You just woke up…
Remember the scene in feature film: “THE MATRIX” when Neo/Keanu Reeves wakes up to discover that people are all just encased in glass bubbles where they are pumped full of fake information so that they think the world is one way?
Yep, it’s like that.
If you think that the world is “suddenly falling apart”, or that “everything is going crazy”: It Isn’t
The internet has simply allowed everybody to see what is really going on, and many of them are realizing that have been used and abused, and they just are not real happy about it.
Network TV is in it’s death throes. Printed magazines and newspapers can barely give themselves away. Ironically, these are the same tools that a small group of billionaires were using to control information and perceptions. Ta Ta, Old school media.
So Google saw the future and decided they would take over for the new billionaires but they were so bad at it that everyone has seen through their shill game of attempted political and economic monopoly that they are now scrambling for air. International investigations, a global hatred of the Google brand and the shear arrogance of Google’s executives and owners, killed that wolf in sheep’s clothing.
So now we have the Millenial Generation. Highly educated, sick of media abuse, unwilling to buy into Frat House programming, “White picket fence” breeding pressure and fully capable of building their own global media. A feat they have already accomplished.
Let’s see how a few different writers describe the “Age of Transparency” that we are nearly half-way through:
The Big Idea: Leadership in the AgeofTransparency – HBR
Rarely do before-and-after business cases present such a neat study in contrasts. Compare the recent actions of the key players in the food industry with those of the …
hbr.org/2010/04/the-big-idea-leadership-in-the-ag…
TheAgeofTransparency | Man Repeller
During your final days in college, there’s not much else to do other than get naked. The first all-senior party I walked into was a nude one. I arrived, unaware of …
manrepeller.com/2014/06/the-age-of-transparency.html
TheAgeofTransparency – Financial Executives International …
The Internet, social networking and blogging are making the world a radically more transparent place for businesses.
daily.financialexecutives.org/the-age-of-transparency/
Hiring in the AgeofTransparency | 2015-03-20 | Workforce.com
Hiring in the AgeofTransparency Social media has changed the recruitment game. But today’s era of transparency in talent acquisition requires greater attention to …
workforce.com/articles/21207-hiring-in-the-age-of-trans…
WikiLeaks and the AgeofTransparency – OR Books
WikiLeaks and the AgeofTransparency. Micah L. Sifry. Preface by Andrew Rasiej “The effects of the ongoing WikiLeaks are cumulative–sort of like mercury …
orbooks.com/catalog/wikileaks/
Hiring in the AgeofTransparency | 2015-03-11 | Talent …
Hiring in the AgeofTransparency Social media has changed the recruitment game. But today’s era of transparency in talent acquisition requires greater attention to …
talentmgt.com/articles/7162-hiring-in-the-age-of-transp…
Leadership in the AgeofTransparency – Harvard Business Review
Find new ideas and classic advice on strategy, innovation and leadership, for global leaders from the world’s best business and management experts.
hbr.org/product/leadership-in-the-age-of-transpar…
OracleVoice: The Big Reveal: HR In The AgeOfTransparency
Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. With more than 400,000 customers—including 100 of the …
forbes.com/sites/oracle/2015/03/02/the-big-reveal-hr…
WikiLeaks and the AgeofTransparency by Micah Sifry …
WikiLeaks and the AgeofTransparency has 82 ratings and 14 reviews. David said: The idea that Internet transparency tools will lead to a happy period of…
goodreads.com/book/show/10480185-wikileaks-and-the-age-…
Theageoftransparency – The Manila Times Online
Okay, I have downloaded the Uber App on my phone months ago but never found a chance to use it. On our latest adventure in Paris, my nieces and I went …
manilatimes.net/age-transparency/144041/
PDF Leadership in the AgeofTransparency
Employee Engagement Action Planning Resource Library 6) Leadership in the Ageof Transparency_5-5-14_453p.m. Leadership in the AgeofTransparency
umn.edu/ohr/prod/groups/ohr/@pub/@ohr/documents/a…
Satyug – The AgeofTransparency | Facebook
Satyug – The AgeofTransparency. 4,997 likes · 4 talking about this. Every faith shall become of the Khalsa; No other religion will remain. Vaheguru…
facebook.com/pages/Satyug-The-Age-of-Transparency/1166…
TheAgeofTransparency: Why You Should Care
TheAgeofTransparency: Why You Should Care. Published on August 13, 2014. With new technology developing at rapid rates and the ever-growing use of social media …
frontstream.com/age-transparency-care/
Wikileaks and the AgeofTransparency (OR Books) | Facebook
Wikileaks and the AgeofTransparency (OR Books). 215 likes. “Micah Sifry doesn’t just know Wikileaks–he sees how it relates to everything.” – Clay…
facebook.com/pages/Wikileaks-and-the-Age-of-Transparen…
Your Reputation in the ‘AgeofTransparency’
In this AgeofTransparency, Seidman recommends putting your marketing money where other people’s mouths are. Invest in staying in touch with past customers.
