Robert Steele on Open Source Everything: Ethics is an OS

https://www.singularityweblog.com/robert-steele-open-source-everything/

Robert Steele is a very interesting person indeed: in the 1980s Robert was a clandestine CIA agent who believed not only in secrecy but also in Reagan’s right-wing politics and trickle down economics. Today Steele is the author of The Open Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth, and Trust. So how does a former spy and CIA intelligence professional, and Marine Corps infantry officer, become an honorary hacker, open source evangelist and the top Amazon reviewer devoted to non-fiction? Well, I invited Steele on my Singularity 1on1 podcast to ask him about that, as well as a few other things.

During our 82 min discussion with Robert Steele we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: whether humanity is making progress or not; failed states, regime change and ISIS; The Open-Source Everything Manifesto; smart cities and nature; shifting from secrecy to open source; producing more actionable intelligence than the entire US intelligence complex; collecting systems versus sharing and processing systems; capitalism, the singularity and true cost economics; industrialization, education and being a sheep; open source everything as a way to unleash our entrepreneurial capabilities; polarization and the preconditions for revolution; panarchy as extreme democracy and informed self-governance; ethics and integrity…

My three favorite quotes that I will take away from this conversation with Robert Steele are:

“The chasm, the gap between people with power and people with knowledge is now catastrophic.”

“Open source intelligence is the application of the craft of intelligence, legally and ethically, to create smart cities, smart nations, smart companies and smart citizens. It’s about not being a sheep.”

“Ethics is about the truth. And transparency. And trust. Ethics is how a civilization hands on the lessons of history, from one generation to the next. Ethics is the cultural code for getting the most out of any group and any situation with the least amount of damage and the least amount of waste. So ethics is an operating system.”

(music)

My name is Nikoli, a.k.a. Socrates

and you are watching Singularity One On One

If you guys enjoy this show you can help me
make it better

in two ways. Number one is you can write

a review on ITunes. Or number two, you can

simply make a donation. Today, my guest

on the show is Robert Steele. Robert Steele

is not only the author of
Open Source Everything Manifesto,

but he's also a former spy,
and CIA intelligence professional,

Marine Corps infantry officer, honorary hacker,

past presidential candidate and a top

Amazon reviewer devoted to non fiction

in 98 categories, who has done
more than 1700 book reviews.

So, Hi Robert. Thanks very much
for joining us tonight.

Oh, it's a pleasure to be with you.

Fantastic. So Robert, I introduced you

in kind of a very impressive paragraph

but, if I were to ask you to put yourself

in a sentence or two, how would you best do

that yourself?

Lived all over the world, had a great

many experiences and I am just stunned that

as a human race, we are not doing better.

Ah, interesting. We are not doing better.

So, let me ask you then, would you say that

in your view, we are making progress

or are we making regress? Are we going

forward or backwards?

You know, the answer is always some of each.

We have certainly made progress in poverty

and infectious disease and a few other areas,

but we have also managed to destroy the world

in the last fifteen years. We've gone from

25 failed states to 175 failed states. The policies

of the U.S. neo conservative government

not just under the Bush/Cheney administration

but, under Obama/Biden have essentially

destabilized the world. Europe is suffering

a two million illegal immigrants and I predicted

this in my second book in 2002.

I basically said, if you don't take care of

the poor, the poor will come to you.

This is fascinating, and there's so many

things I want to grab, so, I don't even know

which one to get first, but...Let me ask

you this. You said, 175 failed states, can you

please give us; elaborate on this more because...

Well, I don't have the graphic in front of me,

but if you look it up, just look up the

number of failed states. My point is, that

the United States government has chosen to

be the best friend of dictators, rather

than a champion of democracy. And, so for

example, in Saudi Arabia, which has an
unemployment rate of 29 percent

among its young, we have chosen to allow

Saudi Arabia to export terrorism in the form of

wahabbism. We've asked Saudi Arabia to

create ISIS as a way of bringing down Syria

which is a totally unnecessary
destabilization effort.

And, we are just generally allowing some

very bad things to happen. For example in

the Ukraine, we supported a neo Nazi fascist takeover.

And, the division of the country. We supported

a number of color revolutions all inherently

aimed at Russia, rather than at improving

the lives of the people in those countries.

Wow, you are already blowing my mind

here in the first couple of minutes,

so let me grab just one point. You said,

Saudi Arabia created ISIS. Can you elaborate on that?

If you look up online, who created ISIS, you'll

find out that ISIS was in fact created

out of the Libyan intervention, which was

started by the French, but exaggerated by the Americans

and CIA wanted to create a form of jihadist force

such as they created for Afghanistan and their

focus was on destabilizing and ultimately
kicking Assad out of power

Assad has long been a Soviet client.

Some people call him a Soviet agent.

I personally think he's simply

the guy in charge of the country and we have no

business trying to kick him out of office.

I am totally opposed to the American

penchant for regime change. It should not

be our business to change regimes. It should

be our business to foster peace and prosperity.

So, okay, as a former political science

student myself, those are all very interesting

and very deep and profound and important,

vitally important topics, but, I'm going to
actually have to pass on on that

and move on to the topic that I would like

to focus on today, which is, kind of, in a way, maybe

arguably more important than these particularities

so, let me ask you this, what is the

Open Source Everything Manifesto about?

Well, one of the things, I started the
open source intelligence revolution

in the 1980's and as a spy I realized

one day how little we knew, because we were

focusing only on stealing secrets and so, I did an

inventory of what could be known using

open. legal, ethical methods and it turned

out that the U.S. government, because it relies

only on secrets, is working with roughly

2 percent of the available information.

It hasn't put into place a vehicle for actually

reaching out in 183 languages to collect

local knowledge and expert wisdom in languages

we don't speak from people we don't talk to.

And, so I created the open source intelligence

revolution and my soundbite at the time was

"Do not send a spy where a school boy can go."

Then I discovered the open source software

and open source hardware revolutions led by

among others The Free Software guy,
...(Richard Stallman)... Yes, exactly, RMS,

whom I admire very much. After looking at

open source software and open source hardware

I realized that they really weren't worth much

unless they also had open access, open data and

open spectrum and so then I started to

create a typology of opens. And, in 2007 I was

invited to be the key note speaker at Gnomedex

in Seattle and so I did a briefing on open source
everything

and I identified about 30 opens. Then around

2011 I decided to write the book,
The Open Source Everything Manifesto

and I was able to list about 60 opens.

Then after I published the book and got some
attention,

the Guardian did a profile of me in 2014

by Nafeez Ahmed, then I realized that the opens

were chaotic. They were an arhcipelago.

They were not talking to each other. They

weren't collaborating with each other.

So, I worked with Michel Bauwens from the

Peer to Peer (P2P) Foundation and Marcin Jacobowski

from Open Source Ecology and we created a

construct of 9 core opens and within those

9 core opens, we picked 3 sub-opens for each

and our hope is that eventually we get all

of the opens to work together and create

smart cities that are not just on broadband

but, smart cities that eliminate all waste.

