Who’s Who in Collective Intelligence: Howard Rheingold

Alpha Q-U, Collective Intelligence
Howard Rheingold
Howard Rheingold

Howard Rheingold may well have been the first pioneer to fall down into the chasm of cyberspace and the write about it.  As Editor of the Whole Earth Review, following in the footsteps of founder Stewart Brand, he has consistently been on the bleeding edge of both righteous living for a Whole Earth, and the bleeding edge of technology and the human mind.  Below are links to his books, the first of which, Tools for Thinking, catalyzed deep soul-searching within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which at the time (1986) had nothing to offer such as Howard envisioned.  He was, with John Perry Barlow, one of the two speakers at OSS '92 who challenged virtually every aspect of the secret intelligence paradigm.

A slice of life in my virtual community

Rheingold at OSS '92

The Book
The Book

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Whole Earth Review Archives on Public Intelligence (Historical)

Whole Earth Review

1992

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Whole Earth R Brand Army Green

1992

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Whole Earth R Kapor et al We Need a National Public Network

1992

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Whole Earth R Kleiner The Co-Evolution of Governance

1992

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Whole Earth R Petersen Will the Military Miss the Market

1992

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Whole Earth R Staple & Dixon Telegeography: Mapping the New World Order

1992

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Whole Earth R Steele E3i: Ethics, Ecology, Evolution, and Intelligence

1992

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Whole Earth R Tibbs Industrial Ecology: An Environmental Agenda for Industry

1991

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Whole Earth R Brilliant Computer Conferencing: The Global Connection

1991

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Whole Earth R Clay Genes, Genius, and Genocide

1991

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Whole Earth R Elgin Conscious Democracy Through Electronic Town Meetings

1991

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Whole Earth R Garcia Assessing the Impacts of Technology

1991

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Whole Earth R Godwin The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Virtual Communities

1991

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Whole Earth R Karraker Highways of the Mind

1991

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Whole Earth R Lovins & Lovins Winning the Peace

1991

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Whole Earth R Marx Privacy & Technology

1991

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Whole Earth R Meeks The Global Commons

1991

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Whole Earth R Rheingold Electronic Democracy: The Great Equalizer

1991

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Whole Earth R Schuman Reclaiming our Technological Future

1991

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Whole Earth R Warren & Rheingold Access to Political Tools: Effective Citizen Action

1991

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Whole Earth R White Earthtrust: Electronic Mail and Ecological Activism

1991

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Whole Earth R Whitney-Smith Information Doesn't Want

1991

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Whole Earth R Wittig Electronic City Hall

1990

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Whole Earth R Barlow Crime and Puzzlement: The Advance of the Law on the Electronic Frontier

1990

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Whole Earth R Brand Outlaws, Musicians, Lovers, and Spies: The Future of Control

1990

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Whole Earth R Dodge Life Work

1990

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Whole Earth R Ishii Cross-Cultural Communications & Computer-Supported Cooperative Work

1990

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Whole Earth R Jordon III Restoration: Shaping the Land, Transforming the Spirit

1990

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Whole Earth R Kumon Toward Co-Emulation: Japan and the United States in the Information Age

1990

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Whole Earth R Monschke How to Heal the Land

1990

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Whole Earth R Shapard Observations on Cross-Cultural Electronic Networking

1990

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Whole Earth R Vidal Founding Father Knows Best

1989

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Whole Earth R Berman The Gesture of Balance

1989

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Whole Earth R Garfinkle Social Security Numbers: And Other Telling Information

1989

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Whole Earth R Haight Living in the Office

1989

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Whole Earth R Horvitz The USENET Underground

1989

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Whole Earth R Jaffe Hello, Central: Phone Conferencing Tips

1989

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Whole Earth R Johnson` The Portable Office

1989

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Whole Earth R Rheingold Ethnobotany: The Search for Vanishing Knowledge

1988

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Whole Earth R Baker, S. Gossip

1988

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Whole Earth R Baker, W. Gossip

1988

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Whole Earth R Brand The Information Wants to Be Free Strategy

1988

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Whole Earth R Coate Tales from Two Communities: The Well and the Farm

1988

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Whole Earth R Ferguson Gossip

1988

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Whole Earth R Fields Gossip

1988

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Whole Earth R Hardin Gossip

1988

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Whole Earth R Hawkins Computer Parasites & Remedies–A Catalog of First Sightings

1988

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Whole Earth R Keen Gossip

1988

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Whole Earth R Kleiner Gossip

1988

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Whole Earth R Leary Gossip

1988

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Whole Earth R Nelson Gossip

1988

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Whole Earth R Newroe Distance Learning

