Posted on

Worth a Look: Seth Godin’s Blog

Blog Wisdom, Worth A Look
0Shares
Home Page

The forever recession

There are two recessions going on.

One is gradually ending. This is the cyclical recession, we have them all the time, they come and they go. Not fun, but not permanent.

The other one, I fear, is here forever. This is the recession of the industrial age, the receding wave of bounty that workers and businesses got as a result of rising productivity but imperfect market communication.

. . . . . .

The networked revolution is creating huge profits, significant opportunities and a lot of change. What it's not doing is providing millions of brain-dead, corner office, follow-the-manual middle class jobs. And it's not going to.

Fast, smart and flexible are embraced by the network. Linchpin behavior. People and companies we can't live without (because if I can live without you, I'm sure going to try if the alternative is to save money).

The sad irony is that everything we do to prop up the last economy (more obedience, more compliance, cheaper yet average) gets in the way of profiting from this one.

Posted on

Hyperlink-Notes on the Future of Education (and the future is now) from Bits to Bots

04 Education, Augmented Reality, Mobile, Technologies
0Shares

There are differences between “learning” and “education,” but hopefully more people can be inspired to blur the two further than we currently see happening.

Open Courseware, Audio and Video:
Open Courseware Consortium
M.I.T. Open Courseware
M.I.T. open courseware YouTube channel
List of courses by subject (May 2007)
The University of Chicago on iTunes U,
University of South Carolina at iTunes U,
Stanford at iTunes U, Depaul at iTunes U,
Univ of South Florida at iTunes U,
Harvard “Extension” at iTunes U
Udemy.com
Khan Academy (videos)
Audible.com
“World In Time”

+ Gutenberg Project (for text)
+ Scrape Torrent (books, videos, etc)
+ Clips and Documentaries at YouTube (and the YouTube Time Machine), Google video, Journeyman Films, TED, live online courses.

Video talks
Sir Ken Robinson: school kills creativity
Sir Ken Robinson makes the case for a radical shift from standardized schools to personalized learning — creating conditions where kids’ natural talents can flourish.

Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution
Entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

Jesse Schell: Visions of the Gamepocalypse (entertaining and fascinating)
Jesse Schell explores the social, cognitive, and technological trends in computer game design and use.

+ Affordable mobile devices, tablets
+ Example of a digital textbook

Continue reading “Hyperlink-Notes on the Future of Education (and the future is now) from Bits to Bots”

Posted on

Omidyar Network to Invest $55M in Internet + Mobile Tech for Gov Transparency and Economic Empowerment

03 Economy, Mobile, Open Government
0Shares

September 21, 2010, NEW YORK CITY — Omidyar Network today announced it will dedicate $55 million to fund technology investments that provide people around the world with information, tools and services that improve their quality of life. The philanthropic investment firm pledged $30 million to progress government transparency and $25 million in support of mobile innovation benefitting people in emerging markets. The announcement was made at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) annual meeting in New York City.

“We are at the cusp of understanding technology’s potential for creating positive change in the world,” said Matt Bannick, managing partner, Omidyar Network. “Through these commitments, Omidyar Network will support technologies that provide citizens with information and insight about their government, and fund mobile platforms that reach new markets with life-changing services.”

Each of Omidyar Network’s CGI commitments will be fulfilled over the next three years, and include both for-profit investments and nonprofit grants.

  • Technology for Transparency: Omidyar Network will invest $30 million to advance government transparency both domestically and abroad. To fulfill the commitment, Omidyar Network will identify and support organizations that use technology to provide access to information and tools necessary for citizens to participate in the governing process and shape outcomes important to them. This effort was created on the belief that open access to information and transparent systems increase the public's knowledge of government activities, leading to a more informed and engaged society that can hold its officials accountable. This new commitment expands Omidyar Network’s government transparency work, which to date has provided support to organizations such as the Sunlight Foundation, mySociety, and Global Integrity.
  • Opportunity through Mobile: Omidyar Network’s second CGI commitment sets aside $25 million to harness the power of mobile technology in emerging markets. Omidyar Network will back innovative entrepreneurs who use mobile platforms to connect people with vital resources in areas such as financial services and banking, health care, agriculture, commerce, and education. Across these sectors, Omidyar Network will invest in mobile technologies that break new ground in improving access to services, reaching underserved populations, and driving large-scale social impact. This new commitment builds on Omidyar Network’s experience supporting mobile initiatives at organizations such as FrontlineSMS, Ushahidi, and Opportunity International.

www.omidyar.com

Posted on

Journal: Microsoft Down, Apple Up, WHERE Is the Band?