Mellissa Sterry is one of the wonderful people that

I listen to and pay attention to. She talks about

a bionic city and what would a city look like

if nature designed it? If nature designed

a city, it would have no fraud, waste or abuse.

It would have no agricultural waste, it

would have no energy waste. It would have

no waste of materials, housing and office

construction. It would have no wasted water.

We have systems, even if India builds

smart cities, they are about to builds 20

smart cities and they are making a huge

mistake, because they're defining their

smart city as solely and exclusively centered

on having broadband access. That's not a

smart city. That's a dumb city with access.

I have to agree with that part on India

and what smart city entails would be

much broader and bigger and deeper and

more profound then just broadband, but let

me push a little bit back on what you said,

"If nature designed a city, we'd have no fraud,

waste or abuse." I mean when I look at

nature, I see what Thomas Hobbs called

life being nasty, brutish and short and

often violent, so we have usually the

stronger killing the weak and old being

killed by the young, etc... etc... So, in

a way, maybe you could say that there is

no waste in nature because everything is

being recycled and reused but, I certainly

would say that it doesn't lack any abuse

or suffering or violence, but actually all

of those are abundant in my view.

Well, I take a more positive view and what

I am really thinking about in relation to

nature is energy and entropy. I'm not

thinking about the violence. You are

absolutely correct, but the bottom line

for me, is that we design things that are

very, very wasteful. For example, London

right now, is trying to create a smart city

and an internet of things and they're doing

absolutely nothing to get rid of all those

ugly highways. They are doing nothing to

reduce their dependence on petrol driven

vehicles. They are doing nothing to create

bicycle and pedestrian access. So, that's

not a smart city at all. That's a city, and

this is IBM's problem, that's a city in

which you are retro fitting gee-whiz

technologies for communications to really

absurd, wasteful, legacy, industrial era

artifacts. A smart city would actually be

a small city. It would be a city in which

agriculture would be integrated into every

neighborhood. it would be a city that you

could walk to work. It would be a city in

which all of the jobs were actually worth

doing. It would be the city in which the

arts and humanities would be present on

every level and in every neighborhood. So,

for me, we haven't had the conversation

about what a smart city really is and this

article that I have done for you on human

intelligence and open source technologies

is perhaps the beginning of that conversation.

I have to say that I really enjoyed your

article and I'm just about to publish it

so it should actually be published at the

time we publish the final edit of this

interview, so people will be able to check

it out and I have to say, as a cyclist myself,

and someone who is very concerned and

interested in sustainability and not wasting

things, I totally agree with you on the idea of
a smart city. But you

know what? Allow me to, please roll back

the tape start at the beginning because

there is a kind of a seeming paradox

between your background and what you're

saying, so I want you to lead us through

the story of what led you to be where you

are, because, basically, you, in your book

even you say that in the 1980's you were

a republican, Reaganite, believer in trickle

down economics...

I WAS WRONG! I have repented my sins.

(Both laugh)

Okay but, but the question then is why

and how?

Well, let me tell you the story.

That's a very, very big shift.

I grew up as the son of an oil man. I went

into the marine corp as an infantry officer

and then from the Marine Corp the CIA came

in and pulled me out and I became a

clandestine service case officer. Now the

Marine Corp and the CIA are inherently

conservative organizations that do not

question authority. They basically obey

orders and do what they're told to do.

In 1988 I was asked by the Marine Corp to

leave the CIA and become the senior civilian

responsible for creating the Marine Corps

Intelligence Center, and I did that and I

spent twenty million dollars on very secret

equipment to access all secret information

and in one little corner I had a PC connected

to the internet and back in 1988 the internet

was something called "the Source", that was

the google of it's time. Well imagine my

surprise when all of my analysts started

lining up for the PC. And, I went to them

and I said, I've just spent twenty million

dollars so you can access everything that

NSA and CIA knows and you're standing in

line fora PC? And, they said, yes, because

CIA and NSA don't know anything about

Burundi, Haiti or Somalia, they only know

things about the Soviet Union and China

and North Korea and Iran. That was my

awakening. That was when I realized that

we had a cold war government with cold war

institutions that were focused obsessively

on a few heavy targets, like Russia and

China and were ignoring the entire rest

of the world. So, I started the Open Source

Intelligence revolution and in fact, I

testified to the Aspin-Brown Commission and

they asked me to do a competition of me

and my phone against a sixty billion dollar

a year intelligence community, and I won.

They set the target as Burundi and they

asked me to get whatever I could on Burundi

over night, it was over a weekend actually

and they asked the entire U.S. Intelligence

community to provide everything they had

on Burundi. They had nothing on Burundi.

Nobody cares about Burundi, but Burundi is

where the Marine Corps goes. I was able to

produce one to fifty thousand Russian combat

charts, maps for Burundi, French imagery,

spot imagery of Burundi, cloud free, less

than four years old, in the archives at the

1 to 50 level. Jane's Information Group,

my friend Alfred Rollington called in an

analyst for the weekend and he created an

order of battle for the tribes, not just the army

the U.S. intelligence community only does

armies that where uniforms they don't do

tribal orders of battle. I was able to get

from the Institute of Scientific Information

that the top hundred academics writing on

Burundi and Rwanda. From Lexis/Nexis I got

the top journalist writing on Burundi and

Rwanda, and I don't care what they've written

I just want them for debriefing. And, from

Oxford Analytica, I got the last twenty

reports they had done on the geo-political

implications of genocide in Burundi and

Rwanda. With five or six phone calls in one

day, I was able to put together more on

Burundi then the entire U.S. secret intelligence

community in the last ten years...

Because I knew who knew and was able to

reach out in the open source world and I

was able to pull this together. Okay? So,

that was my awakening. That's when I started

to realize U.S. government was actually a

military industrial complex that exists to

spend money to enrich the few. It's not

actually focused on furthering democracy

or creating prosperity for the average American.

And, what year was that again, when you...

1988.

I see.

In 1989 I ghost wrote an article for

Gen. Al Gray, in which I talked about

emerging threats as being non state actors

with off the shelf weapons, with no order

of battle, with no rules of engagement,

precisely what ISIS is today and the

Marine Corps tried to get the U.S. government

to invest money in preparing to go against

ISIS like capabilities and everybody refused.

Today we spend one percent on the infantry.

The other ninety nine percent is spent on

very heavy expensive things that don't do

what they're suppose to do and it turns out

that the U.S. government, U.S. military is

in the business of building really, really

expensive things that enrich a few corporations

but don't actually do anything to reduce

the number of amputees and dead, wounded

and suicides that we have. We do not have
a human centric

military. We have a military that exists for

Lockheed Martin's convenience.

Yeah, and the F35 is a good example.