forresidentialpros.com/article/10360602/your-reputation-in-the-a…
Amazon.com: WikiLeaks and the AgeofTransparency …
Praise for WikiLeaks and the AgeofTransparency “An absorbing, comprehensive examination of one of the most vital issues of our time.” —Publishers Weekly
amazon.com/WikiLeaks-Age-Transparency-Micah-Sifry/dp…
The Naked Corporation: How the AgeofTransparency Will …
If you have to be naked, you had better be buff. We are entering an extraordinary ageoftransparency, where businesses must for the first time make themselves …
amazon.com/The-Naked-Corporation-Transparency-Revolu…
Wikileaks and the AgeofTransparency – Micah L. Sifry …
Review: WikiLeaks and the AgeofTransparency User Review – Goodreads. This short book gives a solid overview of a lot of open government initiatives.
books.google.co.uk/books/about/Wikileaks_and_the_Age_of_Tran…
The Coming Ageof Business Transparency: Information Wants to …
… information wants to be free and that creates real pressure for transparency. … The Coming Ageof Business Transparency: Information Wants to Be Free.
huffingtonpost.com/chad-pollitt/the-coming-age-of-busines_b_…
LEED® version 4: The AgeofTransparency – Eggers Industries
Feb 06 2014 LEED® version 4: The AgeofTransparency. Over the past few years things have been pretty “vanilla” in the Green building scene, the types of …
eggersindustries.com/leed-version-4-age-transparency/
Don’t Run From Online Ratings: Four Tips for the Ageof …
It’s an expectation in the AgeofTransparency. And, as a marketer, you know that hiding from troubling commentary won’t do much good in this century, …
marketingprofs.com/articles/2015/27673/dont-run-from-online-…
Theageoftransparency – Twingly Blog
The web is making people and companies more transparent. Even though some users are concerned about losing the anonymity that they enjoyed so much during the past 20 …
blog.twingly.com/2010/07/26/the-age-of-transparency/
The Spiritual Singularity | and Coming AgeofTransparency
Preface. Spirituality is Dying Chapter 1. The Spiritual Singularity Chapter 2. The AgeofTransparency Chapter 3. The AgeofTransparency Chapter 4. The World Wide …
Proactive » Blog Archive » The ageofTransparency
There have been a few discussions recently in the press, about this sector or that sector aiming for greater transparency. We were introduced to the idea of …
In this, The AgeofTransparency, Know That Love Will Find a …
Love is patient, love is kind. Love is gentle and simple by its very nature. Whenever something appears as complicated, know that it is not of your Heart.
archangelsanddevas.com/2015/02/26/in-this-the-age-of-transparenc…
McDonald’s Enters the AgeofTransparency – Businessweek
This is the ageoftransparency. Companies that are open and honest get rewarded for it, even if they are not perfect.
bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2012-09-18/mcdonald-s-enters-…
Infidelity in the AgeofTransparency? But Why? | Mockingbird
Slate interviewed (the fascinating) therapist Esther Perel a couple weeks ago, the new age Dr. Ruth, the “sexual healer” of Mating in Captivity, about her most …
mbird.com/2014/04/infidelity-in-the-age-of-transpar…
Transparency (behavior) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Transparency, is the used science, engineering, business, the humanities and in a social context more generally, implies openness, communication, and accountability.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_(behavior)
WikiLeaks and the AgeofTransparency : Micah … – Boing Boing
Micah Sifry’s WikiLeaks and the AgeofTransparency is a thoughtful and thought-provoking look at the promise and limits of Internet-based transparency efforts.
boingboing.net/2011/04/20/wikileaks-and-the-ag.html
oftransparency – 99U by Behance
I t’s part of Buffer’s policy to “default to transparency” in all possible cases, a way of working that the company believes will become the norm rather than …
99u.com/articles/15527/the-age-of-salary-transpar…
PDF Military Competitiveness in the AgeofTransparency – DTIC
23 Military Competitiveness in the AgeofTransparencyThe End of Secrecy? Beth M. Kasper, USAF August 2001 Occasional Paper No. 23 Center for Strategy and Technology
dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a407066.pdf
AgeofTransparency – The People’s Cube
Obama said he would be open. The democrats aligned with Marx. Transparency award clandestine, The blogs are full of /sarcs. This is Obama and his AgeofTransparency.
thepeoplescube.com/peoples-karaoke/age-of-transparency-t7000…
Marketing In The AgeOfTransparency – Online News for …
The five years following the economic crisis have been among the most difficult for many wealth advisors. Despite the well-documented market recovery, there are still wary consumers, a sluggish pipeline for new business and a recession-like climate that fuels skepticism and prudence among
fa-mag.com/news/marketing-in-the-age-of-transparency…
The Big Reveal: HR In The AgeOfTransparency – Oracle Blogs
Oracle is the Human Capital Management solution of choice for more than 13,500 Oracle customers in over 140 countries, including 8 of the top 10 Fortune 500 companies and 30 of the top 40 innovative companies.
blogs.oracle.com/OracleHCM/entry/the_big_reveal_hr_in
Regulation in the AgeofTransparency | Juan’s Blog
[Reading time: 5 minutes] Voluntary transparency is a superior self-regulatory mechanism that could substantially enhance consumer protection and prudential oversight.
contrariancompliance.com/2015/03/03/regulation-in-the-age-of-trans…
In theAgeof Leaked Memos, Transparency a Must for Firms
Even in this ageoftransparency, there are rules in place—”That’s just the way the company may have to govern itself,” she added. Yet companies can try to soften the blow of bad news by keeping employees in the loop and telling them change is coming.
