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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Berto Jongman

Witnessing a South African healer at work

By Pumza FihlaniBBC News, Johannesburg

EXTRACT:

Ms Siswana is one of thousands of young men and women who are balancing the demands of a career with the calling to be a messenger for deceased ancestors, or “amadlozi”.

Sangomas have played a central role in many African cultures dating back many years; they were seen as custodians of their communities and were consulted by villagers to heal the sick, communicate with the gods on their behalf and to protect villages from harm.

Click on Image to Enlarge

They are essentially diviners – a channel between the physical world and the afterlife.

They believe that through a special “calling” known in Zulu as ubizo, they are able to access advice and guidance through possession by an ancestor, throwing bones or by interpreting dreams.

In today’s South Africa, sangomas are often seen as unsophisticated, uneducated and backwards.

Despite this, they remain the first point of contact for physical and psychological ailments for about 80% of black South Africans according to authorities.

Read full article.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jean Lievens

Warren Karlenzig: Collective Intelligence–Cities as Global Intelligence Platform

Social media and collaborative technologies–layered with smart systems combining geo-location data with human experience–will make cities the driving sustainability force in a dawning planetary era. Cities will anticipate new risks with rapid urban systems innovation based upon crowdsourcing, virtual and physical communities, and transparent markets sensitive to full carbon and resource costs. Creatively leveraging collective intelligence for clean energy, low carbon mobility and sustainable food and water, the new urban grid will enable high local quality of life, lifelong learning and vibrant green economies.

 The Open Source Project Lifecycle, Challenges and Opportunties

Paula Hunter on Apr 30, 2013

Presented at OBC2013, San Francisco

Patrick Meier

Data Science for Social Good and Humanitarian Action

My (new) colleagues at the University of Chicago recently launched a new and exciting program called “Data Science for Social Good”. The program, which launches this summer, will bring together dozens top-notch data scientists, computer scientists an social scientists to address major social challenges. Advisors for this initiative include Eric Schmidt (Google), Raed Ghani (Obama Administration) and my very likable colleague Jake Porway (DataKind). Think of “Data Science for Social Good” as a “Code for America” but broader in scope and application. I’m excited to announce that QCRI is partnering with this important new program given the strong overlap with our Social Innovation Vision, Strategy and Projects.

Read full post.

Jean Lievens

Collaboration and Peer Governance

By Hortensia Pérez Seldner, MPA 2014

Collaboration, Peer production, Peer networks, Crowdsourcing….the more I read about these topics the more I understand the enormous opportunities for social development and governance that are already out there. But at the same time, there are some new challenges to address.

For every new concept introduced in Government 3.0 I have the same reaction. First, I am all confused about it. Second, I start to understand it, but at the same time it always looks kind of utopian or not really applicable in the government field. And finally, I find some practical examples and ideas that allow me to think that these concepts are in fact both interesting and feasible.

. . . . .

Read the rest of this entry »

Theophillis Goodyear

Powerful and effective heuristics are the only way to quickly communicate the complex understandings required to save humanity, because they facilitate quick feedback. They break through information logjams. They reduce information overload. The various elite powers on the planet use heuristics in the form of propaganda to mislead the people and drive them like cattle toward a predetermined objective. But they have a great advantage over us. It’s easier to confuse than enlighten. It’s easier to destroy than to build. It’s easier to get people to misunderstand complexity than to get them to understand it.

So unless we become clever at heuristics, we are outnumbered and outgunned. And we need to be cognizant of any model that can help us dilate the conduits of feedback to the point where our big picture understandings can spread like lightening to the general public. There are many ways to do this, mostly by commandeering well-understood terms and putting them to new uses.

While I was watching the Boston Marathon bombing coverage I heard them talk about victims who were at one point in critical condition but who had been reevaluated to serious condition. And it made me want to look up the precise definitions of these terms. That’s when I saw that they could have usefulness describing all kinds of complex social dynamics. After all, that’s what systems theory is all about. The five terms are: undetermined, good, fair, serious, and critical. You can find definitions here at wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_state

Briefly, they are: waiting assessment; stable within normal limits; indicators are favorable; indicators are questionable; and indicators are unfavorable. These concepts can be applied at every level and context of social dynamics because they are terms that describe systems. And as Donella H. Meadows stressed, the whole point of systems theory is to cut through all the jargon of the multiplicity of specialties. The point is to make things as simple as possible without making them too simple. Simplify but don’t oversimplify.

Read the rest of this entry »

Click on Image to Enlarge

Source

Neal Rauhauser

Exploring e-International Relations

When I was checking out the Think Tanks & Civil Societies Program I noticed e-International Relations – the world’s leading website for students of international politics. They had an About page similar to that of Wikistrat, listing all of their volunteer editors and some additional information on them.

Last night I entered most of that information into e-IR-base, a Maltego graph. Those who want to follow along can download the graph file, get the free Maltego Community Edition, and do a portion of the things I do with it. The free version has very limited access to Paterva‘s transform servers, so I will provide the necessary intermediate files.

Click on Image to Enlarge

This is a top level view of the e-IR graph. What I say next presumes some knowledge of hands on work with Maltego.

The lavender dots are Person entities – a place for a first and last name, and like every entity you can makes notes and attach files to it. The blue dots at the upper right are URL entities and they contain links to an editor’s profile on the official site. Not everyone has a profile – this seems to be for people who produce their own content as well as work as editors. The five green dots are Twitter accounts, the five blue dots with an orange dot in the middle are LinkedIn profiles and an entity for the domain itself.

Maltego provides different types of entities, but here at the start we are only using Person, Domain, URL, and Phrase. Maltego provides a way to group different types of entities using colored stars – blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. This is useful for searching and organizing tasks – if you run a transform that starts with the five Twitter accounts shown here, but gets back over a thousand responses, how do you spot your originals?

Read full post with additional graphics and links.

John Maguire

Thomas Linzey is the Executive Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). CELDF, as some of you might know from John Steiner’s recent posting, is committed to limiting/abolishing the entrenchment of corporate-personhood and reestablishing the rights/resilience of small communities through legal education and local ordinance initiatives.

Amazon Page

All too often in the current political climate the “Law” is utilized as a weapon by the powers-that-be to inhibit the sovereignty and self-organizing character of both individuals and community groups. If we truly want to consider ourselves as citizens, some degree of legal literacy is becoming almost mandatory. Understanding CELDF’s model and tactics is a huge step for any mindful change-agent.

Below the line is a brief interview with Thomas Linzey for those who are interested:

Read the rest of this entry »