Absolutely, in fact the F35 is killing pilots

because nobody thought about the fact that

the chemicals that are associated with the

stealth covering would bleed into the
cockpit

and kill pilots.

Wow, I didn't even know that.

Yeah, we are creating a lot of garbage and

oh, by the way, the Air Force doesn't know

how to run secure satellites so now all of

the Navy captains are learning celestial

navigation, and the army officers are trying

to figure out how they are going to know

where they are when the GPS goes out.

You shut down the GPS and the U.S. military

grinds to a halt. And, that's why I also

started getting interested in redundancy and

sustainability and survivor-ability.

I essentially realized that we have

a government that is spending a lot of

money creating things that don't actually

produce peace or prosperity.

Wow, and again, very dense answer with lots

of topics there, so let me see if I can

sort of lead the way to sort of reveal your

thesis and hopefully the most conducive way

possible. So, tell us... Perhaps the next step

will be best if we discuss sort of the

dichotomy or the tension or the opposition,

if you will, between secrecy on the one hand

and open source on the other hand, because

they do seem to be mutually exclusive.

So, we did already see your background

sort of, your 'A Ha' moment, your amazing

competition against the whole intelligence

community gathering that much on Burundi

over a weekend. So, now talk to us about

the shift from secrecy into open source

and how is that reasonable or the best

way forward?

(pause)

First, let's go back to the beginning of

the U.S. Secret Intelligence community,

people are only now starting to realize

that Allen Dulles was a traitor.

Allen Dulles went against Eisenhower and against

Kennedy and he single handedly rescued the

Nazi regime and much of the wealth of the

Nazi regime. Allen Dulles helped Nazi's

escape justice. He imported thousands of Nazi's,

not just scientists but leaders and people

that had run death camps and so forth.

--- We also captured all of the gold in

the Philippines, that the Japanese had

taken from China and elsewhere and then

they buried it in the Philippines when our

submarines were interrupting the return of

the gold to Japan. That gold, it's a story

that's told in a book called "Gold Warriors"

by Peggy and Sterling Seagraves, that gold

became the Black Lilly covert action fund

and Allen Dulles used that fund to restore

fascists in Italy, Japan and Germany and it

became.... what's that?

Guatemala perhaps?

Also. We love fascists. We love fascists

in Indonesia as well. Essentially CIA became

a, something that Harry Truman never, ever

anticipated. And, Harry Truman himself wrote

a letter in the Washington Post in 1968 that

said that he had never intended for CIA

to become a covert operations organization.

But, it was able to use secrecy under

Allen Dulles to escape accountability.

I have testified to the Secrecy Commission

of Senator Patrick Moynihan and I testified

to the effect that secrecy nine times out of

ten is not used for good reasons, it's used

to avoid accountability and it's used to

do evil in our name, without being discovered.

Now, openness is actually important because

openness is subject to audit. One of the

problems with the secret community is that

it believes in what are called bi-lateral

relations. So, for example Americans will

meet with the Germans one on one and they

will meet with the French one on one then

they will meet with the Jordanians one on one

and what happens is that two governments

lie to each other...because there is no third

party present, there is no real quality

control. Now the neat thing about the

openness environment is it's multi-national.

And not only is it multi-national, but you

have eight tribes. I call these eight

tribes of information. The academic tribe,

the civil society tribe, which includes labor

unions and religions, the commerce tribe,

which is especially small business,
governments,

especially local, law enforcement, media,

military, media, including bloggers like

yourself. And then, military and
non-governmental.

Now, I did my first graduate thesis on

predicting revolution. My second graduate

thesis was on strategic information
management

and what I discovered was that the

government was essentially operating on

two percent of the relevant information.

Most of the information that we need in

order to make good decisions is known to

people who haven't put it on-line, don't

speak English, don't have security clearances

and generally don't like the U.S. government,

but because of the way in which we are

structured...If you look at a typical

embassy overseas, the diplomats are

outnumbered, by all the other people from

other agencies that don't trust the Department

of State to do it right. The embassy officers

don't have money with which to buy legal

ethical information from private investigators,

or investigative journalists or information

brokers, or commercial intelligence companies,

the only people with money are the spies

and the spies insist that you commit treason

before they'll listen to you.

This is a very perverted way of collecting

information. So, what you end up with

is a country team, that essentially collects

twenty percent at best of what can be known

and then, because they are supposed to

coordinate anything that goes out
electronically,

instead of coordinating electronic messages that can

be shared with everybody, they send what

they collect back in the pouch, a physical

pouch. And, what that means is we spill

eighty percent of what we collect,

because once it gets back in a hard copy

volume to a desk officer that's overworked,

that desk officer will either file it or

throw it away. They will not exploit it.

And this comes to the whole big data issue.

Mary Meeker has said we process less than

one percent of the big data that we collect.

While the intelligence community and the

U.S. government are in the same position,

we have spent the last fifty years developing

collection systems. We haven't been developing

processing and analytic systems.

I wrote a forward to a book on cyber hosting

by Stephen Arnold and my forward outlines

the failures of the intelligence, of the

information technology community over the

last fifty years. We focus on big,
expensive ways

of collecting and storing information, we

have not focused on ways to help people

share information and make sense of

information across all boundaries.

Wow... (smiles)

Okay... Fascinating. So, basically

intelligence, as you describe it is in a

big mess but, let's perhaps define.

What do you mean by the term "intelligence"

when you speak of it? What is it that you

are referring to?

I'm so glad you asked that because

properly understood, intelligence means

decision support. Data is a single element

whether it's a signal or an image or a

text document, that's data. Information is

data that has been integrated and had value

added and is then broadcast generically.

So, for example a newspaper is information,

where all these journalists have taken all

these sources of data, they've created these

generic articles and then they broadcast them.

Intelligence is decision support that seeks

to answer a very specific question by a

very specific decider or decision group.

When I was lecturing in Spain, one of the

things I found, was that, when I asked people

who was the client, they would say, oh well

IBM is the client or the trade ministry

is the client, I would say, no. The client

is the specific human being that is going

to be making the decision. If you aren't

focused on what that specific human being needs

to know, wants to know and has to know

than you are nothing more than a classified

newspaper.

So, we've described how intelligence fails

today. We've defined it. Now let's take

the next step.

What is open source intelligence

as being distinctive from secretive classic

traditional intelligence?

Well, one of the dirty little secrets of

the secret intelligence community is that

it doesn't really produce a lot of useful

information. It doesn't actually produce

decision support. I wrote an article for

Counterpunch called, "Intelligence for the

President and Everybody Else", the CIA for

example does not produce useful decision

support for the Department of Agriculture,

the Department of Energy, the Department

of the Interior, the Department of Housing,

Health and Human Welfare, it doesn't do

decision support, for the rest of the
government,

and part of the problem, which is understandable,

is that they think that they are in the

business of secrets for the President, and

they believe that open source intelligence

should be done by the customers themselves.

