The Open-Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth, and Trust (Manifesto Series)

Robert David Steele’s criticisms of the secrecy and mistrust that currently exists within as well as between the “Eight Communities Not Sharing Information” – government, law enforcement, military, business, media, academic, civil societies and non-profits (p. 106) – are right on target. In a very general sense, his solutions to the potentially civilization-destroying problems that result from the cult of secrecy point in the right direction. But, from my perspective, there is a deep flaw in his perspective that I believe must be corrected if his truly inspiring vision has any chance of being realized.He makes an assertion on p. 113 that expresses what I consider to be a serious mistake: “This is precisely the focus of this book: everything is information, information is everything.” This is a version of metaphysical or ontological idealism. As one of “Aristotle’s Children” (Richard Rubenstein, 2003), I believe that real things are both matter and form. (Steele might object to my equating what he means by “information” and what those of us in the Aristotelian tradition mean by “form,” and the ensuing discussion might very well be “informative” for both of us.)What I consider to be Steele’s ontological idealism is behind the way he writes about “collective intelligence.” He draws an analogy between the network of nerve cells in an individual person’s brain and the network of persons that would emerge from “open-source everything.” “We the People,” he says (p. 137), “must first restore our own intelligence and integrity, then reach out to others all over the word to create the World Brain and Global Game – what the technocrat might think of as Web 4.0, and what members of the consciousness community call noosphere.”Although I respect Steele’s leadership in the development of the open-source movement, I think it is vitally important for the members of that movement to avoid the impossible dream of a “world brain.” A brain is not just information; a brain is also “grey matter” encased in a skull. There are no neural connections between the nerve cells in any two persons’ brains, no matter how close they might be intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. To suggest that there could be synaptic connections between and among the brains of everyone, everywhere, is to subject the open-source movement to charges of being hopelessly utopian – “nowhere.”

If there's a single Founding Father of the Open Source movement, Robert D. Steele is it. Everyone else has been playing catchup. And if you don't know what the Open Source revolution is, you need to read this book. You don't even need to know why! You need to buy it, read it, and then you'll *know* why. No other book on Open Source can open your eyes the way this one can. That's because there's no potential use of Open Source intelligence that Steele hasn't anticipated. Collective Intelligence is coming! It's an unstoppable force. And it will change everything. So if you like to know about things like that in advance, you need to buy this book.The information age that was created by personal computers was just a kiddie car with a squeaky horn. By comparison, the open source revolution is a freight train. Its potential to change your world is orders of magnitude greater. This is not hyperbole. In fact superlatives can't begin to express the ground-shaking potential of this next wave of human evolution.Collective Intelligence is a hybrid form of intelligence that's taking everyone by surprise. While researchers have been trying to create artificial intelligence, a new kind of intelligence has emerged and passed them by like they were standing still. The idea behind artificial intelligence was to create computers that can think like humans, but with all the advantages of a computer: lightning fast processing speeds and immense data bases. And although many valuable things have been learned in the process, it's becoming ever more clear that the original aims of the developers of artificial intelligence will probably never be realized.The real revolution in intelligence has been of an entirely different variety. Open Source Systems turn individual human brains into Brain Networks. In a sense, each individual brain then becomes a cell within a much larger brain. And because human brains have skills of analysis, perception, and creative problem solving that computers will never have, this new hybrid form of intelligence is much more powerful than artificial intelligence will ever be. Open Source Intelligence is a new tool of problem solving *and* a new system of organization at the same time. And here's what you need to remember about all of this: when human brains are linked in a network that focuses on a common problem, the processing power of these multiple human brains is similar to a biological supercomputer! Artificial intelligence will never catch up to that. Ever.Probably the best example is a recent open-source science project. Scientists had been trying to unlock the mysteries of a complex protein, but with little success. So they decided to create an open source project that anyone could participate in. They thought if they were lucky, the team of participants would solve the problem in two years. They solved it in two weeks! This is a demonstration of the extraordinary and unmeasurable power of this new form of collective, creative, human intelligence.Ask yourself these questions:What are the implications of this new hybrid form of intelligence? What can it be used for? How will this change human society? How will it change my life? How will it change human organization? How can I use it to my advantage? In how many different ways can it be applied? How can I invest in this new hybrid form of intelligence? How can I avoid missing the boat? How can I be a part of this coming revolution?The Open Source Everything Manifesto answers these questions and more. But ultimately no one has all the answers, for one simple reason. Because you're a unique individual, your creativity may bring a set of skills to open source projects that no one else has. And there's no way of anticipating or predicting what you could add to such a project unless you plug yourself into it to see what you can do. So ultimately only *you* can answer that question.Open Source is not only for computer people! That's the point. It's for *everyone*. This is not a "computer book." Anyone can understand it. The best Open Source Software Systems are those that are designed so that anyone can figure out how to participate quickly and efficiently. That means that you don't have to be computer savvy in order to participate. That's why everyone needs to read this book! Open Source could very well hold the answers to your most vexing problems, right now! And reading this book is the quickest way to find out.Ultimately, Open Source is open-ended in it's applications. Anyone who thinks they can predict all the innovations that might come from it is fooling themselves. The sky's the limit. That's what this book will help you understand. Open Source Everything has radically expanded our ability to DREAM!We can now dare to dream bigger than our limited individual imaginations and be fairly confident that even those dreams are probably gross underestimations of what's actually possible. And that's perhaps the greatest gift of Open Source Everything:It has restored our capacity to dream!The American dream is NOT dead! There's a new dream on the horizon!If someone came along and restored your optimism and your capacity to dream, and challenged you to dream in ways that you never dreamed possible, what value would you put on that message? The answer: it would be beyond any concept of value. And that's what this book can do for you and for all humankind. Words just don't suffice. You need to see it to understand, and this book will enable you to see it. Don't hesitate. It only costs nine dollars! It's the best gamble you'll ever make.It's very readable. Pretty much anyone can understand it. It's not very long. The pages have a very low word count, and only 167 pages are text. The rest are footnotes. It's a pleasure to read. Trust me on this. This book is for everyone. This book is your chance to get in on the ground floor of the next big revolution. How many times have you missed things like that in the past? You don't have to miss it this time. Hop aboard the train. Don't sit on the sidelines and watch it whiz by. Or worse yet, don't be run over by it! If you're heavily invested in a system that's about to be made obsolete by the Open Source Everything revolution, you need to know about it as soon as possible so you can try to minimize your losses.Also by this author: On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography) INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainaabilty Other books I recommend close to this theme: Open Source Intelligence in a Networked World (Continuum Intelligence Studies) No More Secrets: Open Source Information and the Reshaping of U.S. Intelligence (Praeger Security International) Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room

