Future Salon

Global Guerillas strike in London?

Update: Some say it was only a tanker driver that flipped a cut out switch ... (May be the sky is not falling. Sorry.)

One of the sites that I am following, always with a little knot in my stomach is Global Guerrillas by fellow Futurist and friend John Robb. He is a military trained fighter pilot and has lead start-ups to success, which probably is the reason for his contrarian viewpoint.

He has excellent insights and writes sharp analysis about the current terrorist threat and mode of operation. Example: 4GW -- Fourth Generation Warfare; CASCADING SYSTEM FAILURE

When I heard about the London Blast today I immediately thought that this fits into John's systems disruption scenario:

It consists of simple attacks (using ad hoc weapons) on critical nodes of infrastructure -- oil, gas, electricity, water, etc. These attacks, if properly targeted, can cause cascades of failure that sweep entire systems.

Is this the start of such a tactic in Europe? Here John's post from today (attention European notation of date DD/MM/YY or is it military date?):

7/12/05: Zawahiri video posted to the Internet: "I call on the holy warriors to concentrate their campaigns on the stolen oil of the Muslims, most of the revenues of which go to the enemies of Islam. The enemies of Islam are exploiting such vital resources with incomparable greed, and we have to stop that theft with all we can and save this fortune for the nation of Islam."

11/12/05: The Bruncefield Total/Texaco oil depot northwest of London exploded. The explosion was so intense, there is very little likelihood that any cause will be found. 400 tankers offload everyday at the facility which stores 4 million[*] gallons of gasoline, diesel, kerosine, and aviation fuel. As one of the top 5 facilities in the UK, it supplies 5% of the country's energy needs.

Currently the media claims it was an accident, and I so hope that they are right. It looks like some concerted effort is in place to keep the story on low profile. How would you otherwise explain that, although this is the biggest explosion in peacetime Europe, and the fire is still burning, probably with toxic gases all around, the front pages on BBC, CNN, New York Times and the Washington Post barely if at all mention it? I made some screen shots. 

High time to get John Robb over here for a global guerillas Future Salon :-)

[*] The BBC as well as the International Herald Tribune state that there may have been 60 Million Gallons of gasoline involved in the fire.

Above Picture  shot by Gridlock and posted on Flickr with Creative Commons license. There are other beautiful ones, but they marked them all rights reserved, so I don't even link to them :-)

7/12/05: Zawahiri video posted to the Internet: "I call on the holy warriors to concentrate their campaigns on the stolen oil of the Muslims, most of the revenues of which go to the enemies of Islam. The enemies of Islam are exploiting such vital resources with incomparable greed, and we have to stop that theft with all we can and save this fortune for the nation of Islam."

11/12/05: The Bruncefield Total/Texaco oil depot northwest of London exploded. The explosion was so intense, there is very little likelihood that any cause will be found. 400 tankers offload everyday at the facility which stores 4 million[*] gallons of gasoline, diesel, kerosine, and aviation fuel. As one of the top 5 facilities in the UK, it supplies 5% of the country's energy needs.

Currently the media claims it was an accident, and I so hope that they are right. It looks like some concerted effort is in place to keep the story on low profile. How would you otherwise explain that, although this is the biggest explosion in peacetime Europe, and the fire is still burning, probably with toxic gases all around, the front pages on BBC, CNN, New York Times and the Washington Post barely if at all mention it? I made some screen shots. 

High time to get John Robb over here for a global guerillas Future Salon :-)

[*] The BBC as well as the International Herald Tribune state that there may have been 60 Million Gallons of gasoline involved in the fire.

Above Picture  shot by Gridlock and posted on Flickr with Creative Commons license. There are other beautiful ones, but they marked them all rights reserved, so I don't even link to them :-)

Changing Politics is Hard

Micha Sifry was the eCampaign manager for Andrew Rasiej bid to become the number two man in New York politics: Public Advocate. They run an open source political campaign:

We had three over-arching goals for this campaign:
1) that we could push into the public debate some big new ideas about reinventing municipal government, fostering civic engagement, and the value of getting everyone an affordable highspeed Internet connection;
2) that the right way to run for office is to be as open, transparent, people-centered, small-donor-based and network-driven as possible (building on the experiences of various 2004 campaigns); and
3) that reform-minded individuals, groups, writers, editorialists, bloggers, and institutions, along with locally-focused civic activists, would find all of this refreshing and inspiring and they would rally to our banner and help amplify our message.

This is where the potential of new technology lies and where also some of my hopes for positive change are rooted. Unfortunately they didn't manifest this time and Micha Sifry has an excellent post mortem sharing his perspective.

Status of the California Stem Cell Initiative

Scott briefly touched on the 3 Billion California Stem Cell initiative last Friday too. Turns out there is a Blog that is covering nothing else: California Stem Cell Report. David Jensen just posted his score card: Litany of Losses.

Also the perks that the different cities are shelling out to bit for the head quarters sounds a lot like the shenanigans that are going on when countries try to lure the Olympic games to their home. 

I stumbled over this on Chris Nolan's Blog. He also links to a Sacramento Bee editorial, that I was too lazy to sign up for.

Great Stem Cell Overview

Wow, that was an excellent presentation by Christoper Scott last night. Stem Cells is a complex issue from so many angels: Biology, politics, science, potential health benefits, moral issues, economics, international competition, ... Chris super cool and with loots of dry humor made the topic very accessible and kept us captivated throughout the presentation.

Things I learned last night in no particular order:

WMD Film Notes Plus Citizen Journalism Project

Notes from the Movie: Weapons of Mass Deception viewed last night and a very hopeful development around Dan Gillmor.