And that's a mistake. Because the craft of

intelligence, I've written ten books...

One of my favorite books is my second book

"The New Craft of Intelligence - Personal,

Public and Political". More recently I've

written a book called, "Intelligence for Earth -

Clarity, Diversity, Integrity and Sustainability"

and that's more or less my magnum opus.

It has over a thousand five hundred links in it,

so, if you buy the kindle version, you can

then link to all of my book reviews and all

of the other documents that I support it

with. Okay? The craft of intelligence is

about having an objective, professional

group that is able to craft a requirement

and partnership with the person being

supported. That's requirement's definition.

Then they do collection management,

they know who knows, they go out and they

pull in all these sources from many different

places, and this can also be done discreetly

whether you are doing it open source or

closed source. Then they do processing,

man machine processing and one of the

problems that we have with machine processing

is that I was ignored. In 1988 I told the

General Defence Intelligence Program Committee

that we had to have geo-spatial attributes

on every datam or we would never be able

to do machine speed visualization of all

data all the time. We still don't have that.

Okay? So, machine processing is actually

severely limited due to lack of the geospatial

attributes on every datam. And then you do

man processing, one of problems that we have

in both the intelligence community and the

customer base, is we have a mix of young

people and political appointees, not subject

matter experts. I wrote an article for the

U.S. Institute for Peace in 1997 and we

talked about the chasm, the gap between

people with power and people with knowledge,

that gap is now catastrophic. Decisions are

made in Washington on the basis of who has

paid for that decision, not on the basis of

evidence or the public interest.

So, Open Source intelligence is the

application of the craft of intelligence

legally and ethically to create smart cities,

smart nations, smart companies, smart citizens.

It's about not being a sheep.

--- Wow. Okay, not being a sheep.

Bahahahaha...

---

I love that. I absolutely love that.

So, but you are going to be giving the tools

for people not to be sheep any more, but

then you have to really kind of presume or

assume that they would care to do that,

wouldn't you?

You know, one of the things I've decided

that if I ever work for a President and I'm

ever offered my dream job, I want to be

Secretary of Education, Intelligence and

Research, together.

One of the problems we have, is we have

an educational system that trains sheep.

---

It basically requires kids to sit still for

eighteen years. That's a crime against

humanity. It beats the creativity out of children.

It tries to teach children to not question

authority. It completely closes them

off from the real world. I think we need to

radically alter education, and we need to make

education a life long endeavour, at the same

time that we make meaningful work and creative

artistic work, including the arts and music,

and everything. I mean music helps your

brain. The arts help your brain.

So, we have, we're at the end of the

industrial era. The industrial era was

about turning the population into obedient

sheep and factory workers and now we're

getting into an era, and part of the problem

with the singularity approach is it doesn't

understand the true costs. Okay? So, you're

smart phone for example has at least 5 dead

Chinese in it, because the Chinese are

required to dip their hands into class A

carcinogenic in order to build that smart

phone and what that means is that the

Chinese that have touched and built your

smart phone have essentially come down

with leukaemia and they are now in a

leukaemia ward or they're dead and buried.

So, there is a human cost to the singularity

that has not been properly evaluated.

That sounds a little bit too much to me,

I mean in the sense that I totally agree

on the, on the, sort of, carcinogenic

things but, Apple has sold, on their own

like hundreds of millions of phones, if we

had five dead people for each phone, the

whole Chinese population would disappear.

All right, you just killed my math, but,

it's a very good idea, we need to run the

number up to five. Look for an article...

Nikoli: (inaudible)....if you were more specific.
Roberts: ...I have a link, I have a link

I have a link in my article for you called,

"The Human Cost of Computing" and so you'll

see the data there on Chinese coming down

with Leukaemia, you're probably right. You

are probably talking one Chinese for every

thousand phones, or something like that.

I don't know what the number is. The point

is people do come down with leukaemia

while building smart phones.

And I agree on that point, I just disagree

it's going to be five because I actually think

that that's actually...(inaudible)

You've got me. I'm wrong. I confess my sins.

Yeah...okay... And one of the ones that I

liked from those examples you have listed

there is actually a very kind of obvious

one, in a sense that, for example each

plastic water bottle requires water equal

to six or seven water bottles.

It's insane.

Right. To hold one water bottle worth

of water.

Then now, what's interesting is in the last

few years, several excellent processes have

come up for recycling plastic, but we're

still not doing it. There is just this

attitude of waste. I think the

day is going to come when trash dumps

become gold mines.

That's part of the singularity crowd though.

I like that. I didn't know that.

Yeah...The sort of, the fact that there will

be lots of treasure buried there for recycling

and for future entrepreneurs, at least

that's one of the ideas anyway.

It's a good one.

But, how and when it's about to be seen

at least the the scale, to the exponential

scale that we are hoping it will be.

But, I'm not seeing it yet and I'm on

your side to the extent that waste and

sort of negative actualities that we see

in the exponential production of many of

these things.

Well, let's talk exponential and scale.

One of the reasons open source engineering

is so important a concept is because

open source everything engineering is also

distributed, no barrier to entry engineering.

So this means that anybody can recycle

waste. Anybody can be an entrepreneur

without having to get a lot of capital

investment without having to create large

organizations and fixed plans and things

like that. So, the whole concept behind

Open Source Everything is that you have

open money, open politics, open standards,

you have open energy, open food, open water.

All of this is way of unleashing entrepreneurial

capabilities among humans.

Yeah, and I agree with you on that end and

I have huge problems personally with the

(inaudible) system as it is right now etc...

But you know, the classic counter arguments

to that is of course is the issue of innovation

and, or the incentive to innovate, so, how

do you address that? If we open source

everything, people say, no one be innovating

any more because people don't get any

incentive...

I, I, I, I don't think that's true. Now I

will grant you there is still a lot of

struggling about Open Source revenue models.

The way that...

I'm a good example of that myself.

No, I understand and one of the discussions

I've had with the Open Source software guys

is that essentially the open source software

that they create is in theory a calling card.

It's an example. It's a way of announcing

themselves and then, in theory, they get

paid for being part of a larger team that

goes on to migrate and transform and so forth.

There's actually a number of open source

revenue models and what they all seem to

focus on is that the money is not made in

the foundation, but in the finish.

It's made on the edges. I, myself have not

been in a normal job since the first of

January 2008. I have been working on the

edges, on the margins. I mean, today

I gave a briefing for a thousand dollars

and, it's a very uncomfortable existence,

it's a very....

unpredictable and (inaudible)

Yes! Yes! Now part of this larger concept

is a basic income for everybody.

