Group items tagged

Some of the biggest changes sweeping the technology world today are new forms of network and computer-enabled cooperation. It was easy enough to see this pattern in open source software development or Wikipedia, a bit more challenging to see how it powered Web 2.0 giants like Google and Amazon, but it gets really interesting when you are able to see how new kinds of man-machine symbiosis and networked cooperation are at the heart of projects like the Google self-driving car, the reinvention of retail by Apple and Square, transportation services from RelayRides to Uber, and even in new models for networked government.

 how mycorrhizal networks connect the roots of trees, facilitating the sharing of resources.  new molecular tools that can distinguish the DNA of one fungal individual from another, or of one tree's roots from another.

Reed's law or Group-Forming value-add affordance of networks grows much faster  than either Sarnoff or Metcalfe calculations of value.  Nice graphs showing how the three curves compare (scalar of n, square of n, and 2 to the nth power.)

Oblique Strategies for Ambient Journalism Alex Burns (alex@alexburns.net) Published in M/C Journal, 13(2), May 2010.  Alfred Hermida recently posited 'ambient journalism' as a new framework for para- and professional  journalists, who use social networks like Twitter for story sources, and as a news delivery platform.  Beginning with this framework, this article explores the following questions: How does Hermida  define 'ambient journalism' and what is its significance? Are there alternative definitions? What  lessons do current platforms provide for the design of future, real-time platforms that 'ambient  journalists' might use? What lessons does the work of Brian Eno provide-the musician and  producer who coined the term 'ambient music' over three decades ago? My aim here is to formulate an alternative definition of ambient journalism that emphasises craft,  skills acquisition, and the mental models of professional journalists, which are the foundations more  generally for journalism practices. Rather than Hermida's participatory media context I emphasise  'institutional adaptiveness': how journalists and newsrooms in media institutions rely on craft and  skills, and how emerging platforms can augment these foundations, rather than replace them.

Public, private, and nonprofit institutions and organizations often work together in a coalition (an organization of organizations working together for a common purpose) with communities, neighborhoods, and constituencies. In this paper, coalition is the term used for a multiorganizational process that is also called a partnership or a collaborative (state-of-the-art resources on coalition building are available at www.ahecpartners.org).  Usually, coalition strategies for working together are described as networking, coordinating, cooperating, or collaborating, although the use of these terms is often confusing.  This paper suggests definitions of these four strategies used by coalitions to help clarify the most appropriate use of each in particular settings.  Although the examples that follow the definitions are based in health care, the four strategies are utilized in addressing a wide variety of issues.

Yesterday marked the opening day of the Clinton Foundation's "Health Matters" conference in Palm Springs. I had heard a bit of advance word about the conference from a friend who was headed down there, and I had armed him with a copy of Future Perfect to give to Clinton if the opportunity arose. But the gift turned out to be unnecessary. Apparently, Clinton had just finished reading Future Perfect on his own, and spontaneously brought up a number of its arguments in an opening conversation with NBC's Nancy Snyderman. Along the way, he managed to say kind words about three other books of mine. 

Computer-mediated communication systems are believed to have powerful effects on social relationships. Many claim that this new form of social interaction encourages wider participation, greater candor, and an emphasis on merit over status. In short, the belief is that social hierarchies are dissolved and that flatter, more egalitarian social organizations emerge. Networked communications, it is argued, will usher in a renewed era of democratic participation and revitalized community. But as with earlier technologies that promised freedom and power, the central problems of social relationships remain, although in new and possibly more challenging forms.

Glattfelder follows the chain of transnational corporate ownership to determine "who controls the world" economically-speaking.  I.e., our economic commons. He defines the rather tight network of control as an emergent property rather than some global conspiracy.

Also recommended by David Watkins re the Parable of the Tribes.  David says: In 1954 Sorokin's The Ways and Power of Love: Types, Factors, and Techniques of Moral Transformation was published. The common assumption is that love is weak in the face of power. Sorokin and his staff researched the history of war and peace. What they found was that coercion and force were given far too much credit in the headlines of our histories and the power of love not nearly what it deserved. He devotes an entire chapter to examples of how love prevailed against far superior forces. He said that he could have filled several books with the examples that they found. He covers much of the same ground as Tolstoy, Gandhi and King.