Photo by the extraordinary German nature
photographer Tanja
Askani.
Business:
Inc.
Doesn't Get the Wisdom of Crowds: Three readers pointed
me to an article in Inc. magazine that claims "collaboration
doesn't work" and decries "the idiocy of crowds". My guess is
that the writer is just being provocative, but if not he's playing into
the hands of overpaid execs and consultants (the main readers of the
magazine?) by inappropriately apologizing for their inadequacies. There
are some things (as
Surowiecki explains) that crowds do very well, and other things that
they're usually incompetent at. But the things crowds do best are
precisely
the things that arrogant executives think they do better. The things
crowds do badly are best done by small, experienced, skilled groups of
innovative thinkers, rather than senior managers far-removed from the
intelligence of the front-line, or parachuted-in consultants and gurus
with academic, boiler-plate 'solutions'.
Beyond
Viral Marketing: "Venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson doesn't
see any reason for startups to budget funds for marketing anymore."
Alice LaPlante in Information Week explains how viral marketing can be
taken to the next level by understanding and nurturing "contagious
behaviour". Thanks to Innovation
Weekly for the link.
Breaking Free From Professional Services Co-Dependency: From InfoWorld, an amusing but chillingly accurate portrayal of corporate addiction to big consulting
and other 'professional services' outsourcing firms, and a surprisingly
useful '12-step' program to break free. I especially like Step No. 3:
Don’t let money already spent spook you, Step No. 7: Be prepared to buy
your way out, and Step No. 8: Hire knowledge you need. Thanks to my KM colleague Greg Turko for the link.
How
Big Pharma Sees the Patient's Role in Health Care: My KM
colleague Verna Allee has an interesting chart (reproduced above)
depicting how Big Pharma sees the 'value networks' in US health care. Notice
that the patient's role is minor and passive. In an article
later this week I'll contrast this with how an increasing number of
patients (no, customers)
see these 'value networks' -- hint: on my chart Big Pharma hardly
appears at all.
Andrew Leonard Prescribes How to Save Ford: "Tax the rich. Fix the unemployment insurance system,
beef up wage
insurance, and pay for healthcare. Maybe then we can successfully avert
our eyes from the sorry spectacle of Ford begging its entire workforce
to quit."
Politics:
The
NYT Doesn't Get the Disconnect Between Civil Freedoms and Capitalism:
"[New oppressive Chinese censorship rules] appear, at a minimum, to
violate [China's] W.T.O. pledges
to liberalize access to financial information. Trade officials and
foreign business leaders need to remind Beijing’s leaders of
those
promises. And they need to warn them that a country that keeps a
stranglehold on information is not a great place to invest." Sorry,
guys, actually a place where the people
are kept ignorant, timid, and obedient is a great place for
corporatists
to invest. That's why the US corpocracy, which is pretty good at
keeping its own citizens off-balance, fearful and ignorant, has such a
cozy co-dependent relationship with China's.
Can
the Blogosphere Provide Needed Oversight of Government Pork?:
Richard Wolf at USA Today would have us believe so. I'm not so sure --
elected officials have developed pretty devious means
to keep back-room deals with lobbyists secret, and to bury their
sell-outs and paybacks in anonymous 'omnibus' bills and
off-the-books regulations. The blogosphere has neither the access to
information nor the resources to open that up very much. In fact, when
I saw the headline of this article ("Blogosphere spurs government
oversight") I mistakenly thought it was about another attempt by the
corporatists to spy on, interfere with and shut down the blogosphere
before it can threaten its information hegemony.
Olbermann's
On a Roll: Keith Olbermann continues with his brilliant and
scathing editorials eviscerating the incompetence,
carelessness and heartlessness of the Bush Administration, this time
with his thoughts on the anniversary of 9/11. Wonder how long before
the right wingers at MSNBC get him silenced?
ExxonMobil Gets Homeland Security to Arrest Greg Palast:
It seems the barbed-wire 'camp' for 73,000 homeless semi-incarcerated
New Orleans refugees sits right beside one of ExxonMobil's most toxic
sites, and it came into viewing range while Palast was filming the
camp. Apparently DHS doesn't want Osama learning anything about
"critical infrastructure" that could be subject to future attacks or
other terrorist operations. No, not the camp, silly, the refinery. Thanks to Dale Asberry for the link, and the one that follows.
Air Force Chief Wants to Test New Weapons on Domestic Demonstrators: From CNN: "Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control
situations before being used on the battlefield, the Air Force
secretary said Tuesday. The object is basically public relations.
Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions from others about
possible safety considerations, said Secretary Michael Wynne. 'If we're
not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should
not be willing to use it in a wartime situation,' said Wynne." Hmm, I
wonder who appointed this guy. Must have been a compassionate
conservative.
Project Censored Top 25 Censored Stories of the Year: What's surprising about this list is how few of the stories are surprises to those of us who have found other ways to get our news than the MSM. Justifiably #1 is How Internet Freedom Got the Federal Ax, and Why Corporate News Censored the Story. Thanks to David Parkinson for the link, and the one that follows.