In an open source world with an open

government that is totally honest and

transparent you would no longer have the

concentration of wealth. You would no

longer have the tax avoidance of the

very rich. You would in fact have more

then enough wealth for everybody. If we

had... If we had gone into Afghanistan and

Iraq with all the money that we spent

destroying those two countries, and we had

instead given everybody an annual salary and

created two story houses with swimming

pools with water and electricity and free

internet for the kids, the middle east

would be a better place today and we

probably would only have spent half as

much money and we would not have all

these residual costs of the Falluja

uranium babies, and the Iraqi military

officers now running ISIS units

in opposition. So, I talk about holistic

analytics, true cost economics and

open source engineering and all three

need to be together. The problem that we

have right now is that we are at the very

end of the proprietary technology,

scientific, financial paradigm. And that's

the paradigm which says everybody is a

slave and I own the intellectual property

and I can sell it and profit from it and

become a millionaire.

And do you think we are at the end of it

because international treaties like for

example, TPPA most recently...

TPPA is a crime against humanity and anybody

who voted for that should be impeached.

Well, the Canadian government believe it

or not is kind of considering it now and

I'm huge opponent of them doing it, but

that was negotiated in secret by the previous

government and I don't even know...

It was negotiated in secret, it has secret

clauses, it is essentially a fascist treaty.

It allows corporations to tell governments

what to do.

And sue them and force them to do stuff

in their own country.

Look, one of the cool things about the

future is that absentee landlords have no

standing. The day is going to come when all

these big agricultural tracks are taken

over by individual human beings. And,

there is going to be nothing that the big

agricultural landowning companies can do.

They are literally going to lose their land.

Because it's not their land. I believe in

the French and the Mexican system with

community land ownership. This is the

original indigenous Native American concept

so that a family can have a hundred year

lease that is transmittable forever to

other family members, but it cannot sell

the community land, it can use the community

land that is assigned to it to make a profit

but it cannot do any harm to the land.

So, for example no Monsanto GMO seeds

no pesticides. You know, we're...

There's a book called "1491" that says that

the average Mayan head of household had

to work sixty days a year in order to

support a family of five. The rest of the time

they were doing arts and crafts and

killing each other.

Okay, so again, many, many things there.

So, but, if TPPA is what it is, then it seems

to me that that regime that you're saying

is coming to an end, I think, the way I

see it is pretty strong and powerful and

perhaps ever present and overwhelmingly

so ...

It's an illusion...It's an illusion that has been

carefully crafted using movies and the media

and the educational system. There is

a wonderful cartoon of the ninety nine

percent standing on a plank and the other

end of the plank is out over the grand

canyon and the one percent is standing

on the end of the plank that is out over

the grand canyon and on the ninety nine

percent side, one of the 99%er's turns

and says why are we standing on this plank?

That day is coming..

I sure hope so, but then the concern is,

of course, how is that look like, because

there's many ways, shapes and forms that

can come of it and there's many alternative

visions to the world that that can come...

And I think the answer to that, I've read

a number of books on self determination

and secession, Quebec for example,

I believe will be it's own country within

the next five to ten years. Catalan will

be it's own country within five to ten

years. Scotland will be it's own country.

Hawaii will be it's own country within

five to ten years. There are five

thousand secessionist movement around

the world. There are twenty seven

secessionist movements in the United States.

Vermont, Alaska, Texas, Hawaii and a portion

of California and also Oregon and

Washington among others, Long Island,

New York City has talked about leaving the

state of New York, but my point is

I think eventually we are going to get to

a world in which diversity is appreciated again.

We have centralized too much.

I think we call that Canada, where I come

from, but anyway, that's of course a partial

point of view and I don't see the...I see

what your saying and I agree with most of

it, the Quebec example I kind of tend to

disagree with because most of the young

people that I talked to today from Quebec

are not concerned with that issue as

one of the major issues of our time.

They're more concerned with ecology,

with the economy, with security, with their

future job prospects, with things like that

and, probably Quebec as a sovereign state

is not probably even in the top ten, and

certainly not in the top five, as far as I

can tell. But, the other ones maybe I see

that more in Catalonia for example, of what

you're talking about and we see lots of

recent signs of it. I don't see those signs

in Canada per say.

Well, I guess what I want to say to you,

there is an excellent book by a former

Professor of mine, Charles Bednar, called,

"Transforming the Dream", and what he talks

about essentially is that the industrial era

paradigm has now reached the end of it's

supportable life. We're going to see

increasing collapses. I'm looking for

an economic collapse in the United States

in the next year. I'm looking for a collapse

in Europe. This whole... I mean, we've had

two million illegal immigrants go to Europe

in the last two years. Two million! Okay?

So, what's happening now is that governments

are no longer legitimate in the eyes of a

majority and you have concentrated wealth

and I, I, I don't have it in my article for you

but, I can certainly share it with you.

The most popular graph on my website

is "The Preconditions of Revolution Graphic",

because it outlines all the things that

can go wrong in political, legal, socio-

economic, ideal cultural, techno-demographic

and natural geographic terms. And what's

happening right now in the west is all of

those conditions are present.

Do you think that the situation in Europe

and the United States and Canada is all

the same, because I see...

No. They are all different.

Right. That's how I see it. I see that

first coming to the United States if

any where, and secondly is that necessarily

a good thing or not?

Well, you know, going back to your comment

about nature being nasty and brutish,

if the United States government is so

stupid as to not focus on the well being

of its population, then all of the chaos

that occurs in the United States has been

brought on by the U.S. government and what's

going to happen is the states are going to

devolve. They are going to begin nullifying

federal regulations. They're going to be

ending federal ownership of land.

The federal government was intended to

be a kind of administrative convenience.

It's the United States of America, not the

united people of America. It was the states

that created the federal government and

I believe the future is going to eventually

see the federal government forbidden from

owning land or taxing citizens directly.

And the states will be providing a portion

funding for services of common concern.

I expect the U.S. military to be cut back,

not quite to Canada's scale, but I expect

some major, major cuts in how we spend

money. I expect an end to borrowing.

I expect a balanced budget. We're, I mean,

we've literally been living a criminal dream.

Okay, but, to me, what you're saying

sounds like, I mean, from a former political

scientist, as I am, the definition of a state

is "that body which has the monopoly over

the organized means of violence."

In a certain graphical.. (inaudible)

Well McIver wrote a wonderful book,

"The Origin of the State" and he talks about

a number of functions not just the ownership

of violence. Chris Hedges wrote a book

recently on wages of rebellion and, of course,

Russell Brand has written a wonderful book

on revolution. Revolutions happen when

three things ...

The comedian Russell Brand?

What?

Yes. Yes. He wrote a book that I reviewed on

revolution. I liked it very much. Three

things are coming together. First is

concentrated wealth together with unemployment

which is no less then twenty three percent

in the United States today. In some groups it's

forty percent. Single Mom's with a kid,

people of colour, young people with new

college degrees and older guys like myself

it's forty percent unemployment. Okay? So,

concentrate...

Why do official statistics are so different?

Because the government lies.

