On his blog Mark Safranski writes in PNM & 4GW: PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE AND THE MEDIA ENVIRONMENT IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION

Information and perception are critical aspects of connectivity and the media has become a dynamic feedback loop that helps shapes how people, individually and collectively, will frame and interpret events. This of course depends on what information succeeds in capturing their attention. Those of us in the Core live not only in the era of " White Noise" but also in the age of Mass Distraction.

Recently, Tom sent me 3 books. One of them is Dan Gillmor's We the Media: grassroots journalism by the people, for the people.

There's growing recognition of the value of decentralizing people and data at a time when big, centralized operations may be targets. But we need to find ways to bring the nation's collective energy and brainpower to bear on the threat. As Sun Microsystems' Bill Joy has said so memorably, most of the brightest people don't work for any one organization. Tapping the power of everyone is the best approach.

The Homeland Security Information network, under construction as I write this, is built in part on peer-to-peer technology. It's designed to let various levels of governments share information quickly and securely, and on an ad hoc basis when necessary. The furthest the the system goes is to local public-safety personnel. What it does not do, at least not yet, is solicit information from average citizens. To me, this suggest insufficient recognition at high levels that in a world of asymmetric threats, the people who are not in official chains of command will be more and more important.

John Robb, who served in a U.S. Air Force special operations unit and later ran an Internet research firm, helped me understand asymmetry and its consequences in the wake of the [September 11] attacks. I asked himhow we could use the power at the edges of networks and society to counteract the bad guys.

Among his suggestions: "Build a feedback loop that greatly expands on the Pentagon's suggestion box but also narrows down individual questions. Marshall McLuhan first proposed this (and I believe it): For any problem there is a person or persons in a large population of educated people that don't sse it as a problem. We need a feedback loop that can filter up knowledge and insight. For example: If you have seen a loophole in airport security and have a solution as to how to correct it, there should be a mechanism for getting that information to the people that can make the change."

Note the direction of the informatio, from the bottom to the top--or, more accurately, from the edge to the middle.

An extension of the feedback loop, Robb said, is to create much more targeted "knowledge networks" tapping into specific pools of information. "Our foreign service and military units don't have enough Pushtu speakers," he wrote just prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, referring to one of that Asian nation's dominant languages. "However, I am sure we have tens of thousands [of Pushtu speakers] living in the U.S. right now. Why not tap them for expertise in real-time?" How? By giving soldiers satellite phones to call Pushtu speakers who could serve as translators.

The public-health world could take advantage of these kinds of techniques. Bioterrorism, in fact, may absolutely require them. Ronald E. LaPorte, a public-health expert at the University of Pittsburg, has proposed an "Internet civil defense" using the power of networks to help neighbors watch out for each other. [example omitted]

When the stakes are this high, and the threat this different, we should be looking for the best ideas wherever they originate. I'm betting that the center won't hold if we waste power at the edges.

Oh, it's a wonderful day in the neighborhood. A good day for reading.. . . .

The three books Tom sent to me are, in the order I read them:

The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek

We the Media by Dan Gillmor

Who Dares Wins by Bob Mayer