Public Intelligence Blog

Click on Image to Enlarge

Analysis: In “borderless” cyberspace, nation states struggle

By Peter Apps, Political Risk Correspondent

Reuters LONDON | Thu Jun 9, 2011

EXTRACT:

“The nature of cyberspace is borderless and anonymous,” R. Chandrasekhara, secretary of India’s telecommunications department, told a cyber security conference in London last week organised by a U.S.-based think tank, the EastWest Institute. “Governments, countries and law — all are linked to territory. There is a fundamental contradiction.”

Read full article….

Tip of the Hat to Chris Pallaris at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: The national secret intelligence communities mean well, but they are cognitively and culturally incapacitated  in relation to both the global threats and the global infomation sharing and sense-making possibilities.  It may just be that the solution has to come from a private sector service of common concern that can provide the integrity now lacking in governments and most corporation.  Scary thought.  M4IS2 is inevitable….delay is costing trillions.

Jon Lebkowsky Bio

Doc Searls on user-driven democracy

by jonl

Speaking at the 2011 Personal Democracy Forum, Doc talks about how power relationships work in markets vs how they should  and could work. Markets are conversations, and they should be symmetrical conversations. Note his bit about how the language of marketing parallels the language of slavery….and the part where all their cookies end up giving them 50% completely wrong information.

Doc is the co-author of the Clue-Train Manifesto.

Direct Link to Personal Democracy Video

See Also:

48 Recordings on Tap from Personal Democracy 2011

Patrick Meier

Digital Activism, Epidemiology and Old Spice: Why Faster is Indeed Different

The following thoughts were inspired by one of Zeynep Tufekci’s recent posts entitled “Faster is Different” on her Technosociology blog. Zeynep argues “against the misconception that acceleration in the information cycle means would simply mean same things will happen as would have before, but merely at a more rapid pace. So, you can’t just say, hey, people communicated before, it was just slower. That is wrong. Faster is different.”

I think she’s spot on and the reason why goes to the heart of complex systems behavior and network science. “Combined with the reshaping of networks of connectivity from one/few-to-one/few (interpersonal) and one-to-many (broadcast) into many-to-many, we encounter qualitatively different dynamics,” writes Zeynep. In a very neat move, she draws upon “epidemiology and quarantine models to explain why resource-constrained actors, states, can deal with slower diffusion of protests using ‘whack-a-protest’ method whereas they can be overwhelmed by simultaneous and multi-channel uprisings which spread rapidly and ‘virally.’

Read entire anomalously long post….

Phi Beta Iota: Concentrations of power create preconditions for revolution.  Precipitants (such as burning monks or fruit vendors) ignite masses.  The public is a power no government can repress forever.  Howard Zinn (RIP) knew the public is a power government cannot repress; Vaclav Havel spoke to this (power of the powerless); Jonathan Schell documented it most ably (unconquerable world).  Bottom line:  With a tiny handful of exceptions, all governments have lost legitimacy and capability at the same time that the public is increasingly aware of the shocking injustices by banks and predatory corporations that have been legalized by governments.  Patrick Meier’s discussion is a significant contribution to our understanding of why a global revolution is inevitable and panarchy will replace “sovereignty” as the primary operating principle for Earth.

Michael Ostrolenk Recommends...

What Happens When Anonymous Gets a Bank?

Dominic Basulto on May 18, 2011

bigthink

The same people who brought you Wikileaks are back, and this time, they’ve created a virtual currency called Bitcoin that could destabilize the entire global financial system. Bitcoin is an open-source virtual currency generated by a computer algorithm that is completely beyond the reach of financial intermediaries, central banks and national tax collectors. Bitcoins could be used to purchase anything, at any time, from anyone in the world, in a transaction process that it is almost completely frictionless. Yes, that’s right, the hacktivists now have a virtual currency that’s untraceable, unhackable, and completely Anonymous.

And that’s where things start to get interesting. Veteran tech guru Jason Calacanis recently called Bitcoin the most dangerous open source project he’s ever seen. TIME suggested that Bitcoin might be able to bring national governments and global financial institutions to their knees. You see, Bitcoin is as much a political statement as it is a virtual currency. If you think there’s a shadow banking system now, wait a few more months. The political part is that, unlike other virtual currencies like Facebook Credits (used to buy virtual sock puppets for your friends), Bitcoins are globally transferrable across borders, making them the perfect instrument to finance any cause or any activity — even if it’s banned by a sovereign government.

You don’t need a banking or trading account to buy and trade Bitcoins – all you need is a laptop. They’re like bearer bonds combined with the uber-privacy of a Swiss bank account, mixed together with a hacker secret sauce that stores them as 1′s and 0′s on your computer. They’re “regulated” (to use the term lightly) by distributed computers around the world. Most significantly, Bitcoins can not be frozen or blocked or taxed or seized.

Read full article….

See Also:

Open Money

Home Base

http://www.zanran.com

Representative Searches

http://www.zanran.com/q/cost_of_corruption

http://www.zanran.com/q/cost_of_war

Tip of the Hat to Mother Jones at Twitter.

Patrick Meier

Harnessing Social Media Tools to Fight Corruption

Posted on May 17, 2011 by Patrick Meier

I had the distinct pleasure of being interviewed for this report on Harnessing Social Media Tools to Fight Corruption (PDF). The study was prepared by Dana Bekri, Brynne Dunn, Isik Oguzertem, Yan Su and Shivani Upreti as part of a final project for their degree from the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). The report was prepared for Transparency International (TI).

