Change always has a cost and one of those costs is that you have a less safer environment than you once had. In the context of foreign policy safety has long depended on who we are as a nation and the Military, Industrial Congressional Complex. As the "complex" would suggest it is a structure consisting of three different and distinct cultures. The machines (I am talking about hardware not people) inside the military culture ties the culture of industry with the Military and lobbyists tie the culture of the Congress to the Industrial structure. The purse strings tie Congress to the Military. I don't see this relationship changing anytime soon, so the second part between who we are and the MICC, the MICC will have less effect on safety that the change of who we are will. But there is and has always been much effort within the Complex to tie the Markets to the Complex. During the Cold War there was at least an effort to keep the executive branch separate from the MIC (and a pretension that it was separate from Congress) with Congress climbing aboard after the Cold War was "won". I see Trump as a force behind the privatization of the office of the POTUS. As such , there might become a great change to the MICC, which I think will mean the US will become less safe, considering there is going to be a big change in who we are. I mean, maybe it will all work out fine. There is really only one MICC in the world, and maybe the Markets will make the MICCM a part of world safety, by including Russia and other militaries into it. Until and if that happens there is no way I can see the world becoming safer under a Trump leadership. If it does become safer, it is then really a question for whom?

Or was that company Allen's Charter? They are pretty geek-ed out in their web/telephone profile, just wondering is that some of your handy work?

"That fortuitous turn of events gave the Internet time to emerge." But, if not a node, you must have given them an edge to work from, or did you just take your money and run?

"I've built quite a few technical platforms before" Sorry, I was just stating the obvious. The "you" in "I've built" starts with a strategy, which is always simple, but then you are correct. A "platform" is a base, and strategy is usually over a base and not a part of it. You're basically overlaying a decentralized network over a distributed network and letting growth come out of the conflict. What you need are people to man the front-lines and nodes for you.

"A platform is based on simple standards of interconnection and shared services." I don't agree. A platform is based on simple strategy, with its own Ends, Ways, and Means.

That tractor and accessories look a lot like some of the equipment my father built. As the person actually fabricating and operating the equipment, I would like to see what the tractor looks like after a day in the field. Actually I would like the opinion of the operator who would have to sit down on that thing, for more than a few minutes, what he thought of the idea. Precision of fit and accuracy of movement doesn't add to the cost of ownership, they subtract from the cost. I am afraid that tractor would work on a one-acre farm and that would be about it, but the idea has merit.

Were they arrested trying to get in or out?

"The event he creates disrupts established global social networks and puts them into turmoil." To underline the point, even your network was put into turmoil, as it couldn't stay on topic. But, "That turmoil creates the opportunity and sustenance needed to activate dozens of small subnetworks/groups." I wonder if the person burning the Korans wasn't an activated sub-net/group rather than a first-order GG. His reasoning behind the burning had more to do with his feelings that he has stated of always giving ground to what he perceives as the terrorists, than a goal related exercise, such as orientation building. Apparently he didn't want to escalate a war, or to end a war, it was only an expression that he was induced to make because of the flux produced by other forces, these forces being the first-order of GGs. It was the first-order GG who wanted things to escalate, through the modern media, by making the enemy seem both larger and more powerful than those who struck on Sept. 11th, 2001, or even those who we are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. While this sounds like some kind of a conspiracy theory, because these forces of flux can't be seen, but isn't that a part of being a GG, too, not being seen when it doesn't suit your purpose? In that case, I believe Terry Jones was more of a tool for a GG than a true GG, but either way I think, like you say, it is an interesting example.

A Leviathan force is an incumbent force within an economy. It is there to enforce conformity within its movement. The insurgency force within the same economy is the system administrative force that generates diversity and allows evolution to take place within its movement through explicit contracts. The two forces together create the structure of the economy. Perhaps the question should be, from which economy does Wikileaks conform to or generate diversity from? It may have lowered the approval rating of the Afghanistan war by 10%, but what is its economic impact globally? There are basically 3 global economic empires, the EU, the USA, and China. Each are structured differently with the EU more system administrative and China more Leviathan. The USA has a small, but more powerful Leviathan force, and a large, but less powerful system administration force, in comparison of the other two. My guess is that Wikileaks is a Leviathan force economically connected to the EU. It is there to enforce conformity and not to generate diversity in the global economy.