The government doesn't count everybody

that's given up looking for work, doesn't

count people are holding three part time

jobs with no benefits. It's literally a

theatre, I mean Chris Hedges wrote a

wonderful book called "Empire of Illusion"

The End of Literacy and the Triumph of

Spectacle. More recently he's written a

book called "Wages of Rebellion" which

contains the third condition for revolutiion.

The first two are concentration of wealth

and illegitimate government in the eyes of

the people. The third is when the military

and law enforcement stop enforcing the law

and no longer support the elites in their

control of the population, we are very

close to that point.

But to me that sounds like a very concerning
(inaudible) thing (inaudible)... you know,

to me, that sounds like a civil war.
I mean, one of the French

revolutionaries, I can't remember who it was,

but he said, "Revolution is a blood thirsty

monster that once let out, you cannot easily

put back in."

It's true but...

all of them got guillotinized in the end.

Well, let me point out to you the difference

between a civil war and a war of succession.

A civil war is one where you are trying to

become the owner of the state and have a

monopoly on violence and be in control

of everything. A war of succession is much

easier to win. A war of succession says

do what you want, I'm out of here. You no

longer have authority in my state.

Take the state of Texas for example,

that is a state that could very, very

easily kick the federal government out

and there is absolutely nothing Washington

can do about that.

Really, but Washington commandeers the

army, Texas has just some militia.

Texas has the Texas National Guard and

I think you will find that two out of three

U.S. soldiers will not fire on U.S. citizens.

I hope so, but I'm not sure about that

because if you look at the1960's, there was

this famous case, I forget which University

was it that...(inaudible)

Kent State.

Right. And, people got killed and those

were protesters and many of those...

One person got killed and it created

national outrage. Look, the times have

changed. I mean the videotaping of

Rodney King.

Look how many black people get shot

all the time.

And what is happening now is that the

police are now under scrutiny. I mean,

we, the police killed 140 people in

March of last year. What's happening

is that the internet is making cell phone

cameras a major resource for citizens

and it is helping share outrage. Where I

think we're going and I'm actually optimistic,

because for example Lady Lynn Rothschild

ran a conference on inclusive capitalism.

That's code for stop the pitchforks. There are

silicone valley billionaires talking about

redemptive capitalism. That's code for

stop the pitchforks.

Tony Blair use to call that capitalism with

a human face ...

Or compassionate capitalism. Frankly, I

think capitalism is a bad term that should

be ex-sponged, because laborism is the

human side of it. I think we need to

reorient our economies to people and

communities and we need to get away from

these, these, huge supply chains that have

absolutely no respect for true costs.

If you look at a single...It took one of my

guys a whole year to identify the true cost

of a single cotton t-shirt. And, I include

that in your article, in the article that

I did for you.

Yes.

I mean, a single cotton t-shirt has

x gallons of water and all this fuel

and toxins and child labor.

We need to start doing more localized

manufacturing. I mean Buckminster Fuller

was the first person to say, that most

people's jobs are not worth the petrol

they use to get to and from work.

That's a very profound observation.

I would agree like with a couple of street

blocks in New York City and here in Toronto

we call it Bay Street by the way. We don't

call it Wall Street we call it Bay Street.

I would agree with that mostly, but

I don't know. Especially for the Texan

example, going back again to it. I don't

see Texas going to laborism any time soon,

myself. I see Texas even if it succeeds,

being very kind of laissez-faire, hard core

Baptist, Presbyterian, Capit...

Laissez-faire is the key term. Live and let live,

But laissez-faire is kind of the libertarian

pro-capitalist moniker isn't it?

Yeah, and one of the concerns, I was going

to run as a Libertarian candidate for President

but it became clear, they didn't want me.

One of the problems with Libertarians is

that they don't understand communitarianism.

It sounds like communism to them.

Well, they're so individual that they think

that an individual who is owning land

for example at the beginning of a river

has the right to crap in that river

and never mind the people downstream.

So, you have to have a community spirit

in which you have holistic analytics and

true cost economics and everybody understands

what the costs and the benefits are for

having civilized codes of behavior.

Okay, let's move on our conversation here

to a couple of examples and a couple of

terms, terms that you use in your book that

important, I believe. Let me just bring

in a couple of criticisms or critical

points of view. So if we are going

Open Source Everything, for example,

one of the things that we are open sourcing,

engineering, software engineering, all of

software, etc..etc... So, let me ask you first,

Are you a Linux user yourself?

No, but my next computer is going to be an

open source computer that only runs one

program at a time. With no Microsoft.

I still have a computer that's seven years

old. So I'm still using my company computer.

And, what OS is it running?

It's Microsoft.

It's Windows.

Yeah. Which is horrible. In fact, I just

found out if I deleted all the Windows Live

stuff, my computer runs better.

One of the shortfalls that we've had in

recent years is, is we haven't had a proper

open source laptop. Now there are a couple.

There's a company, a penguin company,

that builds an open source laptop. There's

another company that just came out and

they build a laptop in which they advertise

that every single software and hardware

has no back doors.

Yeah, and those are all Linux based.

I mean, no, what I meant to say is they

have no messaging, they have non of this

unauthorized stuff that goes on in the

background. One of the things that

infuriates me about Microsoft is all of

the processes are running without control

when all I want to do is type a memo.

That's the only thing I want running, not

all that other stuff, but no, I'm not a coder,

I am more of a meta-guy.

Yes. Yes. Clearly. But, so anyway, so you're

leaning toward Linux but you're not quite

there yet. Because, the reason that I ask

this or one of the reasons anyway was that

I don't know. You've read a lot of books,

a lot of books. Have you read Jaron Lanier's,

"I Am Not a Gadget" and then I forget what

his latest ...

I like him very much. He has a chapter in

a book that I published called,

"Collective Intelligence, Creating A Prosperous

World at Peace". I know him and I like him.

He's a big opponent of open source software,

he says in his book that all of the

innovation, historically speaking, has

happened in for-profit software and

the open source community at best has

always been just following behind and

kind of implementing the innovation that

has been done by (inaudible) ...

Well I would disagree with him and

I'll tell you why. Time is the one

strategic variable that cannot be bought

and cannot be replaced. Time really matters.

And, right now all of the proprietary technology

if we wanted to transfer it to the five billion

poor, it's unaffordable, it's not interoperable,

and it will not scale.

You think open source can do that?

Yeah. I do. Yes I do and in fact I proposed

an Open Source Technology's Agency in a

memorandum which I link in this artlicle

that I've given you.

And, why would it be able to accomplish such

scaling for five billion people whereas,

the alternatives from be it Microsoft or

be it Apple will not?

Because it's open. Because it's adaptable,

cause it's transparent. Because it will

essentially harness the distributed intelligence of the

five billion poor. See part of the problem

with proprietary technology is it's not

teaching people how to fish. It's
giving them

a closed program. It's giving them a

closed box. If you give them an open box

then they will invent new things with it.