The filmmaker Danny Schaechter was at the movie and joked that he embedded himself in his living room to watch and record the TV news every move leading up and during the war, at least as much as he could stand.

I think this graph is a great illustration of the problem with the TV News. It is derived from a study done by PiPA Program in International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.

Misconception throughout the board with varying degree of severity.

At Stanford last week ABC News president David Westin apologized to the American people for the poor coverage:

The executives also discussed their stations’ coverage leading up to the war in Iraq and failure to more carefully examine the Bush administration’s claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

“[ABC] let down the American people,” Westin said. “I sincerely regret that.”

Random thoughts from the movie:

Election Watch

On this day of the first debate between the two candidates two pointers to sites that keep a tab on the sentiment in the press as well as in the Blogosphere.

Ecoresearch is using the strength of computers let them count words in press articles. From the word count they analyze the attention and the attitude toward the candidates. Results are quite lopsided: 2/3 of attention goes to the President.

Technorati also has a political section where they dissect the Blogger's sentiment including some graphics.

Now That's Extreme Democracy: Be John Kerry In Vietnam

A couple of weeks ago the Future Salon hosted an event called Extreme Democracy that looked at some technologies that affect and facilitate participation in democracy.

On that tip, I see that Kuma Reality Games have a new release in the works that recreates then-25-year-old presidential candidate John Kerry's 1969 journey down the Mekong Delta in a Swift Boat on the day he earned his Silver Star. According to the Kuma site the download will include "[a] broadband video news show, real-world intel, satellite images and the background you need to understand a key issue in this year's presidential election."

MSNBC had an article on on this earlier in the month (John Kerry, action hero). Here's a slice quoting Kuma's CEO, Keith Halper:

"The level of rancor has been so high and what is lost is the details," said Halper referring to the attacks on Kerry's Vietnam service by the partisan group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.  "People want to know, what did Kerry do?  What did swift boats do in Vietnam?  What types of missions did swift boats go on?"

I'm also very happy to announce that Keith will be speaking about the future of Kuma's "interactive reporting" at Accelerating Change 2004.

The Tao of Extreme Democracy Future Salon

sponsored by SAP Labs.

Update: I reread this post, and realized, that I didn't link to Extreme Democracy. Just to set the record straight: Tom Atlee will talk about his work and book The Tao of Democracy. Ross Mayfield will introduce us to the concepts behind Extreme Democracy and Zack Rosen will show us the latest version of CivicSpace.

If you check Amazon for The Tao of Democracy You will find rave reviews of the book. The one from the top 100 reviewer Robert D. Steele is especially interesting: This book focuses on what comes next, after everyone gets tired of just "meeting up" or "just blogging." This book is about collective intelligence for the common good, and it is a very fine book. He is missing the following: Still lacking--and I plan to encourage special organizations such as the Center for American Progress to implement something like this--is a central hub where a citizen can go, type in their zip code, and immediately be in touch with the following (as illustrated on page 133 of New Craft):

Extreme Democracy Plus Future Salon

It's election time, but of course the Future Salon looks beyond Swift Boats :-) One of the inspirations is the upcoming Extreme Democracy book: "Extreme democracy" is a political philosophy of the information era that puts people in charge of the entire political process. It suggests a deliberative process that places total confidence in the people, opening the policy-making process to many centers of power through deeply networked coalitions that can be organized around local, national and international issues."

Another inspiration is The Tao of Democracy by Tom Atlee who has thought about, written and spoken for twenty years on innovations in democracy. Paul H. Ray, Ph.D co-author of The Cultural Creatives sais about his book: What Tom Atlee is writing about is just about the most important thing that's happening at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Over a year ago John Abbe pointed the Future Salon in his direction by posting links to chapers of his book. There for the first time I got introduced to the excellent concept of citizen deliberative councils.

Third inspiration are the tool makers, like the volunteers that created the DeanSpace and now are knitting CivicSpace, an open-source grassroots organizing web-application toolkit .

The beauty is, that on Thursday the 16th of September we bring these three rays of hope together and let them shine at the Future Salon.

Mitch Radcliffe: Swift results

While still in the middle of organizing the September (16th or 17th) Future Salon with the theme Extreme Democracy I stumbled over the Red Herring Blog: Swift results by Mitch Radcliffe one of the editors of the upcoming book Extreme Democracy.

The Swift Boat add as Mitch points out were designed for a target audience that would amplify their messages rather than for voters in general. In the long run, it signals a fundamental change in the way ideas are disseminated. He is convinced, that this was only the opening act and the real target is to paint Kerry as a peacenik.

These tactics make me sad and this is why I am looking forward to talk about alternatives at the next Future Salon. Details to come this week. For inspiration check the Wired Magazine this month: 6 ways to reboot the [democratic] system

Voting via Floating

I almost overlooked our friends in San Diego had an interesting session this month about Seasteading.

Land is taken, let's create land on the sea. In modular structures, that can be linked together to form a community. Advantage: If you don't like the politics or gasp the taxes of your current society, you pull up your seastead and float it over to where the sea is greener.

Politics of Science and Technology

Just about 100 days until the presidential elections. Time for us to look closer at what the two camps have in store for us regarding the things that interest us the most: Science and Technology. (Or at least from a Future Salon perspective these themes are not covered enough.)

I would like to give the September Future Salon scheduled for Friday 17th to both parties to make their case. At the BlogOn last Friday I bumped into Phil Wolff who is very active with East Bay for Kerry. One of their committees is Scientists for Kerry. Phil promised to get me someone to cover the Democrat's agenda.

Same evening I floated the idea with Judith Meskill and she said that she may be able to provide me with an eloquent speaker to present the Republican standpoint.