I am not so sure the answer is in what you grow, but how resilient the crop is that you have planted. This is the first time I have grown corn, and I am amazed, no pun intended, at how it grows. I planted a hybred, so how it acted in its natural world could be quite different. I read that you should fertilze in mid-summer, so I mound a compost around the corn stocks and roots apeared above the compost to either act as stabilizers or to bring added nitrogen from the compost. This new growth is something I anticipated, because I think of corn as just a big grass, but I didn't really count on it behaving as I thought it would. As it was, my corn out performed the garden next door, mainly because I watched the sun, marked where the earth was closes to the sun, and provided water,even while it was raining, to the plant. These "new" world plant will perform if given the chance. I am not so sure, but I feel that some of the "new" world crops exihibited resilient chariteristics that has largely been bred out of them, that we may need in the future.

"...we all go down and people outside dont' notice little old PEI - They all have their [own] p[r]oblems." Yeah, and what problem is that, trying to find a self-sustaining community to feed off of? And your going to advertise? are you guys going to install your own water system? Apparently you will have your own food supply, sounds good to me. Do you need some power, we have a big dam here? Where do you get your power?

"..and we dont have the force capability" Force is only one important part in the structure of a community. When a community becomes fractured, as in the events you posted about, not only is your force capability changed in the command part of your structure, but your velocity magnitude in the control part of your structure changes as well. This can be easily seen in Haiti. The government was unable to command events, and the people were either killed or trapped under the burden of rubble or complexity as their velocity reached near zero magnitude. So at the time of fracture or coalescence (system perturbation), PEI would need to change their structure, to compensate for the change in command and control caused by the energy collapse. After the system perturbation you described hit, PEI would take a different structure than Haiti's or the vision of what my community would suffer, because it would have a unique power-law slope. The events would come down to some kind of power-law of distribution of command and control, where the events (the number of commands acted on) would be over the magnitude of the events (change in the direction in the velocity of resources entering or leaving the area) and define that structure. The slope would begin very steep and positive, and the trick would be to then flatten it in the negative direction as soon as possible. To take Haiti as an example, first on the scene, to lend some of its command and control structure, was NBC, ABC, CNN and other news organizations. Just behind the news media came the SOF, who added to the command portion of the structure that the news media began. Then came the first-responders, who added some to the command, but concentrated on controlling the movement of the community by getting the community moving again, at least those who were able to move. As these layers of command and control were added, and possibly subtracted, the slope defining this structure changed. But then again it would take a very dynamic real-time database to notice such a change, to say the least.

"The end of the world as we know it" I am glad to have read your posting. I have been thinking about my local community, in those terms, for some time now. Your scenario for PEI seems pretty accurate, but I don't really know that much about your area. If it is an island, it probably will not be around in fifty years, but if an energy crisis comes about, it probably will happen, as your story goes, before your island disappears. And your scenario will probably be similar to other non-critical communities. I think my community and other resource heavy (dams) environments will look more like Haiti after the earth quake than what you imagine for PEI. If the military has not already moved in, a SOF will be the first on the ground, isolating critical infrastructures and protecting the people who need to be here, and possibly, like Haiti, from those who are already here. This force will become an insurgency force that will quickly isolate, reorient, and re-harmonize the area from the incumbents, to its advantage. This will be done to mass its size to insure against an insurgency that may follow from a mostly globalized network looking for advantages in the new world.

" we don't have the resources left to get into wars on the scale that might return some national sense of self." Don't you find it disturbing that we (USA) need war to give us "some national sense of self", when the Asians and the European's don't seem to?