shrm.org/hrdisciplines/technology/articles
/pages/c…
Why Dealers should embrace ‘theageoftransparency
The best dealers realized very quickly that it’s the ageoftransparency.” Mobile traffic surging. A recent study by Nielsen for Cars.com found that 83 percent of new-vehicle shoppers own a smartphone, and 43 percent of those consumers …
autonews.com/article/20130422/RETAIL07/304229957/why-d…
Transparency In TheAgeOf Obama
Barack Obama largely ran on the platform of transparency, but such views have been left behind on the campaign trail. My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.
myafricanviews.com/transparency-in-the-age-of-obama/
Transparency in theageof Obama – Al Jazeera English
Barack Obama largely ran on the platform of transparency, but such views have been left behind on the campaign trail.
aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2010/11/20101137512575232…
PDF Digital Footprints – Pew Research Center’s Internet and …
Digital Footprints . Online identity management and search in . the ageoftransparency . Embargoed until 4pm Eastern on 16 December 2007 . Mary Madden, Senior Research Specialist
pewinternet.org/files/old-media/Files/Reports/2007/PIP_Di…
In an AgeofTransparency | David Belden | LinkedIn
In an AgeofTransparency David Belden. Check Your Ego at the Door Bill Marriott Influencer. Nurture the ‘Thing’ That Makes You Feel Energized and Talented Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz Influencer
linkedin.com/pulse/age-transparency-david-belden
The state of affairs: Cheating in the ageoftransparency
About Esther Perel Esther Perel is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She runs a private psychotherapy practice in New York and speaks regularly on erotic intelligence, cross cultural relations and infidelity.
ideas.ted.com/the-state-of-affairs-cheating-in-the-age-…
The Rise of Transparency and Decline of Secrecy in the Ageof …
Article Title. The Rise of Transparency and the Decline of Secrecy in the Ageof Global and Social Media
elibrary.law.psu.edu/jlia/vol1/iss2/2/
AgeofTransparency | Jacqui Consults
We are presently living during an AgeofTransparency. Meaning, the transparencyof all that was hidden will now be revealed. I don’t mean for this to sound ominous , it simply means that we are living during a time of truth, honesty, passion and compassion.
jacquiconsults.com/tag/age-of-transparency/
Marketing Secrets in the AgeofTransparency • Jonathan Salem …
I work on understanding the ways innovation & privacy communications influence how we interact with businesses, governments, and one another.
jonathansalembaskin.com/marketing-secrets-in-the-age-of-transpare…
Welcome to The AgeofTransparency – Daily News Global Center
DNGC is News From Around the World. From Multiple Sources. Every Agenda. No Corporate Handlers. Public & Media-200 supplied stories. Updated the second anything happens.
thenewsdaily.org/crazy-stuff-world-right-now-break-corpora…
Hiring in the AgeofTransparency | 2015-03-11 | Talent …
Hiring in the AgeofTransparency Social media has changed the recruitment game. But today’s era of transparency in talent acquisition requires greater attention to detail.
talentmgt.com/articles/print/7162-hiring-in-the-age-of-…
Wikileaks and the AgeofTransparency by Micah Sifry …
The United States government is diligent—some might say to the point of obsession—in defending its borders against invaders. Now we are told a small, international band of renegades armed with nothing more than laptops presents the greatest threat…
overdrive.com/media/1001828/wikileaks-and-the-age-of-tr…
WikiLeaks and the AgeofTransparency by Micah L. Sifry …
Summer Reading Sale: Select Paperbacks, 2 for $20; Pre-Order Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman; Get 5% Back with the B&N MasterCard; B&N Collectible Editions: Buy 1, Get 1 50% Off
barnesandnoble.com/w/wikileaks-and-the-age-of-transparency-m…
The Naked Corporation: How the AgeofTransparency Will …
… (eBook), Paperback, Hardcover. If you have to be naked, you had better be buff. We are entering an extraordinary ageoftransparency, where businesses must for the first time make … How the AgeofTransparency Will Revolutionize Business [NOOK Book] by; Don Tapscott
barnesandnoble.com/w/naked-corporation-don-tapscott/11003014…
Trust in the AgeofTransparency – Great Place to Work …
This morning, Great Place to Work and FORTUNE magazine announced our seventeenth 100 Best Companies to Work For list. The enduring resonance of this list speaks volumes on our collective desire to peek behind the curtain at the companies we want to work at, want to emulate, or even, want to beat.
greatplacetowork.com/publications-and-events/blogs-and-news/24…
TheAgeofTransparency in Digital Politics – Brian Solis
Tweet; August 3, 2012; 10 Comments; Guest post by Minter Dial @mdial on social, transparency and politics using the recent French Presidential election between Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande as a case study
briansolis.com/2012/08/the-age-of-transparency-and-polit…
Transparency in theAgeof ADHD | Tijana Milosevic
Why should you be interested in this biannual report, whose latest issue came out just weeks ago? While it may not impact you directly at the moment, this report discloses which governments asked Google to reveal information about users they happen to be interested in.x
huffingtonpost.com/tijana-milosevic/transparency-in-the-age_…
Leadership in the ageoftransparency. – ResearchGate
Publication » Leadership in the ageoftransparency.. … [Show abstract] [Hide abstract] ABSTRACT: The author discusses how corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability were incorporated into a business course by using 4 assignments, a project with a CSR question, 7 ethics cases …
researchgate.net/publication/43199511_Leadership_in_the_ag…
Sunday Musings ~ The AgeofTransparency” | Archangels and Devas
What exactly does it mean to be transparent? My thesaurus says ‘see through, clear, translucent, crystal clear, visible etc.’ We are living in the AgeofTransparency; a new age – the Golden Era – and there is nowhere to hide.