1988

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Whole Earth R Pert The Material Basis of Emotions with Inset, Mind as Information

1988

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Whole Earth R Rappaport Gossip

1988

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Whole Earth R Thurow & Walsh Getting Over the Information Economy

1987

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Whole Earth R Donaldson An Incomplete History of Microcomputing

1987

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Whole Earth R Henson MEMETICS: The Science of Information Viruses

1987

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Whole Earth R Horvitz An Intelligent Guide to Intelligence

1987

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Whole Earth R Krause Bio-Acoustics: Habitat Ambience & Ecological Balance

1987

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Whole Earth R Roberts Electronic Cottage on Wheels

1986

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Whole Earth R Fend & Gunther What Have You Got to Hide: Iraq Iran Basra Abadan

1986

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Whole Earth R Minsky Society of Mind

1986

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Whole Earth R Sanders Etiquette for the Age of Transparency

1986

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Whole Earth R Scxhwartz & Brand The World Information Economy

1986

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Whole Earth R Thompson A Gaian Politics

1985

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Whole Earth R Brand, Kelly, Kinney Digital Retouching: The End of Photography as Evidence of Anything

1985

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Whole Earth R Hunter Public Image

1985

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Whole Earth R Kleiner The Health Hazards of Computers: A Guide to Worrying Intelligently

1985

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Whole Earth R Mander Six Grave Doubts About Computers

1983

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Whole Earth R Illich Silence is a Commons: Computers Are Doing to Communication What …

1982

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Whole Earth R Brand Uncommon Courtesy: A School of Compassionate Skills

1982

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Whole Earth R Kayes Force Without Power: A Doctrine of Unarmed Military Service

1982

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Whole Earth R Meadows Whole Earth Models & Systems

Technologies Archive on Public Intelligence (1992-2006)

Technologies

2006

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Technology Arnold The Google Legacy

2005

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Technology CISCO CISCO Application Oriented Network One-Pager

2005

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Technology CISCO CISCO Application Oriented Network Executive IT Overview

2005

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Technology Steele GSA Roundtable on IT Innovation

2004

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Technology Anonymous Semantic Web Presentation

2004

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Technology Anonymous Semantic Web Architecture and Applications

2004

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Technology Anonymous Semantic Web Non-Memo

2004

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Technology Arnold The Information Technology Marketplace

2004

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Technology Arnold Table of Contents for Enterprise Search Book

2004

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Technology GAO Report on the Global Information Grid and DoD

2004

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Technology Gill Open Spectrum as the Third Open

2004

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Technology Gill Wireless Grid: The Possibilities

2004

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Technology Guest Commentary on GAO Report on DoD Global Information Grid

2004

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Technology Steele Commentary of GAO Report on DoD Global Information Grid

2003

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Technology Arnold One Machine…One View

2003

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Technology Hock The Open-ness of the Internet

2002

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Technology Arnold Nomadic Computing

2002

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Technology Steele NSA in Las Vegas: New Craft: What Should the T Be Doing to the I in IT?

2002

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Technology Steele NSA in Las Vegas: New Craft (Alternative Copy)

2002

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Technology Stratton In-Q-Tel

1999

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Technology Arnold Intelligence Management and the Bottom Line

1998

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Technology Arnold The Changing Intelligence Environment

1998

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Technology Arnold The Future of Online

1997

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Technology Arnold Technology Vectors: 1998 and Beyond

1997

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Technology Mani MITRE: Search Engine Technologies

1997

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Technology Maybury MITRE: Knowledge Management

1996

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Technology Ruh Optimizing Corporate Capital Through Information Technology

1994

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Technology Englebart Toward High-Performance Organizations: A Strategic Role for Groupware

1992

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Technology McConnell The Future Federal Information Infrastructure

1992

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Technology Rheingold Tools for Thinking & Virtual Reality: Our Info EcoSystem

1988

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Technology Steele Generic Intelligence Center Production Requirements

Review: Smart Mobs–The Next Social Revolution

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Information Society, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks)

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Describes the Techno-Powered Popular Revolution,

November 11, 2002
Howard Rheingold
At the very end of the book, the author quotes James Madison as carved into the marble of the Library of Congress: “…a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” And there it is–Howard Rheingold has documented the next level of the Internet, in which kids typing 60 words a minute with one thumb, “swarms” of people converging on a geospatial node guided only by their cell phones; virtual “CIAs” coming together overnight to put together massive (and accurate) analysis with which to take down a corporate or government position that is fradulent–this is the future and it is bright.As I go back through the book picking out highlights, a few of the following serve to capture the deep rich story being told by this book–breakthroughs coming from associations of amateurs rather than industry leaders; computer-mediated trust brokers–collective action driven by reputation; detailed minute-by-minute information about behaviors of entire populations (or any segment thereof); texting as kid privacy from adult hearing; the end of the telephone number as relevant information; the marriage of geospatial and lifestyle/preference information to guide on the street behavior; the perennial problem of “free riders” and how groups can constrain them; distributed processing versus centralized corporate lawyering; locations with virtual information; shirt labels with their transportation as well as cleaning history (and videos of the sex partners?)–this is just mind-boggling.