Analysis, Augmented Reality, Collaboration Zones, Computer/online security, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Key Players, Methods & Process, Reform
0Shares
Full Story Online

Phi Beta Iota: Industry colleagues point out that Ballmer took over at the top while Jobs came back in at the bottom.  Our own view is that a convergence is occurring that will be settled between the personal device and the cloud–who comes up with the most secure reliable personal device (e.g. an eye-screen with earpiece/mike and voice or virtual keyboard or pointer) and the most global affordable mix of call centers, intelligence centers, and M4IS2 softwares, services, and sense-making within the cloud.  Google and Oracle and IBM (and their Brazilian, Chinese, and Russian counterparts) are on the same court, but none of them are truly focused on the end game: a World Brain with a Global Game in which we connect all humans to all information in all languages….an open self-organizing world in which profit comes from cost avoidance, truth, reconciliation, and non-zero outcomes.

Posted on

Reference: Summary of Earth’s Terminal Conditions & Radical Necessary Changes

Articles & Chapters
0Shares
Full Story Online

Published Sep 4 2010 by Ceasefire Magazine

The End of the World-as-we-know-it in 10 years? And the rise of the post-carbon era…

Only 500 generations ago, hunter-gatherers began cultivating crops and forming their tiny communities into social hierarchies. Around 15 to 20 generations ago, industrial capitalism erupted on a global scale.

In the last generation, the entire human species, along with virtually all other species and indeed the entire planet, have been thrown into a series of crises, which many believe threaten to converge in global catastrophe: global warming spiraling out of control; oil prices fluctuating wildly; food riots breaking out in the South; banks collapsing worldwide; the spectre of terror bombings in major cities; and the promise of ‘endless war’ to fight ‘violent extremists’ at home and abroad.

Amazon Page

We are running out of time.

Phi Beta Iota: The entire article is a distillation of the author's new book, now at Amazon UK and soon at Amazon US.  The article ends with a sensible coherent list of “must do's” that should be–but are not–understood by one and all.

Dr. Ahmed is interviewed on the BBC World News here.

Original article available here

Posted on

Journal: USA Can Ignore Reality, But Reality Is NOT Going to Ignore the USA…

Corruption
0Shares
Chuck Spinney Recommends

This Country Just Can't Deal with Reality Any More

By Robert Parry, Consortium News

Posted on September 16, 2010, Printed on September 21, 2010

As Election Day 2010 approaches – as the United States wallows in the swamps of war, recession and environmental degradation – the consequences of the nation’s three-decade-old decoupling from reality are becoming painfully obvious.

Yet, despite the danger, the nation can’t seem to move in a positive direction, as if the suctioning effect of endless spin, half-truths and lies holds the populace in place, a force that grows ever more powerful like quicksand sucking the country deeper into the muck – to waist deep, then neck deep.

Trapped in the mud, millions of Americans are complaining about their loss of economic status, their sense of powerlessness, their nation’s decline. But instead of examining how the country stumbled into this morass, many still choose not to face reality.

Instead of seeking paths to the firmer ground of a reality-based world, people from different parts of the political spectrum have decided to embrace unreality even more, either cynically as a way to delegitimize a political opponent or because they’ve simply become addicted to the crazy.

. . . . . . .

Whatever happens on Election Day, the longer-term challenge will be to rebuild an old-fashioned commitment to fact and reason within both American journalism and the broader political system.

Though lying is not foreign to U.S. politics and media, telling the truth has always been a fundamental American value, one that is vital to democracy.

The great task of restoring the Republic must include honest efforts to dig out recent history's ground truth, which can then be used to build a path out of the disinformation swamp and onto the dry land of rational political disco

Posted on

Journal: Oracle Up, Google Down, Band Plays On…

Commercial Intelligence, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Mobile
0Shares

Oracle Growth Plans Worry Rivals and Customers

Full Story Online

ASHLEE VANCE September 21, 2010

EXTRACT 1:  But Oracle’s annual takeover of San Francisco pales against its larger ambitions — to supply just about all the technology, software and hardware, that businesses might need. This sweeping agenda has rattled the nerves of customers, who fear that Oracle has its own best interests, not theirs, at heart. The worry is that instead of saving money, customers will end up paying more over the long term, and that Oracle, already known for its aggressive tactics, will use its strong position in software to gain even more leverage over a larger array of products.

EXTRACT 2:  Like it or not, many of the largest technology companies — H.P., I.B.M., Cisco Systems and Oracle — have made their data center conquest plans clear. Oracle now competes directly with its partners H.P. and Dell, as does Cisco, the networking specialist, through its move into computer servers. Meanwhile, H.P., once one of Cisco’s closest allies, has begun a major assault in the networking arena.

Phi Beta Iota: In our view, secure reliable continuous interoperability with constantly-changing customers and constantly-changing networks of temporary partners–and real-time decision-support from across unstructured constantly changing multi-media multi-lingual information, is going to define the communications, computing, and public intelligence challenge of the 21st Century.