archangelsanddevas.com/2014/09/07/sunday-musings-the-age-of-tran…
Coming Clean in the AgeofTransparency – SPROUT Content
In today’s ageoftransparency, there will always be people to call you out if there’s even a hint at secrecy or untruthfulness by your brand.
sproutcontent.com/blog/bid/186799/Coming-Clean-in-the-Age-o…
TheAgeofTransparency Rocks the Middle East – Strategy …
Welcome, everybody, to the AgeofTransparency! Whether it’s Facebook or Twitter or YouTube, there can be no question that social media technologies continue to play a key role in stirring the Mideast pot.
peppersandrogersgroup.com/blog/2011/03/the-age-of-transparency-rock…
Corporate reporting in the new ageoftransparency
by John D. Wiebe, President and CEO of GLOBE Group. Much has been written of late about the growing importance of corporate reporting, particularly in what many describe as the ‘new ageoftransparency’.
cdp.net/en-US/News/Pages/Corporate-reporting-in-t…
The Rising Power of the AgeofTransparency | Frank Vogl
This article was published in the print edition of Diplomatic Courier By Frank Vogl, May 23, 2013. China’s President Xi Jinping has announced a full-scale attack on corruption, stressing that he will crack down on both “tigers” and “flies”-powerful leaders and lowly bureaucrats in the …
frankvogl.com/2013/05/30/the-rising-power-of-the-age-of…
A new ageoftransparency – The People’s Cube
United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a press conference today stating that she was engaging in a charm offensive to bring peace to the Middle East. Secretary of State Clinton President Obama is bringing a new ageoftransparency to government. He has stated that there should be no
thepeoplescube.com/peoples-blog/a-new-age-of-transparency-t3…
Snooping vs. privacy – lessons for an ageoftransparency …
It’s not possible to stop a Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden. They reflect society’s push for individualism, suspicion of authority, and digital transparency.
csmonitor.com/Commentary/Global-Viewpoint/2013/0726/Sno…
Research in the AgeofTransparency – Applied Clinical Trials …
One of the most important recent efforts, the European Medicines Agency’s Clinical Trial Data Transparency Initiative, is setting an aggressive timeline to make clinical study reports (CSRs) more available.
appliedclinicaltrialsonline.com/research-age-transparency?rel=canonical
The Naked Corporation: How the AgeofTransparency Will …
The Naked Corporation has 26 ratings and 2 reviews. If you have to be naked, you had better be buff. We are entering an extraordinary ageoftransparency…
goodreads.com/book/show/95334.The_Naked_Corporation
The naked corporation : how the ageoftransparency will …
The naked corporation: how the ageoftransparency will revolutionize business User Review – Not Available – Book Verdict
books.google.com/books/about/The_naked_corporation.html?id…
Open Government and Transparency in the Broadband Age …
Open Government and Transparency in the Broadband Age Open Government and Transparency in the Broadband Age. Openness and transparencyof government are key pillars of democracy that pre-date the Internet.
knightcomm.org/government-transparency/open-government-a…
Religious Atrocities in the AgeofTransparency | Atheist …
Religious Atrocities in the AgeofTransparency Daniel Dennett at the 17. Göttinger Literaturherbst, October 19th, 2008, in Göttingen, Germany. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Sooner or later, every atheist blogger writes about religious atrocities (e.g., clergy sexual abuse).
atheistrev.com/2014/10/religious-atrocities-in-age-of.html
The Spiritual Singularity | And Coming AgeofTransparency
Preface. The Spiritual Singularity Chapter 1. Spirituality is Dying Chapter 2. The World Wide Mirror Chapter 3. Technology is Humanity’s Only Child Chapter 4. Why We Love Technology
Transparency – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Transparency, transparence or transparent most often refer to Transparency and translucency, the physical property of allowing the transmission of light through a material.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency
Wikileaks and the AgeofTransparency – Audible.com
Download Wikileaks and the AgeofTransparency audiobook by Micah Sifry, narrated by Alan Schwartz. Join Audible and get Wikileaks and the AgeofTransparency free from the Audible online audio book store.
audible.com/pd/Nonfiction/Wikileaks-and-the-Age-of-Tr…
TheAgeofTransparency – C-Dynamics Inc
Perhaps an unlikely title some may think. Why? Well isn’t obvious? Everyone wants transparency, everyone is crying transparency, transparency and more transparency.
c-dynamicsinc.com/the-age-of-transparency/
Book Review: Wiki Leaks and the AgeofTransparency | Jake …
WikiLeaks and the AgeofTransparency by Micah Sifry, published by Scribe Publications, Melbourne, first published in the US by OR Books LLC, New York 2011, 224 pages, ISBN 9781921344126, RRP $22.95 AUD.