And I don't have all the answers, but what

I do know with certainty is that what we

are doing now is not working and it's not

scalable. Now I wrote a white paper for

the United Nations called,

"Beyond Data Monitoring" and that's also

linked in this article that I've done for you.

And, I make the point that the current plan

to achieve the sustainability development

goals is ridicules. Not only are the donor

promises not going to materialize, but

eighty to ninety percent of the money is

then consumed by United Nations and

intermediate organizations. Less than ten

percent of the money gets to the village

level. Now if you combine an open source

everything approach together with what

Ghani from Afghanistan has recommended,

which is electronic bank accounts at the village

level, then you can put one hundred percent of

the money to the village level and bypass all

these intermediaries that are buying

themselves first class tickets around the

world.

Yeah, that's a good point per say.

I think the whole idea of an

open source world is you move away from

the fenced commons.

I mean, proprietary technology is a way of

fencing the commons and it is too

restrictive for the kind of scale that we

need to achieve in the next ten years.

You see, and I agree with you entirely on

the theoretical end of things and I've been a,

a strong sympathizer to open source software

yet, I've been using Microsoft myself and

the last time I did actually a deeper analysis

on the potential for me migrating to Linux

was maybe a couple of years ago and at the

time there were all kinds of issues with

drivers for video cards and you know, video

codecs, which are of course proprietary and

you know I am a blogger and a podcaster

so I need to be able to edit my audio and

or video for things like that...

But, imagine if you had an open source

alternative for every single one of those.

Yes, that would be fantastic, but there

were problems because of course the

companies are creating those motes, those

barriers, those impediments.

In 1994 we talked about Microsoft and how

it mutates and migrates it's application

program interfaces. I mean Microsoft has

done some great things, but it has set

information technology back twenty years

because it has retarded the ability to create

sense making programs and data

management programs and all these other

things. Microsoft basically said, just,

this is just like Facebook, Facebook is making

the same mistake with facebook basic.

Microsoft is saying screw you, were gonna

go five miles and hour and you better like it.

That's what Facebook is trying to do to India,

okay? That's insane. We ought to put Facebook

and Google and Microsoft out of business.

And, Cisco and Oracle.

But, the Indians turn them down I think.

Didn't they?

Yes, which is good. Which is very good.

Yeah, that was quite impressive and I think

they are going, and even in places like

certain municipal cities in Germany I noticed

just in the last couple of years they did

migrate from Microsoft administrative systems

to Linux.

It's not just them, the Norwegians, the Chinese

a whole bunch of people have said, we should

not require our citizens to buy a proprietary

product in order to read government information.

And that comes back to my vision for

open access, open data requires open

software and open hardware, it also requires

open spectrum. WIFI should be free or this

new thing LIFI with the light bulbs, it's
wonderful.

Tell us a little bit about what you called

the panarchy model. Can you unpack that

for us?

The what?

Panarchy.

Oh panarchy. Well that's more Micheal Bowens's

thing, but you know panarchy is essentially

informed self governance. It's extreme democracy.

It's everybody working together and having

voice and vote on any issue that they wish.

Let's us, pick up the pace then. Let's talk

about the importance of what you call

ethics and integrity.

Oh I love that question. There's a guy

named Robert James Beckett in the

United Kingdom and you can look him up on

my website PhiBetaIota, but he talks

about we're moving from the age of information

into the age virtue. I agree with that.

In their book, "The Lessons of History",

Will and Ariel Durant who wrote the eleven

volume story of civilization say that morality

is a strategic asset of incalculable value.

Ethics is about the truth and transperancy

and trust. Ethics is how a civilization hands

on the lessons of history from one generation

to the next. Ethics is the cultural code

for getting the most out of any group

in any situation with the least amount of

damage and the least amount of waste.

So, ethics is an operating system.

I love that actually. Ethics is an operating
system.

Yes.

Hmmm. I like that very much. Interesting.

That, I would have to ponder on that and

maybe I'll steal it from you.

You drew that out of me. That is the first

time I have ever said that.

Awesome. Excellent. And, so perhaps I'm

contributing a little bit which is...

Ethics is an operating system. You have my

permission to take it.

I'll steal it for sure but, you should...

No, it's open source.

Exactly and because it's open source it

wouldn't be a problem but, tell us a

little bit about, since we are that topic,

the importance of bloggers like me,

because you see I'm a blogger and people

have often a misconception that I blog

about technology, but I actually do not blog

about technology. Technology is just a context.

I actually blog about ethics.

Look, I was Ithe opening speaker at

Hackers on Planet Earth in 1994

and in my speech I said that hackers were

the only people who had the combination

of intelligence and integrity to identify

deficiencies in communications and computing

systems that the companies themselves

were either unaware of or trying to hide.

And, I said that hackers have a social

responsibility to reveal those vulnerabilities

and my proposed approach to them was

report the vulnerabilities to the company

and give them thirty days to fix it. And at

the end of thirty days announce it publicly.

So, since you are mentioning social

responsibility, that means that you actually

would remain in support of people such

as, for example, Julian Assange or even

Edward Snowdon.

Yes and let me point out that I think

Edward Snowden is a CIA operation.

Approved by the White House.

That kind of blows my mind now.

Well, we could talk about that.

Look, Snowden was a nobody. He went from being

a security guard to being a CIA technical

specialist and placed by Booz Allen in

Hawaii as a contractor. Snowden, and I've

met his parents. I like his parents very much.

They're loyal, patriotic Americans. Snowden

has all the signs of being a classic operation

and our state department is stupid, but

they are not so stupid as to take Snowdens

passport away so that he has to stay in

Russia unless we want him to stay in Russia.

That's an interesting point.

Okay well, that's another point I need to

Look, the bottom line is everyone has

different motivations. I like to quote a CEO in New York

Bob Seelert from Saatchi and Saatchi
Worldwide.

He says until you get the truth on the

table, no matter how ugly it is, you're not

in a position to deal with it. And one of the

problems that we with western governments

and western banks and western corporations

is that they lie. As a persistent characteristic

of how they do business.

The war in Iraq was based on nine hundred and

thirty five now documented lies. There's a

book by that title, "935 Lies" and what it

actually talks about is the loss of ethics

in politics. In theory, and I wrote a

wonderful post many years ago that

was featured in a profile in which I talked

about how politics and intelligence are in

theory the highest forms of serving the public,

but only when they are both ethical.

I agree with you completely on that point too.

Okay. So, what we have now, Matt Tabbi has

written a book called "Griftopia", and on

page 32 he has a quote and my summary of

that book is on Amazon, in which he says that

what we have now in the United States is a

state of griftopia, in which political crime

and financial crime have merged. The reason

political crime and financial crime have

merged is because the citizens have abdicated

their responsibility for paying attention.

Now, when I spoke at Gnomedex in 2007.

