Lifeboat Foundation

The Future of Spage-Age Management, Today! by Mr. Andres Agostini at http://lnkd.in/d7zExFi

This is an excerpt from the conclusion section o, “…The Future of Spage-Age Management, Today!..,” that discusses some management strategies. To read the entire piece, just click the link at the end of article:

BEGINNING OF EXCERPT.

Mr. David Shaw’s question, “…Andres, from your work on the future which management skills need to be developed? Classically the management role is about planning, organizing, leading and controlling. With the changes coming in the future what’s your view on how this management mix needs to change and adapt?…” This question was posited on an Internet Forum, formulated by Mr. David Shaw (Peterborough, United Kingdom) at http://lnkd.in/ba6xX-K on October 09, 2013.

This P.O.V. addresses practical and structural solutions, not onerous quick fixes. THIS P.O.V. WILL BE COMMUNICATED UNAMBIGUOUSLY AND EMPHATICALLY.

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Here’s a thought experiment inspired by the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI): Suppose in our search for beings in other galaxies, we come across a species that looks very much like us and can communicate with us reasonably well, so that it doesn’t take very long for them to understand what we’re about. In other words, they are definitely within our sphere of spontaneous sympathy. Moreover they even possess technologies that we consider relatively advanced, such as mobile phones. (After all, how else could we have recognised them as intelligent beings?) At the same time, however, they also tend to live half as long as we do – and for reasons that are quite obvious to us because they lack the sort of societal infrastructure that would enable them to live longer.

To be sure, these beings think that their lives are perfectly fine, aside from spates of internecine strife that seem to be fuelled by alien sources (perhaps the same aliens that enabled us to discover them). In any case, their culture is designed around the way they have conducted their lives for centuries. The question is whether we should violate Star Trek’s Prime Directive and substantially intervene to provide them with an infrastructure that would allow them to live longer and perhaps flourish in a way that would go beyond the sort of superficial trade relations that currently mark our maintenance of a ‘respectful’ distance from them. Here are some options:

1. No matter the cost to them or us, ‘civilising’ these aliens is an end worth pursuing in its own right – even if it ends up a gallant failure.
2. We can’t really afford much backlash from the natives, especially given that backups from Earth will not be forthcoming. So, we need to tread carefully, perhaps envisaging a long-term strategy of cultivating natives over several generations.
3. We commit to leaving the natives with some care packages and a time-limited run of advisors whose mission is to get them to use those packages as effectively as possible, so that eventually they can produce their contents for themselves.
4. We simply obey the Prime Directive and deal with them as free market traders without any particular concern for how they end up using whatever the both of us agree to have been a fair exchange of goods.

Now let us think about planet Earth, where we have the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights – and not the Prime Directive – as our guiding normative principle. Clearly, (4) would be seen as a libertarian dys/utopia that would render the Declaration irrelevant (though it may well capture China’s current policy towards the Third World), whereas (3) would be seen as the default position of most development aid. I have advocated (2) as Imperialism 2.0, and of course classic Imperialism is captured by (1).

Just as the sixteenth century European conquistadors thought they were about to discover lands of great wealth and potential superiority to what they had experienced in their homelands, our own interstellar voyagers may be subject (occasionally at least) to a rude awakening, for which we need a policy. And perhaps considering such a policy might help us to think more clearly about the aliens on our own planet – i.e. those in need of ‘development’.

Overmanagement by Mr. Andres Agostini

This is an excerpt from the conclusion section o, “…Overmanagement…,” that discusses some management strategies. To read the entire piece, just click the link at the end of article:

BEGINNING OF EXCERPT.

Question: What other contemporary issues particularly concern you? Do you find signs of
hope or resistance around these issues that, perhaps, you finding heartening?

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by J.M.P. — The Economist

A GROUP of self-described anarchists, libertarians and Ron Paul supporters fleeing the crumbling world economic system have founded Galt’s Gulch, a community in Chile inspired by Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”—and with an economy based entirely on Bitcoin. Or that’s the goal, anyway.

“Our farm workers and suppliers still want to get paid in pesos,” Ken Johnson, the project’s founder and managing partner, explains. “But Bitcoin as the John Galt coin? Why shouldn’t it be?”

Continue reading “Bitcoin paradise” »

Terence Lee for Tech in Asia

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the country’s central bank, has decided not to intervene on whether businesses can accept Bitcoin as a means of transacting goods and services.

“Whether or not businesses accept bitcoins in exchange for their goods and services is a commercial decision in which MAS does not intervene,” it told Singapore-based Bitcoin trading platform Coin Republic in an email.

Read more

By DAN SANTELLA The Monitor

PEÑITAS — It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s … no, it’s a Border Patrol blimp. Mobile, unmanned, aerial security surveillance has arrived in the Rio Grande Valley.

A so-called aerostat surveillance blimp was unveiled to media Thursday afternoon in a field south of Interstate 2/Expressway 83. Standing behind a U.S. Department of Homeland Security dais, local and national officials introduced the big, white airship and fielded questions about its upcoming use.

Noting how border fencing ends near Peñitas, Rosendo Hinojosa, chief patrol agent of the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector, said that the aerostat will provide Valley authorities with means previously unavailable to them.

Continue reading “Surveillance blimp will help police border” »

Transleadership! By Mr. Andres Agostini

This is an excerpt from the conclusion section of, “…Transleadership!…” that discusses some management, leadership and futurism theories and practices and strategies.

To read the entire piece, just click the link at the end of article:

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The Future of Management Wargaming, Now! By Mr. Andres Agostini

This is an excerpt from the conclusion section of, “…The Future of Management Wargaming , Now…!” that discusses some management theories and practices. To read the entire piece, just click the link at the end of article:

In addition to being aware and adaptable and resilient before the driving forces reshaping the current present and the as-of-now future, there are some extra management suggestions that I concurrently practice:

a) “…human knowledge is doubling every ten years [as per the 1998 standards]…”

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The Future of Skunkworks Management, Now! By Mr. Andres Agostini

This is an excerpt from the conclusion section of, “…The Future of Skunkworks Management, Now!…” that discusses some management theories and practices and strategies. To view the entire piece, just click the link at the end of this post:

Peter Drucker asserted, “…In a few hundred years, when the story of our [current] time is written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event those historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce [not so-called ‘social media’]. IT is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time ─ literally ─ substantial and growing numbers of people have choices. for the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it…”
Please see the full presentation at http://goo.gl/FnJOlg