Finally, the author deserves major credit for putting all this techno-marvel stuff into a deep sociological and cultural context. He carefully considers the major issues of privacy, control, social responsibility, and group behavior. He ends on very positive notes, but also notes that time is running out–we have to understand where all this is going, and begin to change how we invest and how we design everything from our clothing to our cities to our governments.

This is an affirming book–the people that pay taxes can still look forward to the day when they might take back control of their government and redirect benefits away from special interests and back toward the commonwealth. Smart mobs, indeed.

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Review: Tools for Thought–The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technolog

5 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Public)

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Rheingold 10, Gates 0,

December 29, 2000
Howard Rheingold

Howard Rheingold, former Editor of the Whole Earth Review and one of the pure-gold original thinkers in the Stewart Brand and Kevin Kelly circle, lays down a serious challange to both decisionmakers and software producers that has yet to be fully understood. Originally published in 1985, this book was a “must read” at the highest levels of advanced information processing circles then, but sadly its brilliant and coherent message has yet to take hold–largely because bureaucratic budgets and office politics are major obstacles to implementing new models where the focus is on empowering the employee rather than crunching financial numbers.

This book is a foundation reading for understanding why the software Bill Gates produces (and the Application Program Interfaces he persists in concealing) will never achieve the objectives that Howard and others believe are within our grasp–a desktop toolkit that not only produces multi-media documents without crashing ten times a day, but one that includes modeling & simulation, structured argument analysis, interactive search and retrieval of the deep web as well as commercial online systems, and geospatially-based heterogeneous data set visualization–and more–the desktop toolkit that emerges logically from Howard's vision must include easy clustering and linking of related data across sets, statistical analysis to reveal anomalies and identify trends in data across time, space, and topic, and a range of data conversion, machine language translation, analog video management, and automated data extraction from text and images. How hard can this be? VERY HARD. Why? Because no one is willing to create a railway guage standard in cyberspace that legally mandates the transparency and stability of Application Program Interfaces (API). Rheingold gets it, Gates does not. What a waste!

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Review: The Virtual Community–Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier

5 Star, Civil Society, Culture, Research, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum)

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Prophet of Electronic Power to the People,

December 29, 2000
Howard Rheingold
Everyone seems to miss what I think is the most important the point of Howard's book. First published in 1993 and now in the expanded edition, the bottom line on this book is that the Internet has finally made it possible for individuals to own the fruits of their own labor–the power has shifted from the industrial age aggregators of labor, capital, and hard resources to the individual knowledge workers. The virtual community is the social manifestation of this new access to one another, but the real revolution is manifested in the freedom that cyberspace makes possible–as John Perry Barlow has said, the Internet interprets censorship (including corporate attempts to “own” employee knowledge) as an outage, and *routes around it*. Not only are communities possible, but so also are short-term aggregations of interest, remote bartering, on the fly hiring of world-class experts at a fraction of their “physical presence price”. If Howard's first big book, Tools for Thought, was the window on what is possible at the desktop, this book is the window on what is possible in cyberspace, transcending physical, legal, cultural, and financial barriers. This is not quite the watershed that The Communist Manifesto was, but in many ways this book foreshadowed all of the netgain, infinite wealth, and other electronic frontier books coming out of the fevered brains around Boston–a guy in Mill Valley wearing hand-painted cowboy boots was there long before those carpetbaggers (smile).
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Review: Virtual Reality–The Revolutionary Technology of Computer-Generated Artificial Worlds – and How It Promises to Transform Society

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Education (General), Future, Information Society, Information Technology

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Sacred and Scary Reflections on Neo-Biologicial Civilization,

December 29, 2000
Howard Rheingold
First published in 1991, this is a gem that should be one of the first readings of anyone contemplated the sacred and the scary aspects of how humans, machines, and software are being changed by emerging information technologies. While there is a lot of focus on “cool tools” and all the paraphenalia of “virtual reality” qua artificial sensation and perception, the rock bottom foundation of this book can be found in Howard reflections on what it all means for the transformation of humans, business, and society in general.
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