Anderson describes how we are entering an "age of open systems" as systems of all kinds - organizations, nations, ecosystems - change in similar ways. Boundaries around systems are penetrated, challenged, renegotiated, relocated. Systems that were once relatively isolated develop new connections and linkages to other systems. Anderson argues that this globalizing world is radically "uncentralized" even though people and societies are richly interconnected. All Together Now shows how globalization is advanced even by anti-globalization movements, while global-scale problems such as climate change draw us together into the first global civilization."

All Connected Now: Life in the First Global Civilization

From a quarterly journal from the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy. This issue contains two articles of interest: "The Internet and Civil Society" and "Reliance and Reliability: The Problem of Information on the Internet".

Topics include: Equity, Thin Social Bonds, Threats to Public Deliberation Online, Consumer Choice, and Privacy.

The Internet and Civil Society [PDF]

M. Stuart Lynn, CEO of ICANN, spoke on August 15 to the New America Foundation about the future of the Internet.

Archived streaming Quicktime video coverage is provided by C-SPAN.

The Challenge of Borderlessness and a Billion Connected People: Pondering the Future of the Internet

A 1993 article on the then-emerging field of memetic engineering.

From the outline: Mind as Ecology, Mind as Ecosystem; Language, the Building Blocks of the Mind; An Expanded Model of Communication; Diseases and other Automata; Memetics as an Applied Science; Operational Uses of Memetic Engineering; Spread and Control of Memes; Protecting Yourself.

"The best way to protect oneself [is to] to 'know thyself.' [...] This document is an attempt at memetic manipulation as well."

Memetic Engineering: PsyOps and Viruses for the Wetware

Robert Steele's critically acclaimed April 2000 book on open source intelligence.

Reviews:
Alvin & Heidi Toffler: "Few have thought as deeply or imaginatively about such questions as a super-smart, forty-one-year-old former Marine and intelligence officer named Robert D. Steele. Steele's vision will thrill many--and send a quiver down the spines of others."
The Honorable Richard Kerr, Former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence: "Robert Steele storms into the core of intelligence issues without fear. The scope of his work is impressive and whether you agree with him or not, you cannot ignore what he says. The book is an important addition to the literature on intelligence."

Read a chapter from the book (in Microsoft Word format):

http://www.oss.net/OSS01/prezintel.doc

On Intelligence : Spies and Secrecy in an Open World

(From a review: 'Why Johnny Can't Catalog' might be a more appropriate title for this strongly argued yet brief piece. Author Cory Doctorow casts doubt on the ability (or even willingness) of Joe Six-Pack content-creator to properly and honestly identify his online material. Librarians will be familiar with many of the author's complaints.)

"A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be a utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities."

Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia

If Alexis de Tocqueville were writing about America in the information age, this is the book he'd write. In Making the Information Society, Dr. James Cortada offers profound new perspective on the meaning of the information age in American society."

Making the Information Society: Experience, Consequences, and Possibilities

Every four years, the military issues the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) Report, a document that is key in setting military goals and priorities. [...] "Even before the attack of September 11, 2001, the senior leaders of the Defense Department set out to establish a new strategy for America's defense that would embrace uncertainty and contend with surprise, a strategy premised on the idea that to be effective abroad, America must be safe at home." [...] the strategy seeks to move the US military "from a 'threat-based' model that has dominated thinking in the past to a 'capabilities-based' model for the future."

Quadrennial Defense Review 2001