Gnomedex is a conference of bloggers.

I suggested to them that they attach

themselves like leeches to individual

corporations and individual issues and

that they become citizen intelligence

minutemen, which is a phrase that

Alisandro Politi coined in 1992 when he

attended my first conference on

open source solutions. So in the ideal,

every citizen should be a citizen intelligence

professional who is focused with laser like

intensity so that they become the world's

top expert on x, y or z and nothing escapes

their notice. I want to do for open source

what Linus Torvalds did for Linux.

In other words I want all the poverty authors

and all the citizens observing poverty to

be part of one massive global brain

poverty slice. The same thing for infectious

disease, the same thing for environmental

degradation. The same thing for potholes.

I mean, there are now wonderful apps

where a citizen can tap there phone and

report a pothole. I want to create the world

brain. And, in fact I have an essay on saving

civilization.

Well, tell us a little more about the concept

of that world brain looks like.

Well, I own three of the url's, worldbrain.net

dot org and dot com. And I have a graphic

on the world brain. Basically worldbrain.net

should be permenent identities

that also include anonymity and privacy

and rights and security and worldbrain.org

should be, like the global library. It's free

to everybody. Worldbrain.edu should be

global education one cell call at a time.

So, I don't care what it is that you want

to know you should be able to get it in

a five minute video that is directly related

to the moment in time.

And then worldbrain.com would be a profit

making activity in which communities would

agree to crowd fund very specific developments.

Well, I want to tell your listeners, if they

go to tinyurl.com/steele-future - and I think

I have this link in the article that I wrote

for you. but, steele-future as a tinyurl

has all of my latest work, including

the saving civilization essay and that calls

for a school of future oriented hi-grade

governance. It calls for a multi-national

decision support center so that the U.N.

will stop making decisions based on

American lies. It calls for an open source

technologies agency. Let see, what else,

oh, it calls for a United Nations Open Source

Decision Support Information Network.

Eventually, we should be able to connect

all information and all languages all the
time.

But let me ask you, all of those things so

far that you said like, open source

intelligence world brain connecting

everything, all the knowledge and all the

languages all the time. All those things to me

sound like Google. Google.

No, you know, I, I really like and admire

Vint Cerf. He and I met in 1992 when I was

attending The Annual Internet Society Conferences.

And, I bought Vint sushi before he went to

the dark side. You know and I said, "Vint,

for God sakes get Google to give us some

tools for making sense." And I'm sorry to say

that hasn't happened. Now you know, now

are you aware Google started basically on

the basis of three crimes. Google stole

the yahoo search engine.

I don't know about that.

Yes. They have recently paid one billion

dollars as a quitclaim, so Google stole

the yahoo search engine and then modified

it to become Google. They received funding

from the CIA Office of Research and Development.

And they were able to pick up all of the

AltaVista employees that Hewlitt Packard

closed down. Those are the three things

that created Google

and my friend Stephen Arnold has written

three books about Google. The Google Trilogy.

Google, in my view has done some really

excellent things, but Google is also a fraud.

It hasn't actually made money. It's operating

on shareholder cash, okay. Google is driven

by search engine advertising revenue

and that is collapsing. I think Google is gone.

And, frankly I think Facebook is gone

at some point. If India really, really wanted

to create a smart nation and smart cities

they should be harnessing all their universities

to create the anti-google and the anti-facebook

and then on top of it put the tools that I've

identified. Eighteen different tools.

Well, I can sympathize with sort of the

desire to have alternatives to Google and

Facebook and perhaps in sort of the

open source realm of, but

that's great, I just don't see the end of either

Google nor Facebook any time soon.

Well, I see the end of IBM

you know, I mean this is gonna happen

inevitably. Google and Facebook serfed

the wave perfectly. They are utterly brilliant

and I don't begrudge them for a moment,

their great success, but they're not good

enough and that's my bottom line.

Okay. Let me ask you this then. First of all,

it's just a curious question. How in the

world have you managed to write seventeen hundred

book reviews? Like, I read a lot of books

myself, probably in the five to seven,

eight hundred range maybe...

Right. Let me say first off when Google,

I mean when Amazon started the review
system,

I had already written two books and each of

those two books had a hundred fifty

annotated bibliographic entries. So I had

a total of three hundred mini book reviews,

one paragraph. I loaded all of those to

Amazon on the fourth of April 2000 and I

was instantly a top thousand five hundred

reviewer, because it had just started.

So that's three hundred reviews right there.

Then I was invited to speak to a parliament

in Europe. I can't remember, a French Parliament,

a German parliament, whatever and I was very

intimidated, so I read fifty books to get

ready for this mission and I wrote short

reviews of those fifty books and I loaded

that and now we are at three hundred

and fifty. Then I kind of got hooked and

buying books is a business expense, so

there was a time when I was spending

five thousand dollars a year on books.

And it basically boiled down to my

reading one or two books a week. Now I read

books in three ways. I glance through them

and if I don't like them at all I just set

them aside and I don't review them.

Some books I will read the introduction,

the conclusion and maybe one or two chapters

and the table of contents and the index

and then the... Some books I will start with

the index and then read all of the end notes

and then read the entire book word for word.

So out of the two thousand one hundred or so

books reviews that I have now, I would say

I have read every word in at least half

of them. And the others are partial things

because at my level with what I know you

could pick up a book and you can see very

quickly does this book make an original

contribution or is this regurgitating stuff

or whatever... and so my reviews do two

things; they summarize the book and they

provide ten links which is the maximum

allowed by Amazon. So, I've actually created

a collegy, a non fiction, a collegy of ninety

eight linked categories of books and if you

go to phibetaiota.net, at the top you'll

see the review page and then within that

review page I have a whole series of lists

of book reviews, like I have a long list,

list of lists of books about the future

and lists of lists of books about the past.

I have one list of three hundred books on

secret intelligence. I have another list of

books on self determination and secession

and so forth. So, I would certainly say take

a look at the review page where I also have

essays on leadership and education and
democracy lost.

And, now give me your homepage, Robert,

but unfortunately time is advancing here

I'm going to have to bring our conversation

to an end, but let me ask you what's the

best place for our viewers and listeners to find more

about you and your work.

Well, I would say the blog which has no

advertising and offers a free subscription.

That has over nineteen thousand posts

from over eight hundred contributors.

Eighty of which are active now and that

is PhiBetaIota.net.

Very good, okay, now link to it. And, then

the final question that I always have to ask

my guests on my show is this, "How do we

wrap up our conversation? We kind of jumped

all over space and time and subject matters

and went all kinds of...

Well, you're going to be publishing an article

that I have written for you especially and

what I would say is let's keep the conversation
going.

Let's keep the conversation going. Interesting.

Okay, I like that. All right and of course, by

the time this interview gets published, I

will already have published the article, so...

Robert Steele thank you very much for

being with us tonight.

It's an honour. Thank you.

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