academia.edu/6475583/Book_Review_Wiki_Leaks_and_the_Ag…
AgeOfTransparency PDF And Ebook Files – DocsFiles
AgeOfTransparency PDF Files, Preface This study focuses on military competitiveness in the ageoftransparency, and asserts that the U.S. military must consciously prepare – AgeOfTransparency – DTIC on DocsFiles
docsfiles.com/pdf_age_of_transparency.html
Oscar Berg: The AgeofTransparency – Rebuilding trust
Tweet “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” These days, many of us are amazed by how a few people have been able – or rather allowed – to make decisions that have put well-respected companies at the brink of collapse, not to say how they have …
oscarberg.net/2009/04/age-of-transparency-rebuilding-tr…
Leadership in the ageoftransparency – StudyMode
A theme essay on Leadership in the AgeofTransparency in context of Nepal. Prepared by Group B Nabin Thapa, Anju Sharma Dhirendra Chand Shekhar Ojha
studymode.com/essays/Leadership-In-The-Age-Of-Transpare…
TheAgeofTransparency – TRISYM Growth Partners
Knowledge is Power. Most organizations are comfortable using the term transparency to refer to internal affairs, but the Ageof Technology and global marketplace has birthed an unprecedented AgeofTransparency.
trisym.com/operations/the-age-of-transparency
Leadership in the AgeofTransparency – Manageris
Manageris recommande l’article Leadership in the AgeofTransparency, Harvard Business Review, 2010
manageris.com/article-leadership-in-the-age-of-transpar…
TheAgeofTransparency — HB
Earlier this month I attended a research symposium organized by the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR). The use of the word transparency at the event reminded me of the “Hi Bob” drinking game.
hbagency.com/the-age-of-transparency/
Citizens United in the AgeofTransparency: Donate at Your …
It should hardly surprise anyone if Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission – the landmark Supreme Court decision that prohibits government from placing limits on independent political spending by corporations and unions – is a bit more on people’s minds these days. The …
forbes.com/sites/richardlevick/2012/02/08/citizens-u…
Bitreserve – Regulation in the AgeofTransparency
Voluntary transparency is a superior self-regulatory mechanism that could substantially enhance consumer protection and prudential oversight.
bitreserve.org/en/blog/posts/bitreserve/regulation-in-th…
The Coming Ageof Radical Transparency – Healthy Building Network
In his new book, Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything, Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer Daniel…
healthybuilding.net/news/2009/10/22/the-coming-age-of-radical…
The Open Source Revolution is HERE and it will conquer the 1%. How FACT-SWARMING works:
The open source revolution is coming and it will conquer the 1% – ex CIA spy
The man who trained more than 66 countries in open source methods calls for re-invention of intelligence to re-engineer Earth
A businessman tries to break through a line of Occupy Wall Street protesters who had blocked access to the New York Stock Exchange area in November 2011. Photograph: Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images
Robert David Steele, former Marine, CIA case officer, and US co-founder of the US Marine Corps intelligence activity, is a man on a mission. But it’s a mission that frightens the US intelligence establishment to its core.
With 18 years experience working across the US intelligence community, followed by 20 more years in commercial intelligence and training, Steele’s exemplary career has spanned almost all areas of both the clandestine world.
Steele started off as a Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer. After four years on active duty, he joined the CIA for about a decade before co-founding the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, where he was deputy director. Widely recognised as the leader of the Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) paradigm, Steele went on to write the handbooks on OSINT for NATO, the US Defense Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Special Operations Forces. In passing, he personally trained 7,500 officers from over 66 countries.
In 1992, despite opposition from the CIA, he obtained Marine Corps permission to organise a landmark international conference on open source intelligence – the paradigm of deriving information to support policy decisions not through secret activities, but from open public sources available to all. The conference was such a success it brought in over 620 attendees from the intelligence world.
But the CIA wasn’t happy, and ensured that Steele was prohibited from running a second conference. The clash prompted him to resign from his position as second-ranking civilian in Marine Corps intelligence, and pursue the open source paradigm elsewhere. He went on to found and head up the Open Source Solutions Network Inc. and later the non-profit Earth Intelligence Network which runs the Public Intelligence Blog.
Former CIA spy and Open Source Intelligence pioneer, Robert David Steele speaking at the Inter-American Defense Board in 2013 I first came across Steele when I discovered his Amazon review of my third book, The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism. A voracious reader, Steele is the number 1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction across 98 categories. He also reviewed my latest book, A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization, but told me I’d overlooked an important early work – ‘A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, Report of the UN High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change.’
Last month, Steele presented a startling paper at the Libtech conference in New York, sponsored by the Internet Society and Reclaim. Drawing on principles set out in his latest book, The Open-Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth and Trust, he told the audience that all the major preconditions for revolution – set out in his 1976 graduate thesis – were now present in the United States and Britain.
Steele’s book is a must-read, a powerful yet still pragmatic roadmap to a new civilisational paradigm that simultaneously offers a trenchant, unrelenting critique of the prevailing global order. His interdisciplinary ‘whole systems’ approach dramatically connects up the increasing corruption, inefficiency and unaccountability of the intelligence system and its political and financial masters with escalating inequalities and environmental crises. But he also offers a comprehensive vision of hope that activist networks like Reclaim are implementing today.