My point was: war is won by nations not countries. We fought WWII as a nation not a country. Your pictures are of countries not those inside a nation. You "win" by negotiations (or not) from a position of strength. Countries have no position of strength. A nation has a center and edges, a position of power and strength. A country has no center and my be defined by some geographical edges, or not. An empire is a nation, not a country. European nation, Asian nation, or the North American country called the USA. This is not a position of strength for the USA, because there is no center and its edges are falling away into fronts. A nation has a center with clear edges that define its shape or form and it hits you like a rock not a fan. A fan can blow you over, but in time you can recover and fly off. Rock smashes fly. The USA today is formed into fronts, without edges that fan-outward from some undetermined center. Those behind the fronts are fighting separate battles that together show weakness to its enemies, not strength. And the reason the USA is no longer a nation (as we fought in WWII) is that most people think like you and have no image, other than one’s self, which they can relate to. Much of this has to do to the fact that they might be in the fight, but they are not at war. It is only in war that one would need to look at any other image for strength, besides the one in the mirror. That is because, in a fight, the one in the mirror or those that look just like him/her are the only ones in the fight.

To the last three question: I am more detail oriented; but patterns are useful; don't have to move at all; I see, but feel is really better. It would be interesting to know how many in the pictures consider themselves Christians. I am just saying, that could be a type of culture common to them all? I know it doesn't seem like they could be related culturally, you probably wouldn't be caught dead next to a Britt or a Governer.

“Quants make great tools which I agree need to be used BUT these tools need to be employed in partnership with Qual experts who understand the entire context, as squishy, soft and muddy as the bigger picture can be at times.” But the real conversation between Quants and Quals is in faith and certainty. Quants have faith in numbers; Quals have certainty in numbers. This gap between faith and certainty is not one easily crossed, as religion has certainty and science has faith. Maybe one way to think of this is: science has faith that the input they are getting is accurate, but has no bias of its outcome; religion has a certainty about the output it has to give, but no bias of its input. Religion will always enforce conformity in its input, base on its output; science will enforce conformity in its output, based on its input. These are dynamically opposed logic centers that are not easily conformed or diversified, and most often settled by war, the judgment rendered by resources or the lack there of.

“I wrote the (rather silly) post…” It was not silly; it was something you wished could do without any consequences, no? “Remember, this tribe will run in parallel to a global system and its intent is to provide members with a decisive competitive advantage within that system. Let's do some free thinking on the subject to get your brain working.” If these worlds are going to run parallel, the virtual and global system, then we first should look at the force normal to both. This perpendicular force is what controls the frictional relationships between the two. Then perhaps the force opposite the normal force, which would probably be considered the base, or what is more commonly called the base line. Usually this base is a timeline between the past and future, with the potentials of Want and Need at either end. Of course the relationship between the past and future are judged by the honor, interest and fear between it, but that would be a start. Then I suppose we would need to understand the structure created as a result of the normal force and the two parallel forces inner acting within the same environment. We could then follow up with understanding the gap between the two parallel forces and the judged commands needed to coalescence and fragment the relationships of the agents and the control of the velocity that distributes the agents within the gap, or not. At least that could be a start.

With all these new words like: “Buildership; builder; maker; top-down Leader and Manager hierarchies; co-creation, and you take the first letter of Umair’s five points of strategy: Renewal; Democracy; Equity; Peace; and Meaning, and combine it in the word ReDeMPtion, then this “new” concept should make their heads explode, for fundamentalists all over the world. While Umair is not trying to turn capitalism into a new religion, he is trying to turn it into a new life sustaining force. Some might say that he is getting out of the area of that which is Caesar’s and down a road few brave men will travel. I hope he understands this. Small wonder then that the camera was mostly on the man and not the slide presentation, gutsy move. Of course there are no worries that what Umair is trying to accomplish will happen. Corporations have only one implicit rule-set, and that is to maximize profits. Corporations only gave lip-service to empowering their employees and would not even pay living wages; Umair’s ReDeMPtion will fair no better.

Of course, I define the conservative-center as those that maintain an explicit brand, while implicitly, not so much. They wrap themselves in the flag, but still have to make the sell, buy, or compromise. You know those like the US Chamber of Commerce. Very conservative on the right, and very practical. Practical enough that they could tip the leverage either way, but are centered. And, in the USA, very, very powerful. The pressure containing this powerful force is building-up, at least the potential is becoming huge. Just watch-out for deflation.

"The left-center has gone for authoritarian technocratic oligarchy in a velvet glove." Many on the consevative-center are humping that dog, at least on the leg. Not sure they are even using gloves.

"So me and everyone will just gravitate to the top 10." True, but who do the 10 follow?