Energy and Environment:
Getting Communities Ready for the End of Oil: "The
time has come to move beyond energy alternatives to creating
alternative lifestyles and communities...Through drastic reductions in
resource consumption, dramatic conservation and curtailment of energy
use, coupled with an increase in local community living we can survive Peak Oil and create a sustainable world."
There are a surprising number of new sites and conferences that
appreciate that the only way to live in a post-cheap-oil world is by
building self-sustainable local communities, independent of the grid,
using renewable energy sources owned by the community itself.
Solar
Wireless Lets Struggling Nations Leapfrog Ahead in Education:
Solar-powered wireless routers promise to help children and adults in
struggling nations access
Web-based knowledge to educate themselves, at their own pace,
even in areas with no electricity. Thanks to Innovation Weekly
for the link.
Invention of Civilization a Desperate Adaptation:
A new report for the British Association for the Advancement of Science
agrees with a growing consensus of anthropologists that agriculture,
settlement and the other trappings of civilization were a desperate
adaptation to shortage of resources and adverse climate change, "built on fear, not the need to socialize". More support for the Story of B. Thanks to Dale Asberry for the link.
Just for Fun:
Some
Hilarious Advice for the Young: Fifty-something WaPo
columnist Gene Weingarten brilliantly
satirizes advice columns by telling his young readers what he
wishes he knew when he was in his twenties. (Apologies -- I can't
recall who sent this link to me).
Thought for the
Week: From Kevin Beavers, a Buddhist story about relieving
internal conflict:
There once was a
young monk who went to his teacher in
tears. He blurted out that he was having a terrible experience with his
meditation practice. Every time he settled down, took a deep breath,
and closed his eyes, all he could see were two dragons fighting each
other. One dragon was a deep blue and it was filled with anger and
greed and lust. Even its fire was terrifying. It was ferocious, this
dragon. The other dragon was just as ferocious. Only the other dragon,
pale white, was filled with love, wisdom, and compassion. Its fire was
a deep, deep yellow. The young man was terrified of what would happen.
Which dragon would win? He couldn't tell and was afraid to watch them
fight, which made him afraid to sit. Could the teacher please give him
some advice?
The teacher smiled. He looked at his student, his eyes filled with
compassion. 'Do you want to know which dragon will win?' The young monk
nodded. 'Why the one filled with love and compassion and wisdom, of
course.' But how did he know asked the young monk. 'Because that's the
one you'll feed'. Update: Andrew Campbell tells me this story circulated in many different versions after 9/11. He prefers the following version, as do I:
A Cherokee elder sitting with his grandchildren told them, "In every
life and heart there is a terrible fight between two wolves. One is full of
fear and anger, envy, greed arrogance, self-pity, resentment and
deceit. The other is full of joy and serenity, humility, confidence,
generosity, truth, gentleness and compassion."
A grandchild asked, "Which wolf will win?"
The elder looked him in the eye.
"The one you feed."
And here as a bonus is a story from Chris Corrigan, also from late 2001:
My daughter Aine and I were walking in the woods today
playing a game. She was pretending that there were monsters in the
forest and that they were coming to eat us. We had to be vigilant. We had
to defend ourselves. I asked her "What is the plan? What are we going
to do if we see one of the monsters?"
She replied,"Feed them." "Feed them?" I said."Yes," she said. "If we feed them they won't want to eat us."
I think she has the answer there. Imagine if George Bush
took that $40 billion that Congress gave him and used it to feed
people. Heck, take $20 billion to fix up US security and clean up New
York and use the other half to feed people. And not just feed them with
food.
What if we decided that people's spirits needing feeding
too? What if we chose to take $1 billion and build the biggest, most
beautiful mosque in the world, right in the heart of Kabul. And what if
we gave it as a gift, no quid pro quo, as a place for people to feed
their spirits? What would the reaction be? What do we want the reaction
to be?
We have choices. Seems we could bomb innocent people to
death and celebrate, mirroring the images of September 11, and thereby
satisfy our thirst for vengeance. But what would that get us? A world
that so admired the West that it wanted to emulate it in every way and
celebrates its way of life? Or would a large part of the 5 billion
people that don't live in the west see things differently? Would more
people feel as if vengeance was the only possible response, and figure
out more simple and effective ways to terrorize? We can have that kind
of world if we choose it.
Or we can take Aine's advice and feed people. And what
would that get us? There is no better way to rob the world of it's
anger and bitterness, jealousy and hate, than to feed people
unconditionally ...feed their bodies, minds and spirits. Build places
of learning, places of spirit, places for healing and nourishment,
places of community. Take that $40 billion and spend it in every
neighborhood in the world. Put the world to work growing food, healing
people, restoring land and water, building communities, creating the
thin fibres of connection between peoples, families, communities,
cities, nations...."If we feed them they won't want to eat us." Can you
think of a better form of security? |
4:50:55 PM 
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