“We are at the end of a five-thousand-year-plus historical process during which human society grew in scale while it abandoned the early indigenous wisdom councils and communal decision-making,” he writes in The Open Source Everything Manifesto. “Power was centralised in the hands of increasingly specialised ‘elites’ and ‘experts’ who not only failed to achieve all they promised but used secrecy and the control of information to deceive the public into allowing them to retain power over community resources that they ultimately looted.”
Today’s capitalism, he argues, is inherently predatory and destructive:
“Over the course of the last centuries, the commons was fenced, and everything from agriculture to water was commoditised without regard to the true cost in non-renewable resources. Human beings, who had spent centuries evolving away from slavery, were re-commoditised by the Industrial Era.”
Open source everything, in this context, offers us the chance to build on what we’ve learned through industrialisation, to learn from our mistakes, and catalyse the re-opening of the commons, in the process breaking the grip of defunct power structures and enabling the possibility of prosperity for all.
“Sharing, not secrecy, is the means by which we realise such a lofty destiny as well as create infinite wealth. The wealth of networks, the wealth of knowledge, revolutionary wealth – all can create a nonzero win-win Earth that works for one hundred percent of humanity. This is the ‘utopia’ that Buckminster Fuller foresaw, now within our reach.”
The goal, he concludes, is to reject:
“… concentrated illicitly aggregated and largely phantom wealth in favor of community wealth defined by community knowledge, community sharing of information, and community definition of truth derived in transparency and authenticity, the latter being the ultimate arbiter of shared wealth.”
Despite this unabashedly radical vision, Steele is hugely respected by senior military intelligence experts across the world. As a researcher at the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, he has authored several monographs advocating the need for open source methods to transform the craft of intelligence. He has lectured to the US State Department and Depar
tment of Homeland Security as well as National Security Councils in various countries, and his new book has received accolades from senior intelligence officials across multiple countries including France and Turkey.
Yet he remains an outspoken critic of US intelligence practices and what he sees as their integral role in aggravating rather than ameliorating the world’s greatest threats and challenges.
This week, I had the good fortune of being able to touch base with Steele to dig deeper into his recent analysis of the future of US politics in the context of our accelerating environmental challenges. The first thing I asked him was where he sees things going over the next decade, given his holistic take.
“Properly educated people always appreciate holistic approaches to any challenge. This means that they understand both cause and effect, and intertwined complexities,” he said. “A major part of our problem in the public policy arena is the decline in intelligence with integrity among key politicians and staff at the same time that think tanks and universities and non-governmental organisations have also suffered a similar intellectual diminishment.
“My early graduate education was in the 1970’s when Limits to Growth and World Federalism were the rage. Both sought to achieve an over-view of systemic challenges, but both also suffered from the myth of top-down hubris. What was clear in the 1970s, that has been obscured by political and financial treason in the past half-century, is that everything is connected – what we do in the way of paving over wetlands, or in poisoning ground water ‘inadvertently’ because of our reliance on pesticides and fertilisers that are not subject to the integrity of the ‘Precautionary Principle,’ ultimately leads to climate catastrophes that are acts of man, not acts of god.”
He points me to his tremendous collection of reviews of books on climate change, disease, environmental degradation, peak oil, and water scarcity. “I see five major overlapping threats on the immediate horizon,” he continues. “They are all related: the collapse of complex societies, the acceleration of the Earth’s demise with changes that used to take 10,000 years now taking three or less, predatory or shock capitalism and financial crime out of the City of London and Wall Street, and political corruption at scale, to include the west supporting 42 of 44 dictators. We are close to multiple mass catastrophes.”
What about the claim that the US is on the brink of revolution? “Revolution is overthrow – the complete reversal of the status quo ante. We are at the end of centuries of what Lionel Tiger calls ‘The Manufacture of Evil,’ in which merchant banks led by the City of London have conspired with captive governments to concentrate wealth and commoditise everything including humans. What revolution means in practical terms is that balance has been lost and the status quo ante is unsustainable. There are two ‘stops’ on greed to the nth degree: the first is the carrying capacity of Earth, and the second is human sensibility. We are now at a point where both stops are activating.”
Former CIA officer’s matrix on the preconditions for revolution It’s not just the US, he adds. “The preconditions of revolution exist in the UK, and most western countries. The number of active pre-conditions is quite stunning, from elite isolation to concentrated wealth to inadequate socialisation and education, to concentrated land holdings to loss of authority to repression of new technologies especially in relation to energy, to the atrophy of the public sector and spread of corruption, to media dishonesty, to mass unemployment of young men and on and on and on.”
So why isn’t it happening yet?
“Preconditions are not the same as precipitants. We are waiting for our Tunisian fruit seller. The public will endure great repression, especially when most media outlets and schools are actively aiding the repressive meme of ‘you are helpless, this is the order of things.’ When we have a scandal so powerful that it cannot be ignored by the average Briton or American, we will have a revolution that overturns the corrupt political systems in both countries, and perhaps puts many banks out of business. Vaclav Havel calls this ‘The Power of the Powerless.’ One spark, one massive fire.”