This book will appeal to militaristic people in the dated world of Systems Analysis. In the emerging Age of Algorithms I would recommend first reading YN Harari's 'Homo Deus' (2016)The author is a well-intentioned ex-Marine who became involved in US intelligence, saw the problems, and established a government-sponsored Center for Open Source training: his book seeks to be a Manifesto for Liberation (from lies). There is a problem with such writers which seems to go unremarked, that they have spent their working lives mainly on camps and campuses, so little interaction with ordinary people and cultures.Steele's proposal requires that the great majority of humans make an effort to be better informed, to improve democratic decision-making, yet it is difficult to see this happening in our world which Steele describes as 'an empire of illusion, and the triumph of spectacle'. Social media and banality, along with inwards-obsessed individualism, means we have passed that era when Calvinistic Christians aspired to achieve such rigour.He majors on integrity from Transparency, Truth and Trust, but that has declined since the the Reagan/Thatcher 'What can I get away with' era.Yet he recognises that the USA has a culture that equates wealth with virtue (all those inaccurate Rich Lists), leading to a political culture that can be bought - as achieved by Trump who was not distracted by fundraising campaigns, but used his own money and outrageousness to win.Lack of knowledge alone is not the problem with the 5 billion poorest, rather it is the narrowness of their daily way of life and therefore their lack of experience, which is for others what leads to 'wisdom' in a modern technological society. Dr. Harari in his book says that people now need a rudder, rather than an anchor (eg Islam), with data/information processing by algorithms to guide human decision-making. The data flow is so huge that human systems cannot handle even a small part of it, as exemplified by the CIA's failure to join the dots before the 9/11 massacre.

Delivered promptly and goods were as specifiedRecommended

This is mind blowing stuff. It is so neat and powerful a new way of living. The writer has a depth of life that has given him the wisdom to see the folly that is mankind and also has a escape route for us all. We are headed to our end if we stay on the same path ... Mr Steele gives us a better option and we would be wise to follow.

I wouldn't say it is really well written or that I agree with some of his ideas but the early parts of the book excited me and inspired me into taking action. Great motivator to take the power back.!

The flaw being the continual secrecy and dissembling of our political classes and their connivance with the 1%. Steele's book demonstrates that only integrated honesty and systems thinking can hold elites to account