Public Intelligence Blog – Page 4149 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

2000/04/072009/11/01

Review: The Second Self–Computers and the Human Spirit

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology

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Priceless Early Look at Hackers with “The Right Stuff”,

April 7, 2000

Sherry Turkle

This is “the” book that described the true origin of “hacking” as in “pushing the edge of the envelope” by writing a complex program in six lines of code instead of ten. This is a really superior piece of work about computer cultures and the people that belong to them. It is a wonderfully readable book with magnificent insights into the psychology of the young people at the bleeding edge of the computer frontier.

Update of 31 May 08 to add links:
THE HACKER CRACKDOWN: LAW AND DISORDER ON THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
Information Payoff: The Transformation of Work in the Electronic Age
Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace (Helix Books)
The Unfinished Revolution: Human-Centered Computers and What They Can Do For Us
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

2000/04/072009/11/01

Review: New Rules for the New Economy

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Resilience, Culture, Research, Economics, Information Society

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Toffler on Jolt Cola–Great Tour of the Horizon,

April 7, 2000

Kevin Kelly

Building on a series of article for WIRED Magazine, Kevin explains ten rules for the new Internet-based economy that make more and more sense as time goes on. From “follow the free” to “feed the web first” and on to “from places to spaces” and “relationship technology”, his insights provide an easy to understand map of where the digital economy is going.

2000/04/072009/11/01

Review: Blown to Bits–How the New Economics of Information Transforms Strategy

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Economics, Information Society

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Navigation, Not Content, Will Rule,

April 7, 2000

Philip Evans

Navigation, not content, will rule. Navigators will compete based on reach, affiliation, and richness. Privacy will be a mandated aspect of every offering. Traditional organizations and bureaucracies are unlikely to survive because there is no one there willing and able to “deconstruct” them down to core functionalities and then rebuild them back up with a focus on customer service as the driving force rather than assembly of whatever it was they used to understand as the primary organizing principle.

2000/04/072009/11/01

Review: Silicon Snake Oil–Second Thoughts on the Information Highway

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Information Society, Information Technology, Misinformation & Propaganda

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When High Priests Recant, Worshippers Beware,

April 7, 2000

Clifford Stoll

“Our networks are awash in data. A little of it's information. A smidgen of this shows up as knowledge….The Internet, that great digital dumpster, confers not power, not prosperity, not perspicacity…Our networks can be frustrating, expensive, unreliable connections that get in the way of useful work. It is an overpromoted hollow world, devoid of warmth and human kindness. The heavily promoted information infrastructure addresses few social needs or business concerns. At the same time, it directly threatens precious parts of our society, including schools, libraries, and social institutions.”

2000/04/072009/09/26

Review: Consilience–the Unity of Knowledge

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Education (General), Environment (Solutions), Information Operations, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Science & Politics of Science, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

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Creating World Brain and the Virtual Intelligence Community

April 7, 2000

E. O. Wilson

EDITED 9 July 2007 to add comment and links to other books.

Comment: This is still one of the best books for someone who wants to think deeply about knowledge. Below are links to some others I recommend.

Our answer to Levy, but an order of magnitude more practical and steeped in some of the best endnotes I've ever enjoyed. Consilience is the “jumping together” of knowledge across boundaries, and the greatest enterprise of the mind. He begins with an example, showing how biology, ethics, social science, and environmental policy must all come together to properly resolve a global environmental issue, but actually do not-the learned individuals are fragmented into four separate communities, and within those communities further fragmented into nationalities and cliques and jobs, and it is our greater loss for we cannot arrive at the best policy without being able to integrate the knowledge across all these boundaries. He emphasizes that the public must be educated and have access to this unified knowledge, not just the policymakers. He poses, and then answers across the book, this question: “What is the relation between science and the humanities, and how is it important to human welfare?” In my own mind, Edward O. Wilson has defined both national and global intelligence writ large, and done so in way that suggests the “virtual intelligence community” is a very practical and achievable vision.

The Future of Life
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organization
Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives
Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Power at the Edge of the 21st Century
Infinite Wealth: A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era
The Age of Missing Information
Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography
Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
Information Productivity: Assessing Information Management Costs of U. S. Corporations

2000/04/072009/11/01

Review: Information Payoff–The Transformation of Work in the Electronic Age

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology

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One of Five “Must Read” Books on Information Age,

April 7, 2000

Paul A. Strassmann

Paul, former Chief Information Officer for Xerox and later Director of Defense Information, used this book to address the basic issues of employee productivity in relation to information technology. This is one of a very few books, including those by Carkhuff, Cleveland, Kelly, and Toffler, that I regard as fundamental-required reading for anyone with any authority over anything.

2000/04/072009/11/01

Review: The Politics of Information Management–Policy Guidelines

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Catastrophe, Culture, Research, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology

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Required Reading for Boards and Stockholders,

April 7, 2000

Paul A. Strassmann

Many of the cartoons published in the Irreverent Dictionary came from this book, and I was among those who suggested to Paul that he should publish the cartoons separately. They were, however, essential to this otherwise intimidating book that is nothing less than an operating manual for the Captain of the Virtual Network. The bottom line that I took from this book is that Kevin Kelly is right, our national and international information systems are “out of control” and our policy leaders have abdicated their responsibilities to technicians who do not have the political, economic, or common sense of two ducks and a chicken. As Paul alludes in one of his footnotes, the Network today is somewhat in relationship to the “horseless carriage” stage of the automobile, and we have a very long way to go before policy helps make computers as user-friendly and reliable and interoperable as the telephone and the automobile are today.