over handheld devices, it seems like the last thing they will do is notice a chirping bluebird or flying ladybug overhead. But a new app for the iPhone seeks to change all that. Slate reports that Project NOAH, or networked organisms and habitats, can make your mobile device into a handheld wildlife spotting tool.
Journal: Tea Party Introspection–Not There….
Cultural Intelligence
There is a fascinating dynamic occurring within the Tea Party “movement, one that juxtaposes earnest individuals of all types with much more calculating opportunists who are responsive to money via “anonymous” channels made possible by the Supreme Court decisions to take all limits off corporate funding in politics.
Despite the story being told by numerous media outlets, we estimate that the lower two-thirds, perhaps even the lower four-fifths, of the Tea Party have no idea they are window dressing, hired hands in a political drama being orchestrated by the Republican mandarins who have been named in the media, and their long-standing financial backers, also named.
Among other impacts, this has dramatically lessened the Libertarian movement's prospects, and placed the Green and Reform parties so far over on the sidelines they cannot achieve any semblance of past modest successes.
The question to be asked: Who Benefits? This is not a question the Tea Party membership is considering with any degree of informed introspection. Nor is it a question that Wikipedia or other popular public sources of information have addressed with any sufficiency.
20101010 English Defence League forges links with America's Tea Party
As the far-right group marches in Leicester, details are emerging of growing contacts with extremist US groups in a ‘war on Islamification”
Reference: Peace versus War–Competing Visions
10 Security, DoD, YouTubeGo In Peace: An Essay on the War on Terror
The challenge for us is to build a vision of peace. This will require courage to be introspective, to look deeply within ourselves and to ask difficult questions, to strip away the rhetoric and the hate.
Tip of the Hat to John Marke LinkedIn.
U.S. GOV can kill ANYONE including YOU without trial COVERTLY !! YouTube featuring Ron Paul at the end, raises core issues. Should be watched with 1961 speech Eisenhower Warns us of New World Order (also YouTube)
Tip of the Hat to Mario Profaca at Facebook.
Phi Beta Iota: At the end of President Eisenhower's speech, he emphasizes the role of an informed engaged citizenry in assuring the balance of values and power in government.
Reference: World Brain Global Game Scaling
Blog WisdomThe only thing that scales infinitely and without cost is end-users.
Robert Steele, email to Mitch Ratcliff, 9 October 2010
Next Ubuntu Linux for desktops and Netbooks will launch Sunday with new cloud features, an updated interface, and better links with other operating systems. Tip of the hat to Paul Harper at Facebook.
View a demo of Silobreaker Premium's many features and tools. More information at http://info.silobreaker.com/
Phi Beta Iota: Managing Project GEORGE (Smiley) for CIA's Office of Information Technology, followed immediately by the privilege of creating the Marine Corps Intelligence Center (today a Command), and then 20 years helping 90 governments (66 directly) get a grip on Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), are the foundation for understanding how to create a World Brain and Global Game that is infinitely scalable. Proprietary software by its very nature is not infinitely scalable in part because it sharply limits the number of end-users that can interface with the software. The monetization as well as the security attributeshave moved from the T to the I, and most simply do not get that.
Review (Guest): Animal Farm–An American Story
5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Environment (Problems), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Public), Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Public Administration, Religion & Politics of Religion, Science & Politics of Science, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
Since its publication in 1946, George Orwell's fable of a workers' revolution gone wrong has rivaled Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea as the Shortest Serious Novel It's OK to Write a Book Report About. (The latter is three pages longer and less fun to read.) Fueled by Orwell's intense disillusionment with Soviet Communism, Animal Farm is a nearly perfect piece of writing, both an engaging story and an allegory that actually works. When the downtrodden beasts of Manor Farm oust their drunken human master and take over management of the land, all are awash in collectivist zeal. Everyone willingly works overtime, productivity soars, and for one brief, glorious season, every belly is full. The animals' Seven Commandment credo is painted in big white letters on the barn. All animals are equal. No animal shall drink alcohol, wear clothes, sleep in a bed, or kill a fellow four-footed creature. Those that go upon four legs or wings are friends and the two-legged are, by definition, the enemy. Too soon, however, the pigs, who have styled themselves leaders by virtue of their intelligence, succumb to the temptations of privilege and power. “We pigs are brainworkers. The whole
management and organisation of the farm depend on us. Day and night, we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples.” While this swinish brotherhood sells out the revolution, cynically editing the Seven Commandments to excuse their violence and greed, the common animals are once again left hungry and exhausted, no better off than in the days when humans ran the farm. Satire Animal Farm may be, but it's a stony reader who remains unmoved when the stalwart workhorse, Boxer, having given his all to his comrades, is sold to the glue factory to buy booze for the pigs. Orwell's view of Communism is bleak indeed, but given the history of the Russian people since 1917, his pessimism has an air of prophecy. –Joyce Thompson
Phi Beta Iota: Morality is how civilizations transmit the hard lessons of the past. Both Communism and Fascism–including Faux Democracy Of, By, and For the Corporations and Banks, lack morality. The only antidote to corrupt elites is educated non-violence, as both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison among others understood so well. This web site is an attempt to inspire public intelligence in the public interest.
Thomas Jefferson: A Nation’s best defense is an educated citizenry.
James Madison: Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
