Public Intelligence Blog

Michel Bauwens

People are raving about this as a possible alternative command and control system for the public to use.

Civilized Discourse Construction Kit

Jeff Atwood

Coding Horror, February 5, 2013

EXTRACT:

After spending four solid years thinking of discussion as the established corrupt empire, and Stack Exchange as the scrappy rebel alliance, I began to wonder – what would it feel like to change sides? What if I became a champion of random, arbitrary discussion, of the very kind that I’d spent four years designing against and constantly lecturing users on the evil of?

I already built an X-Wing; could I build a better Tie Fighter?

Today we announce the launch of Discourse, a next-generation, 100% open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.

The goal of the company we formed, Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc., is exactly that – to raise the standard of civilized discourse on the Internet through seeding it with better discussion software:

• 100% open source and free to the world, now and forever.
• Feels great to use. It’s fun.
• Designed for hi-resolution tablets and advanced web browsers.
• Built in moderation and governance systems that let discussion communities protect themselves from trolls, spammers, and bad actors – even without official moderators.

Our amazingly talented team has been working on Discourse for almost a year now, and although like any open source software it’s never entirely done, we believe it is already a generation ahead of any other forum software we’ve used.

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Rickard Falkvinge

United States Government Shows The World It Doesn’t Understand The Internet, Claims “Ownership” Of Specific Files

Infopolicy:  The United States Department of Defense has “claimed ownership” of CAD drawings of a plastic, printable pistol. In doing so, they apparently believe they can stop the files from existing. The result is obviously the complete opposite, which calls into strong question the judgment and ability of United States Government to set Internet policy at all.

Read full article.

Stephen E. Arnold

Open Source Trends for [Content Management System] CMS in 2013

Beyond Search, May 10, 2013

CMS Wire does a great job of providing a monthly update of the latest in CMS news and releases. In their latest edition for the month of May, open source software is taking the spotlight. Read all the details in their article, “Alert: What’s Coming Up for Open Source CMS in May 2013.”

Here is a portion of the many new releases, updates, and products they cover:

“Every month we like to serve up a little open source CMS roundup, and like most months in this busy segment, May is packed with interesting tidbits . . . Content, portal and collaboration expert Liferay has announced an integration with Tibco this week, and the two companies have developed a combined product that will itself integrate with multiple systems. Liferay Portal will begin offering several enterprise Connectivity Adapters that use Tibco’s ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks starting in the third quarter, the company announced.”

Liferay is definitely up to good things as they seek to round out their portal offerings. But the emphasis on open source offerings should encourage users with enterprise needs to explore offerings outside of the realm of CMS. For instance, LucidWorks offers all-encompassing enterprise search for organizations that need a solution ready to go, but can choose to do some customization as desired. The best part is that solutions like LucidWorks are built upon the best of open source strength (in their case Apache Lucene/Solr) but are fully supported with training and customer service.

Emily Rae Aldridge, May 10, 2013

Steven Aftergood

Making Government Information Open and Machine Readable

An executive order issued by President Obama today directs that “the default state of new and modernized Government information resources shall be open and machine readable.”

“As one vital benefit of open government, making information resources easy to find, accessible, and usable can fuel entrepreneurship, innovation, and scientific discovery that improves Americans’ lives and contributes significantly to job creation,” states Executive Order 13642 on Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information.

The new order was welcomed by the Sunlight Foundation, a proponent of open access to government data, particularly because it establishes a requirement to produce an inventory of “datasets that can be made publicly available but have not yet been released.” That will facilitate enforcement and advancement of the open data agenda, Sunlight said.

While one wants to believe in the efficacy of the order and to affirm the good faith intentions behind it, it is necessary to recognize how remote it is from current practice, particularly in the contentious realm of national security information.

The CIA, for example, has stubbornly refused to release the contents of its CREST database of declassified documents, even though the documents contained there are entirely declassified.  The CREST database is not open, it’s not machine-readable, and you can’t have a copy.

Meanwhile, the Obama White House itself has refused to publish even its unclassified Presidential Policy Directives (with a few exceptions), forcing requesters to litigate for access, or to surrender.

 The Open Source Project Lifecycle, Challenges and Opportunties

Paula Hunter on Apr 30, 2013

Presented at OBC2013, San Francisco

Our spending practices, as a country, are completely upside down. We spend endless billions on war instead of what it will take to keep the U.S. functioning as a country, as this report makes clear. Think about what is being said here, just in reference to your own area.

Our Infrastructure Isn’t Ready for Climate Change
ED MAURER and EUGENE CORDERO – Market Watch

This is an excellent essay on the power of data. Big data. It describes the first stages of the emerging Metaview Trend, which is going to change our lives. And has the potential to recreate democracy in an electronic age.

The Rise of Big Data
KENNETH NEIL CUKIER and VIKTOR MAYER-SCHOENBERGER, Data Editor of The Economist and Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford U. – Foreign Affairs

David Isenberg

The Rise of Big Data

How It’s Changing the Way We Think About the World

Kenneth Neil Cukier and Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger

May/June 2013

Article Summary and Author Biography

EXTRACT

Big data is a resource and a tool. It is meant to inform, rather than explain; it points toward understanding, but it can still lead to misunderstanding, depending on how well it is wielded. And however dazzling the power of big data appears, its seductive glimmer must never blind us to its inherent imperfections. Rather, we must adopt this technology with an appreciation not just of its power but also of its limitations.

Read full article.

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Howard Rheingold

Information overload? • Wearable sports technology raises safety concerns

If you think the desktop Web and the smartphone were occasions for info-overload, get ready for wearable computing, which isn’t waiting for the 2014 release of Google Glass. On ski slopes and on the roads, we’re about to embark on a societal experiment regarding the dangers of fragmented attention. How many people will master multiple streams of incoming information while racing down a hill or driving on a freeway? And how many will crash?

Click on Image to Enlarge

Safety advocates say the concept of high-tech displays for goggles — and for other sports eyewear — is information overload run amok, particularly when people are using them at high speeds. Yet Oakley, based in Foothill Ranch, Calif., is one of a handful of sports eyewear companies betting that thrill seekers and athletes crave the equivalent of a cockpit dashboard while skiing, snowboarding, cycling and running. The companies are in the vanguard of the next wave of personal technology, called wearable computing, which promises to further shrink the barrier between users and the information they seek.”

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Click on Image to Enlarge

Source

Berto Jongman

“The innovation is the placing of these documents into one place and in a database which can be searched by the public. That makes them accessible in a way not seen in the past.”

Wikileaks publishes 1.7m US diplomatic records

Wikileaks says it has created the world’s largest searchable collection of US diplomatic documents

Wikileaks has published more than 1.7 million US diplomatic and intelligence reports from the 1970s.

They include allegations that former Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi was a middleman in an arms deal and the first impressions of eventual British PM Margaret Thatcher.

The documents have not been leaked and are available to view at the US national archives.

Wikileaks says it is releasing the documents in searchable form.

Much of the work has been carried out by the website’s founder Julian Assange while he has been holed up at the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

Read full article.

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