But we need more than revolution, in the sense of overthrow, to effect change, surely. How does your manifesto for ‘open source everything’ fit into this? “The west has pursued an industrialisation path that allows for the privatisation of wealth from the commons, along with the criminalisation of commons rights of the public, as well as the externalisation of all true costs. Never mind that fracking produces earthquakes and poisons aquifers – corrupt politicians at local, state or province, and national levels are all too happy to take money for looking the other way. Our entire commercial, diplomatic, and informational systems are now cancerous. When trade treaties have secret sections – or are entirely secret – one can be certain the public is being screwed and the secrecy is an attempt to avoid accountability. Secrecy enables corruption. So also does an inattentive public enable corruption.”
Is this a crisis of capitalism, then? Does capitalism need to end for us to resolve these problems? And if so, how? “Predatory capitalism is based on the privatisation of profit and the externalisation of cost. It is an extension of the fencing of the commons, of enclosures, along with the criminalisation of prior common customs and rights. What we need is a system that fully accounts for all costs. Whether we call that capitalism or not is irrelevant to me. But doing so would fundamentally transform the dynamic of present day capitalism, by making capital open source. For example, and as calculated by my colleague JZ Liszkiewicz, a white cotton T-shirt contains roughly 570 gallons of water, 11 to 29 gallons of fuel, and a number of toxins and emissions including pesticides, diesel exhaust, and heavy metals and other volatile compounds – it also generally includes child labor. Accounting for those costs and their real social, human and environmental impacts has totally different implications for how we should organise production and consumption than current predatory capitalism.”
So what exactly do you mean by open source everything? “We have over 5 billion human brains that are the one infinite resource available to us going forward. Crowd-sourcing and cognitive surplus are two terms of art for the changing power dynamic between those at the top that are ignorant and corrupt, and those across the bottom that are attentive and ethical. The open source ecology is made up of a wide range of opens – open farm technology, open source software, open hardware, open networks, open money, open small business technology, open patents – to name just a few. The key point is that they must all develop together, otherwise the existing system will isolate them into ineffectiveness. Open data is largely worthless unless you have open hardware and open software. Open government demands open cloud and open spectrum, or money will dominate feeds and speeds.”
Robert Steele’s vision for open source systems On 1st May, Steele sent an open letter to US vice president Joe Biden requesting him to consider establishing an Open Source Agency that would transform the operation of the intelligence community, dramatically reduce costs, increasing oversight and accountability, while increasing access to the best possible information to support holistic policy-making. To date, he has received no response.
I’m not particularly surprised. Open source everything pretty much undermines everything the national security state stands for. Why bother even asking vice president Biden to consider it? “The national security state is rooted in secrecy as a means of avoiding accountability. My first book, On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World – which by the way had a foreword from Senator David Boren, the immediate past chairman of the Senate Select Committee for Intelligence – made it quite clear that the national security state is an expensive, ineffective monstrosity that is simply not fit for purpose. In that sense, the national security state is it’s own worst enemy – it’s bound to fail.”
Given his standing as an intelligence expert, Steele’s criticisms of US intelligence excesses are beyond scathing – they are damning. “Most of what is produced through secret methods is not actually intelligence at all. It is simply secret information that is, most of the time, rather generic and therefore not actually very useful for making critical decisions at a government level. The National Security Agency (NSA) has not prevented any terrorist incidents. CIA cannot even get the population of Syria correct and provides no intelligence – decision-support – to most cabinet secretaries, assistant secretaries, and department heads. Indeed General Tony Zinni, when he was commander in chief of the US Central Command as it was at war, is on record as saying that he received, ‘at best,’ a meagre 4% of what he needed to know from secret sources and methods.”
So does open source mean you are calling for abolition of intelligence agencies as we know them, I ask. “I’m a former spy and I believe we still need spies and secrecy, but we need to redirect the vast majority of the funds now spent on secrecy toward savings and narrowly focused endeavors at home. For instance, utterly ruthless counterintelligence against corruption, or horrendous evils like paedophilia.
“Believe it or not, 95% of what we need for ethical evidence-based decision support cannot be obtained through the secret methods of standard intelligence practices. But it can be obtained quite openly and cheaply from academics, civil society, commerce, governments, law enforcement organisations, the media, all militaries, and non-governmental organisations. An Open Source Agency, as I’ve proposed it, would not just meet 95% of our intelligence requirements, it would do the same at all levels of government and carry over by enriching education, commerce, and research – it would create what I called in 1995 a ‘Smart Nation.’
“The whole point of Open Source Everything is to restore public agency. Open Source is the only form of information and information technology that is affordable to the majority, interoperable across all boundaries, and rapidly scalable from local to global without the curse of overhead that proprietary corporations impose.”
Robert Steele’s graphic on open source systems thinking It’s clear to me that when Steele talks about intelligence as ‘decision-support,’ he really does intend that we grasp “all information in all languages all the time” – that we do multidisciplinary research spanning centuries into the past as well as into the future. His most intriguing premise is that the 1% are simply not as powerful as they, and we, assume them to be. “The collective buying power of the five billion poor is four times that of the one billion rich according to the late Harvard business thinker Prof C. K. Prahalad – open source everything is about the five billion poor coming together to reclaim their collective wealth and mobilise it to transform their lives. There is zero chance of the revolution being put down. Public agency is emergent, and the ability of the public to literally put any bank or corporation out of business overnight is looming. To paraphrase Abe Lincoln, you cannot screw all of the people all of the time. We’re there. All we lack is a major precipitant – our Tunisian fruit seller. When it happens the revolution will be deep and lasting.”
