AI and Geoeconomics

Extracted from Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge, Selected Interviews & Other Writings 1972-1977, Edited by Colin Gordon, Random House Inc, 1980. Foucault: Power in the substantive sense, ‘le pouvoir’, doesn’t exist. What I mean in this. The idea that there is either located at -- or emanating from -- a given point something which is ‘power’ seems to me to be based on a misguided analysis, one which at all events fails to account for a considerable  numbers of phenomena. In reality power means relations, a more-or-less organised, hierarchical, co-ordinated cluster of of relations . So the problem is not that of constituting a theory of power which would be a remake of Boulainvilliers on the one hand and Rousseau on the other. Both the authors start off from an original state in which all men are equal, and then what happens? With one of them, a historical invasion, with the other a mythico-juridical event, but either way it turns out that from a given moment people no longer ...

La première sortie ( The first outing, 1876-1877) Pierre-Auguste Renoir Excerpts from Balachandra, Lakshmi, et al. " Improvisation and negotiation: Expecting the unexpected. " Negotiation journal 21.4 (2005): 415-423. Preparation and Mindfulness Negotiation is a fascinating subject in part because the process is so often unpredictable . External events outside the control of the parties — unexpected outbursts, accidentally pressing someone’s “emotional hot button,” learning critical new facts about the issues being negotiated — can intrude at any time. A negotiator who learns to react effectively in unpredictable moments clearly is an improviser. He or she somehow manages to cope regardless of the people, the problem, or the process in place. We have known people who have this gift. But how do these virtuoso performers do it? [...] A cornerstone of negotiation theory is that a negotiator must consider the needs, interests, and concerns of the other side. Proper ...

A Portrait of Luca Pacioli  (c. 1447–1517) Excerpts from "Chapron Guillaume. The environment needs cryptogovernance . Nature . 2017 May 22;545(7655):403-405. doi: 10.1038/545403a." The arrival of the blockchain has been compared to the invention of double-entry book-keeping (first described in print in the fifteenth century  by Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli), which enabled the modern economy. I think that its implications reach far beyond finance, to governance and sustainability. Unique record The blockchain proves with certainty that a recorded piece of information — a piece of data, document, transaction, certificate, event or identity — existed at a particular time. If an asset can be assigned a unique  digital identifier , such as a barcode, then it can be included. At least four areas related to governance and sustainability could benefit from using the blockchain. Ownership  From a birth certificate to a fish or a forest, the blockcha...

René Magritte, "Les mémoires d'un saint", 1960, The Menil Collection, Houston   © ADAGP, Paris 2016 Excerpts from the Indian Journal of Science and Technology, Volume 8, Issue 24, September 2015 The Impact of Transformational Leadership The purpose of this study is to analyze the causal relationship between individual creativity and organizational creativity by focusing on transformational  and emotional leadership amid various factors that bring about innovation to organizations. The results of the analysis show that transformational leadership  had a significant effect on individual creativity, while individual creativity had a significant effect on organizational innovation. While emotional leadership, which, of late, has been receiving growing attention, did not have a significant positive effect on individual creativity, it did have a significant positive effect  on organizational innovation. In particular, the core factor that was responsible for ...

The Statute of Anne came into force in 1710 Blockchain and IP rights One of the most obvious applications of blockchain technology is as a registry of IP rights, to catalogue and store original works. In the UK, copyright is unregistered and comes into existence automatically on creation of an original qualifying work. This means that, unlike registered trade marks which can be recorded and viewed on various registries around the world, there is often no adequate means for authors to catalogue their works. As such, ownership can be hard to prove. It can also be difficult for authors to see who is using their work, and equally difficult for third parties using a work to know who to seek a licence from. The result of this is that authors are often unable to stop infringements or to make the most of monetising their works. Using blockchain as an IP registry may help give clarity to copyright authors, owners and users. By registering their works to a blockchain, authors could...

Alexey Bestuzhev (1693 – 1768), Grand Chancellor of Russia Negotiation  101: Why Republicans Capitulate on Budget — for Now Breitbart News -2 mai 2017 The Republicans came to these budget negotiations without a BATNA (1), or with a very bad one. They were not prepared to shut down the government under almost any circumstances. A shutdown in President Donald Trump’s first 100 days would have made him look like a weak chief executive, and might have caused lasting political damage. A shutdown would also have made the GOP-dominated Congress look reckless and incompetent. It was never going to happen. The Democrats might also have suffered from a shutdown, but they have an institutional advantage, in that the public is conditioned to expect federal spending as the norm, and the mainstream media almost always blame the Republicans for shutdowns. So their BATNA, while bad, was better than President Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan’s BATNA. America – Trump's Small ...

Henri Matisse - La Danse - 1909 Text excerpts from  Freeman, R. B. (2015).  WorkersOwnership and Profit-Sharing in a New Capitalist Model?   (No. 267566).   Harvard University & © Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) 2015 Richard B. Freeman   holds the Herbert Ascherman Chair in Economics at  Harvard University . He is currently serving as Faculty co-Director of the  Labor and Worklife Program   at the Harvard Law School. He directs the  National Bureau of Economic Research   / Sloan Science Engineering Workforce Projects, and is Senior Research Fellow in Labour Markets at the London School of Economics'  Centre for Economic Performance . The challenge of extreme inequalities Capitalism today faces the specter of ever rising economic inequality and perennial financial crisis. The fruits of economic progress are increasingly concentrated on a small proportion of society – the upper 1 %, 0.1 %, 0.01 %, 0.00...