As part of this project, the authors compiled a very useful database of projects that apply social tools to create greater transparency and accountability around corruption issues. The authors recommend that TI draw on this list of projects to catalyze an active network of civil society initiatives that challenge corruption. The report also includes an interesting section on Mobilizing Volunteers and considers the role of volunteer networks as important in the fight against corruption. The authors write that,

“As an essential expression of citizenship and democracy, the past 25 years have seen rapid growth in the practice of volunteering worldwide. One study reports approximately 20.8 million volunteers in 37 countries, contributing US$ 400 billion to the world economy. The increasing enthusiasm of individuals to serve a cause while improving their own skills complements key goals of civil society organisations to build a strong volunteer force.”

This of course relates directly to the Standby Volunteer Task Force (SBTF), so I’m always keen to learn more about lessons learned and best practices in catalyzing a thriving volunteer network.

Do let me know if you’d like to get in touch with the authors, I’d be happy to provide an introduction via email.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Cooperation Is Pledged By Nations Of the Arctic

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

New York Times, May 12, 2011

NUUK, Greenland — The eight Arctic nations pledged Thursday to create international protocols to prevent and clean up offshore oil spills in areas of the region that are becoming increasingly accessible to exploration because of a changing climate.

The Arctic Council — the United States, Russia, Canada, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden — said the protocols would be modeled on a separate agreement signed here in Nuuk on Thursday to coordinate search-and-rescue operations over 13 million square miles of ocean.

Read more….

Phi Beta Iota: This is potentially world-changing, but pedestrian at this time.  Legal and logistics arrangements institutionalize old ways of doing things–slow, expensive, often inappropriate ways.  Much more exciting would be for the nations to agree to create an Arctic M4IS2 Centre, perhaps based in Copenhagen or in Oslo, with an emphasis on sustainable energy and climate change to begin with, but rapidly filling out to provide holistic analytics across all threats and helpful to the harmonization of spending across all policies.  Such a center could be innovative from the first day if it includes all eight tribes of intelligence in its organizational and outreach schema, creating a model for both the United Nations and for each of the continental political organizations.

Venessa Miemis

4 Trends Shaping the Emerging “Superfluid” Economy

This post originally appeared on CNN.com’s Global Public Square.

Humanity and technology continue to co-evolve at an ever increasing pace, leaving traditional institutions (and mindsets) calcified and out of date. A new paradigm is emerging, where everything is increasingly connected and the nature of collaboration, business and work are all being reshaped. In turn, our ideas about society, culture, geographic boundaries and governance are being forced to adapt to a new reality.

While some fear the loss of control associated with these shifts, others are exhilarated by the new forms of connectivity and commerce that they imply. Transactions and interactions are growing faster and more frictionless, giving birth to what I call a “superfluid” economy.

Business will not return to usual. So let’s discuss 4 key concepts to help us  better understand the shifts that are underway:

1. Quantifying and mapping everything
2. Everyone has access to the internet
3. Self-organizing expands
4. Peer-to-peer exchange changes the future of money

4 Trends discussed below the line with links

Read the rest of this entry »

Patrick Meier

Analyzing U-Shahid’s Election Monitoring Reports from Egypt

Posted on May 8, 2011 by Patrick Meier| Leave a comment

I’m excited to be nearing the completion of my dissertation research. As regular iRevolution readers will know, the second part of my dissertation is a qualitative and comparative analysis of the use of the Ushahidi platform in both Egypt and the Sudan. As part of this research, I am carrying out some content analysis of the reports mapped on U-Shahid and the SudanVoteMonitor. The purpose of this blog post is to share my preliminary analysis of the 2,700 election monitoring reports published on U-Shahid during Egypt’s Parliamentary Elections in November & December 2010.

Read full posting with links & graphic…

May 10th: Let the Infinite Games Begin!

At our April 6 SVII gathering Bill Veltrop, co-founder of the Monterey Institute for Social Architecture (MISA), introduced Regional Metamorphosis as a pragmatic strategy for accelerating our movement into an Age of Conscious Evolution. Jesse Clark and colleagues then produced a video that does a great job of capturing the intent and spirit of that evening.

At the conclusion of the April 6 gathering Howard asserted that Silicon Valley had what it takes to be a leader in a regional metamorphosis movement. Howard invited us to explore this possibility together at a May 10th gathering at Serena Software from 4-7 PM.

Questions for you:

1. Are you a GRIP, a game ready infinite player? Check your “symptoms” against this profile. http://www.theinfinitegames.org/e02/02.php

1. Does the idea of playing a key role in bootstrapping a Silicon Valley regional metamorphosis initiative intrigue you? Below are some of the key roles we see needed if we are to turn this large idea into a global movement:

TEN MOST WANTED EVOLUTIONARIES

• Angel Investors
• Multimedia Story-tellers
• Transformational Leaders
• Champions of Generative Initiative
• Leader for a Center for Regional Metamorphosis
• Bridge-Builders from Academia
• Online Collaboration Web Weavers
• Developmental Mavens
• Providers of Generative Services
• Regional Conveners

1. Are you willing to join with other interested GRIPs at Serena Software from 4-7 on Tuesday, May 10? At this gathering we will be —

• Getting to know who we are — what each of us cares about, and could bring to this emerging infinite game
• Diving more deeply into the ideas presented on April 6
• Exploring for the best approach to getting traction in Silicon Valley — and beyond

Requests

• If you plan to attend, please register here.
• 
• The address is:
  
  Serena Software Inc
  1900 Seaport Boulevard,
  Redwood City, CA
• If you can’t attend but are definitely interested, or if you have any questions, please contact Bill@MISA.ws or call at 831-462-1992
• If you’ve a friend/colleague GRIP who is a good fit, please invite him/her to join us.
• If you attended our April 6th gathering, you may find it helpful to refresh your memory with this video, http://vimeo.com/22894801
• If you were not at the April 6th event it’s important that you invest the time to watch the video. The May 10th gathering will build on our April 6 work together.

Tip of the Hat to David Alan and Mark Roest.