The Arab spring analogy has its negatives. So far, there really isn’t much to root for. I want to know what’s to stop this revolution from turning into a violent, destructive mess. Steele is characteristically optimistic. “I have struggled with this question. What I see happening is an end to national dictat and the emergence of bottom-up clarity, diversity, integrity, and sustainability. Individual towns across the USA are now nullifying federal and state regulations – for example gag laws on animal cruelty, blanket permissions for fracking. Those such as my colleague Parag Khanna that speak to a new era of city-states are correct in my view. Top down power has failed in a most spectacular manner, and bottom-up consensus power is emergent. ‘Not in my neighborhood’ is beginning to trump ‘Because I say so.’ The one unlimited resource we have on the planet is the human brain – the current strategy of 1% capitalism is failing because it is killing the Golden Goose at multiple levels. Unfortunately, the gap between those with money and power and those who actually know what they are talking about has grown catastrophic. The rich are surrounded by sycophants and pretenders whose continued employment demands that they not question the premises. As Larry Summers lectured Elizabeth Warren, ‘insiders do not criticise insiders.'”
But how can activists actually start moving toward the open source vision now? “For starters, there are eight ‘tribes’ that among them can bring together all relevant information: academia, civil society including labor unions and religions, commerce especially small business, government especially local, law enforcement, media, military, and non-government/non-profit. At every level from local to global, across every mission area, we need to create stewardship councils integrating personalities and information from all eight tribes. We don’t need to wait around for someone else to get started. All of us who recognise the vitality of this possibility can begin creating these new grassroots structures from the bottom-up, right now.”
So how does open source everything have the potential to ‘re-engineer the Earth’? For me, this is the most important question, and Steele’s answer is inspiring. “Open Source Everything overturns top-down ‘because I say so at the point of a gun’ power. Open Source Everything makes truth rather than violence the currency of power. Open Source Everything demands that true cost economics and the indigenous concept of ‘seventh generation thinking’ – how will this affect society 200 years ahead – become central. Most of our problems today can be traced to the ascendance of unilateral militarism, virtual colonialism, and predatory capitalism, all based on force and lies and encroachment on the commons. The national security state works for the City of London and Wall Street – both are about to be toppled by a combination of Eastern alternative banking and alternative international development capabilities, and individuals who recognise that they have the power to pull their money out of the banks and not buy the consumer goods that subsidise corruption and the concentration of wealth. The opportunity to take back the commons for the benefit of humanity as a whole is open – here and now.”
For Steele, the open source revolution is inevitable, simply because the demise of the system presided over by the 1% cannot be stopped – and because the alternatives to reclaiming the commons are too dismal to contemplate. We have no choice but to step up.
“My motto, a play on the CIA motto that is disgraced every day, is ‘the truth at any cost lowers all other costs'”, he tells me. “Others wiser than I have pointed out that nature bats last. We are at the end of an era in which lies can be used to steal from the public and the commons. We are at the beginning of an era in which truth in public service can restore us all to a state of grace.”
Dr. Nafeez Ahmed is an international security journalist and academic. He is the author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It, and the forthcoming science fiction thriller, ZERO POINT. ZERO POINT is set in a near future following a Fourth Iraq War. Follow Ahmed on Facebook and Twitter.
Paul Gilding’s book The Great Disruption was released around the world over 2011 to wide acclaim. It is now being translated into various languages. The Dutch edition has been released (see here) with the German version due for release in late 2012.
A bracing assessment of the planetary crisis that we can no longer avoid-and the once-in-an-epoch chance it offers to build a better world.
“One of those who has been warning me of [a coming crisis] for a long time is Paul Gilding, the Australian environmental business expert. He has a name for this moment-when both Mother Nature and Father Greed have hit the wall at once-‘The Great Disruption.’ ”
– Thomas Friedman in the New York Times
It’s time to stop just worrying about climate change, says Paul Gilding. We need instead to brace for impact because global crisis is no longer avoidable. This Great Disruption started in 2008, with spiking food and oil prices and dramatic ecological changes, such as the melting ice caps. It is not simply about fossil fuels and carbon footprints. We have come to the end of Economic Growth, Version 1.0, a world economy based on consumption and waste, where we lived beyond the means of our planet’s ecosystems and resources.
The Great Disruption offers a stark and unflinching look at the challenge humanity faces-yet also a deeply optimistic message. The coming decades will see loss, suffering, and conflict as our planetary overdraft is paid; however, they will also bring out the best humanity can offer: compassion, innovation, resilience, and adaptability. Gilding tells us how to fight-and win-what he calls The One Degree War to prevent catastrophic warming of the earth, and how to start today.
The crisis represents a rare chance to replace our addiction to growth with an ethic of sustainability, and it’s already happening. It’s also an unmatched business opportunity: Old industries will collapse while new companies will literally reshape our economy. In the aftermath of the Great Disruption, we will measure “growth” in a new way. It will mean not quantity of stuff but quality and happiness of life. Yes, there is life after shopping.
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